Upper St. Clair attorney Charles McCullough, under scrutiny for his management of a widow’s trust fund, has dropped out of the race for an at-large Republican seat on Allegheny County Council, his former campaign coordinator said today.

McCullough also no longer works for Downtown law firm Eckert, the firm’s CEO, Tim Ryan, confirmed this afternoon.

"He is not employed by, nor associated with, Eckert Seamans," said Ryan, who declined further comment.

Ryan said the firm is still examining how McCullough helped manage a fund for Shirley H. Jordan, 90, of Upper St. Clair, that donated $10,000 each to a judicial candidate, three council members and a Catholic charity headed by McCullough's wife. The money was returned after the recipients learned that Jordan suffers from dementia.

McCullough was running against Republican Kevin Acklin for the council seat.

Mr. Meyers is one of the leading US legal advisers to Australian companies and Australian and international investment banks on US and international capital raisings and stock exchange listings, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, structured finance and M&A transactions.

Tom Cole, Chair of the firm’s Executive Committee, noted “Our decision to open an office in Sydney and the recruitment of Mr. Meyers demonstrates our commitment to serving our clients throughout the world.”

Tom Albrecht, a member of the firm’s Executive and Management Committees with responsibility for International operations, noted “For over twenty years, our firm has represented investment banks and financial institutions based in the Australian and New Zealand markets on US and European capital markets, structured finance and related transactions.  Given the increased sophistication and number of transactions that have been originated in the Australian market,  we believe that it is now time for us to establish a local presence, and we are very fortunate to have a lawyer with Bob’s skills and reputation join us. The US-qualified lawyers to be based in our Sydney office will also provide additional depth and breadth to our existing international legal practices based in the other Sidley offices in the Asia Pacific time zone.”

Mr. Meyers expressed his delight at joining Sidley, commenting, “Sidley’s longstanding experience in the Australian and New Zealand markets, its strength in the Asia Pacific region, its world class corporate, capital markets and litigation practices and its reputation as one of the world’s leading international law firms is the perfect platform for my practice and my clients.”

Mr. Meyers will join Sidley’s global corporate finance and capital markets practice, which numbers several hundred lawyers practicing in 11 offices around the world.  Sidley has long maintained one of the world’s leading capital markets’ practices.  For the third consecutive year, Sidley was ranked top issuer counsel for U.S. debt, equity and equity-related deals by Thomson Financial in its 2006 U.S. law firm league tables.  The firm advised on 548 deals worth $374.1 billion in deal value representing a market share of 10.7 percent. Sidley also ranked number three as underwriter’s counsel in the same category with $257.3 billion in deal value from 429 offerings representing a market share of 7.2 percent.  In the 2007 American Lawyer Corporate Scorecard, Sidley ranked third (tied) for top law firm transactional practice in the United States.

Sidley Austin LLP is one of the world's largest full-service law firms, with more than 1,700 lawyers practicing in 15 U.S. and international cities including Beijing, Brussels, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo.  Sydney will be Sidley’s sixteenth office.  In 2006, Sidley was named to Legal Business’ Global Elite, their designation for "the 15 finest law firms in the world."  Sidley was again named the number one law firm for overall client service by BTI, a Boston-based consulting and research firm, in 2007.  BTI has also named Sidley to their Client Service Hall of Fame as one of only two law firms to rank in the Client Service Top 10 for six years in a row.

www.sidley.com

White & Case was retained by the Ad Hoc Committee of Arahova Noteholders, one of the principal unsecured creditor constituencies in the case, in the spring of 2005, after various positions taken by the debtors and other creditor constituencies threatened to materially reduce Arahova creditor recoveries from full par plus accrued interest to mere cents on the dollar.

"The case involved potential shifting of billions of dollars of value around the corporate enterprise," said Miami-based partner Thomas E Lauria, chairman of the Firm's Global Financial Restructuring and Insolvency Group. "More than $2 billion of creditor recoveries were at stake for Arahova creditors. Together with the Ad Hoc Committee, our work was instrumental in negotiating a global settlement between and among a majority of all creditor constituencies fragmented throughout the entire Adelphia capital structure."

What ensued was nearly two years of intense, contentious litigation over the bona fides of Adelphia's general ledgers. With billions of dollars of creditor recoveries at stake, certain major parties finally agreed on a term sheet resolving the inter-debtor disputes and, importantly, providing for near payment in full for Arahova creditors. Under the prior plans of reorganization proposed by the Debtors and pursuant to the May 2005 schedules, the default distribution for Arahova creditors had been in the low 20 cents on the dollar. Instead, as a direct result of White & Case's efforts, Arahova stakeholders were positioned to receive a nearly full recovery — an approximate $2 billion improvement in recoveries on a class basis.

White & Case then took the lead role in developing the plan and structuring the Ad Hoc Committee's recovery, which included cash, stock and certificated litigation trust interests, freely tradable on a national exchange, in one of the largest litigation trust vehicles ever created in a Chapter 11 case.

Capping off more than 21 months of White & Case's involvement on behalf of the Ad Hoc Committee — including 11 weeks of trial in the winter of 2006 and weekly court-ordered settlement negotiations throughout the summer of 2006, the bankruptcy court confirmed the plan and endorsed the settlement, granting a nearly full recovery to the Arahova Noteholders.

Along with partner Thomas E Lauria, the White & Case team was led by New York partners J. Christopher Shore and Gerard Uzzi. In New York, the team comprised partners Wayne Cross, Robert Milne, Michael Gallagher, Jack Pace, James Hayden and Colin Diamond, and associates Meghan McCurdy, David Ernst, John Chung, Douglas Baumstein, Averie Hason, Victoria Kennedy, Raj Gandesha, Victoria Oswald, Kendra Goldenberg and Jessica Marchand. In Miami, associates Richard Kebrdle, Kevin McGill, Fernando Menendez and Lane Begy also advised the committee.

White & Case has taken a lead role in a number of major US bankruptcy proceedings, including the completion of a three-year restructuring of one of the world's largest energy trading companies, Mirant Corporation, in which the Firm acted as debtors' counsel; advising on the cross-border restructuring of Corporación Durango, the largest papermaker in Mexico; representing hedge fund Appaloosa Management in connection with being the principal equity investor for the proposed restructuring of Delphi, one of the largest manufacturing restructurings in US history; and representing French governmental agency CDR Creances as mortgagee and judgment creditor, in the successful prosecution of an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the owner of the Flatotel building in Manhattan.

About White & Case
White & Case LLP is a leading global law firm with more than 2,000 lawyers in 35 offices in 23 countries. Our clients value the breadth and depth of our US, English and local law capabilities and rely on us for their complex cross-border commercial and financial transactions and for international arbitration and litigation. Whether in established or emerging markets, the hallmark of White & Case is our complete dedication to the business priorities and legal needs of our clients.

The Commission's complaint in this action charges Scrushy with directing a $2.6 billion financial fraud at the HealthSouth Corporation during the years 1996 through 2002....

The Complaint alleges that, at Scrushy's direction, HealthSouth's overstated its revenue by more than $2.6 billion from the second quarter of 1996 through the third quarter of 2002. This overstatement led directly to quarterly and annual overstatements of net income and retained earnings. The Commission's complaint charges that, by the end of 2002, HealthSouth was claiming to have over $1.5 billion in accumulated retained earnings, when in fact the Company had operated at a significant loss over its entire corporate history. The HealthSouth fraud resulted in one of the largest accounting restatements in American corporate history.

Scrushy was acquitted in 2005 on criminal charges of wire and mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for his role in overstating HealthSouth's earnings.

He was, however, convicted last year on federal bribery and fraud charges for paying campaign debts of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in exchange for a seat on a state-operated review board that regulates Alabama hospitals. Siegelman was also convicted in that case and both could face up to 30 years in prison.

"As the investigation or the hearings went forward, it was clear that the attorney general broke no law, did no wrongdoing. And this is an honest, honorable man in whom I have confidence," the president said.

Bush also maintained Wolfowitz was honest in answering every query that was posed at him in the panel hearing.

"The Attorney General went up and gave a very candid assessment and answered every question he could possibly answer -- honestly answer. And in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job."

The President also stressed the Attorney General "has the right" to recommend the replacement of attorneys.

"One of the things that's important for the American people to understand is that the Attorney General has a right to recommend to me to replace US attorneys. US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. In other words, we have named them and I have the right to replace them with somebody else," Bush remarked.

But lower federal courts have disagreed about what happens if a company voluntarily chooses to clean up a site: can it sue other companies, or the U.S. government, to recover costs? Or does the Superfund law require a company to be sued by the EPA first, before it can take action against other parties?

The U.S. government has taken the latter position. The Bush administration argued in court filings that requiring companies to be sued by the EPA before they can recover costs from other entities encourages companies to settle with the government.

There "is little evidence that...Congress," when it enacted the Superfund law, "intended to promote unsupervised cleanups at the expense of government-supervised cleanups pursuant to a settlement or suit," the Solicitor General, the government's lawyer, wrote.

Environmentalists and several U.S. business groups respond that such an interpretation would discourage companies from initiating their own cleanups. The EPA is stretched too thin to oversee the rehabilitation of every site, a coalition of business groups wrote in a court brief.

The case before the court Monday stems from a lawsuit filed by Atlantic Research Corp. in 2002. Atlantic Research retrofitted rocket motors under contract with the U.S. government in the 1980s at an industrial park in Camden, Ark., according to court filings.

Rocket propellant contaminated the industrial park as a result of the work, and the company voluntarily cleaned up the pollution. It then sued the federal government in 2002 to recover some of the costs.

A district court sided with the government, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Atlantic could proceed with its suit. The government then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Several business groups, including the Superfund Settlements Project and trade associations representing the chemical, oil, and utilities industries, signed onto a brief supporting Atlantic Research. The Superfund Settlements Project represents 10 corporations, including General Electric Co. and United Technologies Corp., that have spent $6 billion on hazardous waste cleanups, the group's lawyer said.