Russell B. Hill has joined the Orange County office of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP as a partner in the firm's Intellectual Property practice group.  Hill most recently practiced at Howrey in Irvine. 

Hill specializes in patent litigation and trials.  He has tried patent cases before the International Trade Commission and in federal district courts, and has conducted several successful appeals to the Federal Circuit.  Hill's technical expertise lies in electronic systems and controls.  He gained this expertise as an aviation radar and RF communication systems chief in the Marines.  Hill has also taught undergraduate mathematics and electronics courses as an adjunct professor.  Hill also has extensive transactional and general counseling experience.  He has successfully formed joint ventures, and negotiated and structured a wide range of domestic and international deals. 

"Russ joins us with an impressive practical and academic background.  His practice is firmly rooted in electrical engineering and the electronic arts, though he also represents clients in a variety of biotechnology, software and mechanical process patent disputes and licensing campaigns.  With Russ, our patent litigation team continues to expand to adeptly handle high-stakes technology matters across a variety of technical disciplines," said Guy Halgren, chairman of the firm. 

"I look forward to joining Sheppard Mullin, a top-notch full service firm with a strong footprint in Orange County, and a solid nationwide presence and reputation," Hill commented.  "I am impressed with the firm's IP practice, the group's successful growth in recent years and firm management's dedication to growing it even further.  I'm excited to be part of a partnership that is transparent and open, which fosters both a collegial culture and an entrepreneurial spirit." 

"Russ is a great fit for us.  He is obviously a well respected patent litigator, but also a quality person.  Russ adds significantly to our patent litigation team and brings a formidable expertise in electrical engineering.  His background complements our patent litigation expertise in Orange County, and supplements our existing EE expertise firmwide," said Carlo Van den Bosch, co-chair of the firm's Intellectual Property practice group. 

Hill’s clients include Electronics for Imaging, Lenovo, Magnecomp and TDK.  Hill received a J.D., Order of the Coif, from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1997, a M.A. from Baylor University, a B.A. summa cum laude, from Chapman University, and a B.S. in Electronics Engineering Technology from Grantham University. 

Sheppard Mullin has 60 attorneys based in its Orange County office.  The firm's Intellectual Property practice group includes 70 attorneys firmwide. 

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that lawyers for people thinking of pleading guilty to a crime must advise their clients who are not citizens about the possibility that they will be deported.

Likening deportation to the punishments of banishment and exile, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for five justices, said the Constitution guaranteed competent legal advice on at least some collateral consequences of guilty pleas.

“It is our responsibility under the Constitution to ensure that no criminal defendant — whether a citizen or not — is left to the mercies of incompetent counsel,” Justice Stevens wrote.

The vote was 7 to 2, though two justices in the majority would have required only that criminal defense lawyers not say anything false and tell their clients to consult an immigration lawyer if they had questions.

The case involved Jose Padilla, a native of Honduras who has lived in the United States for 40 years, served in the Vietnam War and is a legal permanent resident. Mr. Padilla, a commercial truck driver, was arrested in 2001 after the authorities in Kentucky found more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana in his truck.

Mr. Padilla pleaded guilty to marijuana trafficking, a felony, and received a five-year sentence. He later said he had agreed to the plea based on his lawyer’s incorrect advice that it would not affect his immigration status. In fact, the plea made it all but certain that Mr. Padilla would be deported once he served his time.

The question in the case, Padilla v. Kentucky, No. 08-651, was whether bad legal advice about a collateral consequence of a guilty plea could amount to ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment.

A federal appeals court denied on Thursday Microsoft Corp's request that a full panel of judges rehear arguments in its long-running patent dispute with a small Canadian technology company.

The decision is a blow to the world's largest software maker, which has been embroiled in a dispute with Toronto-based i4i Ltd over a feature in Microsoft's Word application for more than three years.

Microsoft could yet take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, or make a new request to the appeals court. The company is considering its options, according to a spokesman.

A federal jury awarded i4i $290 million last August after finding that Microsoft had infringed a patent belonging to i4i relating to text manipulation software in the 2003 and 2007 versions of Word, Microsoft's word processing application.

The Lovells law firm plans to close its Chicago office by the end of October, sending 22 lawyers and 25 other employees scrambling to find work.

The London firm is set to merge with Washington-based Hogan & Hartson on May 1, creating one of the world's largest law firms with $1.8 billion in revenue and 2,500 lawyers in 40 offices. But the new firm, to be called Hogan Lovells, will not have a presence in Chicago.
Lovells said it decided to exit the city after 15 years because the performance of the Chicago office has declined in recent years.

In a statement Tuesday, David Harris, Lovells managing partner, said: "[The reinsurance market] is an area which has seen changes in work patterns and the office has been affected by a number of significant conflict situations. Despite the best efforts of partners in Chicago and elsewhere, this has had an impact on the office's overall performance in recent years and the position is not expected to change."

Conflicts and deteriorating performance had contributed to departures from the Chicago office in recent months. The office used to have more than 30 lawyers.

Yet, legal observers in Chicago said they thought the merger with Hogan would save the office. The decision to shut down was made independent of the merger, Harris said.

But the just-enacted health care overhaul law contains a provision that changed the federal False Claims Act in a way that would appear to allow new, similar lawsuits to go forward.

The court voted 7-2 to hold that a technical, though important aspect, of the federal whistleblower law applies to local governments. One section of the law prohibits whistleblower lawsuits when public disclosure of the alleged fraud occurs through a court hearing, a news report or congressional or administrative audit.

In an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court ruled that the language on administrative audits refers to a report prepared by any government, not just a federal government document. The question had divided federal appeals courts.

Justice Sotomayor dissented, saying her colleagues "misread the statutory text" to limit whistleblower claims. Justice Stephen Breyer joined the dissenting opinion.

But, in any event, the health care legislation signed by President Barack Obama last week changed the false claims law so that it now refers specifically to federal reports. Stevens noted the change in a footnote to his opinion, but said it did not affect pending lawsuits.

Secured creditors are owed about $300 million by owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. They want to use that "IOU" to make a so-called "credit bid" for the company.

The auction is scheduled for April 27. A local group that includes current investor Bruce Toll, the housing company founder, and chemical company heir David Haas has made an opening $67 million bid.

A federal appeals panel issued a 2-1 decision this month that lets Philadelphia Newspapers deny creditors the right to bid with the money owed them. The lenders this week asked the full 13-judge court to hear their appeal, charging that the ruling upends decades of precedent and will disrupt the credit industry.

"The panel decision in this case represents a startling break with decades of established bankruptcy practice and a repudiation of basic principles of bankruptcy law," the creditors wrote in the 122-page motion filed Monday.

A South Korean woman who worked as an escrow agent at a Seattle law firm for 16 months has been charged with 114 counts of theft after authorities said she embezzled more than $825,000 from her employer.

Heather "Veronica" Pak, 41, was arrested by Seattle police last week and has since been charged with the felonies. She is being held at the King County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bail.

According to police, Pak embezzled funds designated for the Shim Law Firm via checks, credit cards and real-estate transactions.

As the law firm's escrow agent, Pak had signing authority on the firm's trust accounts at Pacific International Bank and Bank of America, court papers said. She was authorized to write business checks and had access to a company credit card, which authorities say she used for personal spending, charging documents said.

Pak also collected insurance money for the firm's personal-injury clients. In one case, she allegedly forged the signature of a client so she could intercept a $7,500 payment, court charging papers said.

Pak wrote a series of checks that conveyed $20,000 to her sister, $161,799 to her brother, $98,500 to herself and $78,891 to a man who turned what he received back over to Pak, court charging papers said.