Booz Allen Settles Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

On the eve of trial, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. has settled with a former partner who accused the consulting firm of gender discrimination. The trial was scheduled to start today in District of Columbia Superior Court. On Oct. 23, Booz Allen and plaintiff Molly Finn told the judge they had reached a settlement. The terms of the agreement are confidential, according to a Booz Allen spokesman. Booz Allen is facing two other gender discrimination lawsuits still pending in Superior Court. Both cases mirror Finn's claims that the company pushed out women before they reached top leadership positions, an allegation Booz Allen has denied. Richard Salzman and Stephen Chertkoff of Heller, Huron, Chertkoff & Salzman represented Finn. Neither could immediately be reached for comment this morning. Booz Allen spokesman James Fisher declined to comment beyond confirming the case settled. McGuireWoods and Littler Mendelson represented the consulting firm. Lead counsel Stephen Robinson, a labor and employment partner in McGuireWoods' Tysons Corner, Va., office, said he had been handling employment matters for Booz Allen for at least 15 years. Finn was the consulting firm's highest-ranking female partner before she was fired in September 2010, according to her complaint. She claimed the firm consistently forced out high-ranking women partners, paid women less and offered women fewer advancement opportunities. She filed suit in July 2011. In August 2011, another former partner, Margo Fitzpatrick, filed a separate gender discrimination lawsuit against the company. Two years later, in May 2013, a former longtime attorney for the consulting firm, Carla Calobrisi, also filed gender discrimination claims. Both cases are still pending in D.C. Superior Court. Fitzpatrick said she was fired as part of the firm's efforts to keep women out of upper management and in retaliation for reporting allegedly discriminatory behavior. Calobrisi said she was excluded from training and other advancement opportunities and was demoted before being forced to resign because of her age and gender. Booz Allen denied any wrongdoing, saying previously that the personnel decisions at issue in Fitzpatrick and Calobrisi's cases were made for reasons other than their gender. Finn's case was before Superior Court Judge Anita Josey-Herring.

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Dutch Bank Pays $1B to Settle Rate Rigging Charges

Dutch banking giant Rabobank will pay more than $1 billion to settle charges it manipulated benchmark global interest rates from 2005 to 2011. The biggest piece of the settlement - $425 million - will go to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for what Enforcement Division chief David Meister called "a truly shocking and brazen degree of unlawfulness" in rigging the Libor and Euribor rates. It's the fifth case against a bank for interest rate manipulation, and the second-largest penalty to date. Swiss bank UBS AG paid U.S. and overseas regulators $1.5 billion in December 2012 to settle similar charges. As part of the settlement, Rabobank agreed to pay a fine of $325 million for one criminal count of wire fraud, admitting in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that the allegations were "true and accurate." The bank will also pay $170 million to financial regulators in the United Kingdom and $96.5 million to Dutch prosecutors. Rabobank announced today that chairman Piet Moerland has resigned, and said 30 employees were involved in wrongdoing, but that "top management was neither involved in nor aware of inappropriate conduct." The bank, represented in the investigation by David Gelfand and James Cavoli of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, said it "did not sufficiently appreciate the risks associated with the Libor and Euribor submission processes." The U.S. Justice Department said Rabobank did not self-disclose the misconduct, but "fully cooperated" once the inquiry began, and is assisting in ongoing investigations of other banks. "Other banks should pay attention: our investigation is far from over," Mythili Raman, acting head of DOJ's criminal division, said in a statement. Deutsche Bank in its third quarter report issued yesterday said a pending Libor-related investigation has "the potential to result in the imposition of significant financial penalties." Reuters has previously reported that Citibank and JPMorgan Chase are also under investigation for interest rate rigging. To date, U.S. prosecutors have only brought charges against foreign entities—Barclays plc paid $453 million in June 2012 and Royal Bank of Scotland paid $612 million in February for rigging the Libor and Euribor. British interdealer broker ICAP plc paid $87 million last month. Like the other global banks under fire, Rabobank submitted borrowing rate information on a daily basis for use in the calculation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, and the Euribor, for the U.S. dollar, Yen, and Pound Sterling. According to the CFTC, the bank made submissions that traders at the time called "ridiculous" "obscenely high" and "silly low" in the hopes of fraudulently moving the market. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler warned that the problem is still not solved. "I wish I could say that this won't happen again, but I can't," he said in a written statement. "Libor and Euribor are not sufficiently anchored in observable transactions. Thus, they are basically more akin to fiction than fact. That's the fundamental challenge so sharply revealed by Rabobank and our prior cases."

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The Morning Wrap

Sentence Starts: Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. reported to a North Carolina prison for a sentence of more than two years for convictions of taking campaign funds, the same prison as other high-profile felons such as Bernie Madoff, The Chicago Tribune reports. Going to California: Edward DuMont of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington is headed west, appointed as the California Solicitor General, The Recorder reports. Major League Beards: The American Mustache Institute sends Boston Red Sox general counsel Ed Weiss a marketing cease-and-desist letter that, among other things, claims a violation of the Sexually Dynamic Mustached American Lifestyle trademark, Corporate Counsel reports. Abuse Payouts: Penn State announced it will pay $60 million to settle claims from 26 sexual abuse victims of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, USA Today reports. Clinics Remain: District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the new Texas abortion restrictions place an unconstitutional burden on women seeking to end a pregnancy, a day before dozens of abortion clinics would have been shuttered, the Associated Press reports.

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Potholes and Tolls on the Road to ACA Compliance

As uncertainty over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act makes headlines in Washington, D.C., in-house and outside counsel at the Association of Corporate Counsel's Annual Meeting in Los Angeles Monday warned business leaders that the road to ACA compliance is fraught with potholes and unavoidable tolls. Despite the recent focus on issues concerning the ACA provision known as the "individual mandate," the "employer mandate" has its own challenges for companies, lawyers from Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart and Canam Steel Corp. said. Under the employer mandate, businesses have until January 2015 to give reasonably priced health insurance to employees or risk fines. The provision applies to companies with at least 50 full-time employees—including full-time equivalent workers—who work more than 30 hours per week. Speaking at the ACC event, Ogletree Deakins shareholder Penny Wofford said businesses can't escape costs related to the ACA. Companies have to decide whether they will give health insurance to all their full-time employees or accept penalties for noncompliance. Affiliate publication Corporate Counsel has more.

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Justice Dept. Considers Appeal of Fast and Furious Ruling

The court ruling that kept alive the House Oversight Committee's lawsuit over the Fast and Furious gun program "implicates the constitutional separation of powers between the branches" and could be challenged on appeal, the U.S. Justice Department says in a newly filed court document. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Sept. 30 refused to dismiss the House committee's suit, which seeks the enforcement of a subpoena for information about how the Justice Department responded to congressional inquiries about the flawed firearms operation. The government has asserted executive privilege to shield certain documents from Congress. Justice Department lawyers had urged Jackson not to wade too far into the case, filed in August 2012, on the contention that Congress and the executive branch would ultimately resolve the dispute over documents. "Judicial restraint, not judicial intervention, is warranted," the department's legal team told Jackson last October. Jackson didn't sit on the sidelines. The judge said her ruling "simply rejects the notion that it is an unreviewable privilege when asserted in response to a legislative demand." Justice Department lawyers and attorneys for the House are now trying to hash out a schedule to allow the case to move forward in Washington's federal trial court. DOJ lawyers, including Erik Womack, said the government expects to make a decision by late November on whether to take the dispute to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, according to a status report filed on Oct. 25. "This is an opinion that implicates the constitutional separation of powers between the branches," Justice Department lawyers wrote in the jointly filed court papers. The Justice Department's review of Jackson's ruling was "interrupted by the shutdown of government activities during the month of October," Womack said. Justice Department lawyers also said the lawyers in the case "should begin renewed mediation" to try to settle the dispute. Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein earlier oversaw discussion between Justice Department attorneys and lawyers for House oversight. The House committee's attorneys, led by general counsel Kerry Kircher, don't have much interest in any further mediation. "While the Committee has the utmost respect for Judge Rothstein, its past experience has left it with the firm conviction that the Attorney General will use further court-ordered mediation for purposes of delay only," House lawyers wrote.

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Judicial Nominations Fight to Flare Up

The Senate is poised for a renewed fight over executive and judicial nominations, including President Barack Obama's three picks for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced today he will move forward on "a number of vital nominations" before Thanksgiving. Republicans have systematically delayed or blocked "scores of President Obama's judicial and executive branch nominations" despite an agreement earlier this year, Reid said on the Senate floor. "Obstruction has reared its ugly head. And we have a backlog now," Reid said. "It's time to move forward without delay and fill those crucial posts." He did not identify by name any particular nominee. Republicans have continuously vowed to oppose Obama's three nominees for the D.C. Circuit—Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld partner Patricia Millett, Georgetown University Law Center professor Cornelia Pillard and U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins. It's unclear, however, how far Republicans will go to block the nominations once they reach the Senate floor. While Reid did not specifically mention the D.C. Circuit nominees, there are other signs the battle is heating up over the nominees to the key appeals court. Experts who watch the judicial confirmation process say they expect Reid to make a move on the D.C. Circuit as soon as this week. The House Judiciary Committee, which does not have a say in the judicial confirmation process, is holding a hearing Tuesday about the D.C. Circuit entitled "Are More Judges Always the Answer?" (The committee's chairman has already answered that question in the negative.) Seven Republican attorneys general, including Greg Abbott from Texas, sent a letter to the Senate today urging support for a Republican bill that would remove the three open seats from the D.C. Circuit. The letter accuses Obama of filling the D.C. Circuit vacancies "to slant the playing field sharply in his favor with regard to challenges to his aggressive regulatory agenda." "Using judicial vacancies to promote a political agenda undermines the rule of law and threatens to erode public confidence in our courts—something that Republicans and Democrats alike should seek to avoid," the letter states. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote is scheduled for Thursday on Wilkins' nomination. After that vote, all three nominees are expected to be awaiting confirmation votes on the Senate floor. Wilkins' nomination is expected to be approved in the committee along party lines, just like Millett and Pillard's committee votes. There are seven district court judges awaiting action on the Senate floor, according to progressive judicial group Alliance for Justice. Reid would likely move the D.C. Circuit nominees one at a time and in regular order, according to lawyers who are closely monitoring the nomination and confirmation process. The first vote, then, would be for Millett, who has argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. No senators have disputed that Millett has the credentials and experience to serve on a bench that's often considered the nation's second highest court. "This is a priority for Leader Reid," said Michelle Schwartz, director of justice programs at Alliance for Justice. "I think he's been clear about that. This could happen quickly because I think it's important to him to move these nominees quickly." The scope of the obstruction determines what could happen next — possibly Democrats threatening to use the so-called "nuclear option" to change long-standing Senate rules to strip the ability of Republicans to filibuster nominations. The Senate averted a move to change the filibuster rules this summer by striking a deal on some executive nominations, including controversial National Labor Relations Board nominees. Everything will be on the table if Republicans prevent votes on other nominations such as the D.C. Circuit nominees, Schwartz said. "There's going to be a lot of frustration in the Democratic Party, that the deal from the summer was about specific nominees but more broadly about this issue," Schwartz said. "We're also in a moment where Republicans have an opportunity to show whether they want to be a party of preventing government from functioning or want to be a party that has learned something form the last two weeks and wants to move forward." Republican opposition has been constant and strong since Obama announced the D.C. Circuit nominations simultaneously in a Rose Garden ceremony. Several Republicans say the eight D.C. Circuit judges — split evenly between Democrat and Republican appointees if you don't count senior judges — can handle the current caseload. Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), when asked about any plans to filibuster the D.C. Circuit floor votes, said on Oct. 16: "We'll see how that all plays out." "I think none of them need to be confirmed, we don't need any of them," Sessions said in an interview after a vote on the government funding bill. "There's no financial justification for those three judges and I've reached the end of my rope on it." House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) will preside over a hearing Tuesday titled "Are More Judges Always the Answer?" "The drafters of the Constitution intended the federal judiciary to function as an impartial arbiter of the law," Goodlatte said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is leading a campaign pushed by partisan and ideological organizations that is designed to tilt the balance of Circuit Courts of Appeals in order to stack the deck in favor of an expansive regulatory regime and against Americans who challenge the power of the central government." Senate Democrats, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), have said Republicans did not raise any concern about whether D.C. Circuit judges were needed in 2002, when there was a Republican president. President George W. Bush successfully appointed Thomas Griffith, Janice Rogers Brown and Brett Kavanaugh to the D.C. Circuit. "Now that it is a Democratic president making nominations to those same seats, Senate Republicans have dusted off their old arguments against filling vacancies on the D.C. Circuit," Leahy said in a September written statement for the committee. "They say one thing when President Clinton is in office, flip when the President is a Republican, and flop when the American people elect President Obama."

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Obama Praises New FBI Director Comey

President Barack Obama today used a courtroom anecdote to illustrate why he thought James Comey, a longtime former prosecutor who earlier served as the second-in-command at the U.S. Department of Justice, was the right pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Obama, speaking at a ceremony for Comey today at FBI headquarters, touted Comey's effort to establish confidence in the American justice system. The president described Comey as a tough prosecutor who took on white-collar crime, sought to stem the tide of gun violence and confronted organized crime. "There's a story from the time during his prosecution of the Gambino crime family, one of the defendants was an alleged hit man named Lorenzo," Obama said. "During the trial, Jim won an award from the New York City Bar Association. When the court convened the next morning, everybody was buzzing about it," Obama said. "And suddenly a note was passed down from the defendant's table across the aisle to the prosecutor's table." "It was handed to Jim and it read: 'Dear Jim, Congratulations on your award. No one deserves it more than you. You're a true professional. Sincerely, Lorenzo,'" Obama said. "Now we don't know how sincere he was, we don't know whether this was a veiled threat or a plea for leniency or an honest compliment." "But I think it is fair to say that Jim has won the respect of folks across the spectrum, including Lorenzo. He's a perfect leader for an organization whose walls are graced by the words of the legendary former director: 'The most effective weapon against crime is cooperation,'" Obama said. Obama in June nominated Comey to lead the FBI, replacing Robert Mueller III. The Senate confirmed Comey in July and he was sworn in September 4 in a private ceremony at the Justice Department. Today was the public ceremony. Comey, before serving as deputy attorney general, spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor in New York and Virginia, with a few brief stints in private practice. Comey left Main Justice as the deputy attorney general in 2005 to join Lockheed Martin as senior vice president and general counsel. More recently, he served as general counsel at hedge fund Bridgewater Associates L.P. in Connecticut.

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Williams & Connolly Seeks Legal Fees in Libel Suit

Attorneys from Williams & Connolly and Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz are seeking more $200,000 in legal fees and costs for their work fighting a libel suit filed in September 2012 against Foreign Policy magazine and a writer. Yasser Abbas, the son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, sued Foreign Policy over a June 2012 article written by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Schanzer was also a defendant. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the case on Sept. 30. Abbas intends to take the fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Williams & Connolly partner Kevin Baine, who focuses on First Amendment work, and associates Adam Tarosky and Elise Baumgarten, are seeking $100,481 in legal fees and costs. Levine Sullivan partner Nathan Siegel, an attorney for Schanzer, is asking for $107,174 in fees. Siegel worked on the case with Levine partner Seth Berlin and associate Shaina Jones. (Schanzer had his owner lawyers; he was not an employee of Foreign Policy.) Baine said in a declaration, accompanying the Oct. 25 fee request, that Williams & Connolly gave Foreign Policy a 10 percent discount on rates. With the discount, Baine billed at $765 an hour. Baine said he clocked a little more than 25 hours in the case. Tarosky and Baumgarten submitted hourly rates of $409.50 and $342, respectively. (On top of the discount, Williams & Connolly, which employs about 250 lawyers, said the firm further reduced its fees in the case by an average of 12 percent per month.) Tarosky, a sixth-year associate, and Baumgarten, a third-year associate, worked nearly 234 hours defending Foreign Policy magazine, accourding to Baine's declaration. At the time the suit was filed, The Washington Post, for whom Baine had previously performed legal work over 30 years, owned Foreign Policy. Baine declined to comment today on the fee request. Levine Sullivan, a boutique firm with 34 lawyers who specialize in First Amendment and media litigation, charged Schanzer an hourly rate of $390 for work and $195 for paralegals. The firm said in court papers that the rates were "as requested and negotiated by Dr. Schanzer's insurer." The rate amounted to a 20 percent discount from $575 rate that Siegel and Berlin typically charge, according to court records in the case. Levine Sullivan lawyers said the firm performed nearly 250 hours of attorney work for Schanzer. Siegel, based in Washington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Baine and Siegel defended their legal fee request in the court filing. The attorneys compared their rates to other Washington lawyers with similar experience in the law. The attorneys pointed to a recent case where U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington awarded attorneys for McKesson Corp. more than $450,000 in fees. "[T]he rates charged by W&C are materially lower than rates recently approved by courts in this jurisdiction for attorneys of comparable reputation and experience in large law firms. Judge Leon, for example, recently approved rates for attorneys at Winston & Strawn of $780–810 for a senior partner, $525 for a fifth-year associate, and $390 for a first-year associate, all of which exceed the rates charged here."

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Portrait of Female Justices Unveiled

The Supreme Court's four female justices are joined together in a new portrait unveiled today at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. Famed portraitist Nelson Shanks, who painted the life-sized work, was on hand this morning as the press was given a first glimpse. A seated Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, seen standing behind her, look somber, while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seated next to O'Connor, and Justice Elena Kagan, standing next to Sotomayor, have faint smiles. They are wearing their black robes, with differing neckwear that accurately reflects their preferences. The four justices have not yet seen the portrait, but will tonight -- along with some of their colleagues -- at a private event at the gallery. The setting for the portrait is a space at the court that does not actually exist -- a "pastiche," Shanks said, of the Natalie Rehnquist Dining Room in the court and one of the main floor conference rooms that looks out over the building's courtyard. As a result, the composition gives glimpses of the court's architecture as well as its opinion-writing mission, seen in legal tomes on the sofa where O'Connor and Ginsburg are seated, and a bookcase reflected in a mirror. Shanks said he drew on 17th-century Old Master Dutch group portraiture style, a "diversion" from the typical straight-row lineup style usually used in depictions of judges. Shanks, 75, said it was "a bit of a challenge" to capture the justices' "different personalities and visages." Two other portraits by Shanks are on display at the museum -- one of former president Bill Clinton, the other of opera star Denyce Graves. All four justices sat for the portrait for more than four hours last year, Shanks said, describing the sitting as "semi-controlled chaos," with the justices "talking and joking" amiably throughout. The design for the painting was roughed out on a napkin more than two years ago, Shanks said. Art collectors Ian and Annette Cumming commissioned and own the work, which will be on display at the gallery for the next three years. Museum director Kim Sajet said the portrait, which is prominently placed on the second floor, will be a "launching pad" for an educational program emphasizing the difference that women are making in American life. "Things are beginning to happen" for women, she said, and the painting will hopefully "spark a conversation among young people, particularly young women, about breaking barriers." Photographs by Diego Radzinschi

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This Week in The National Law Journal

Costly Side Effects: As JPMorgan Chase & Co. hammers out a $13 billion settlement with the government, the bank has more to worry about than paying Uncle Sam and consumers. Any settlement would also have direct repercussions in a $10 billion lawsuit Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. has filed over shoddy assets. Jenna Greene reports. Spill Settlement: Amanda Bronstad reports on the latest set of court challenges related to the $9.6 billion Deepwater Horizon settlement. Class of '13: The incoming law school class of 2010 graduated in May, took the bar in July, and now are launching their legal careers. Karen Sloan recently caught up with three of them to see what they are doing now, how they feel about their law school experience and what advice they have for those following in their footsteps. Building a Supreme Court Practice: Williams & Connolly partner Kannon Shanmugam sat down with Tony Mauro to discuss building a practice at a firm that does not have practice groups, amid the competitive and economic pressures of representing clients before the nation's highest court. Gun Docket: Guns are back before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, but the cases at hand don't target any of gun advocates' most wanted issues. Marcia Coyle takes a look. Representing Corporate America: This annual survey takes a look at which firms are representing America's largest companies.

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The Morning Wrap

No 'Recant': Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit explains how one innocuous sentence in his new book turned into a media examination of whether he "recanted" on voter ID laws, in New Republic. Explosive Evidence: A trial starts today in the U.K. phone-hacking scandal related to Rupert Murdoch's News of the World newspaper, AFP reports. Not On Prime Time: The Washington Post turns to The National Law Journal's Tony Mauro to describe all the ways the U.S. Supreme Court's traditions trump new technology, compared to how the New Mexico Supreme Court's arguments were aired online last week. It Could Be Worse: U.S. Senate historian Robert Baker puts current relations among senators in perspective, telling a crowd how duels and fistfights broke out on the Senate floor, the Times of Northwest Indiana reports. NSA Protest: Protesters carried signs to Capitol Hill such as "Stop Mass Spying" and "Thank you, Edward Snowden" in a demonstration Saturday against the online surveillance by the National Security Agency, Reuters reports.

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