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SUITS OVER YANKEE PITCHER'S PLANE CRASH SETTLE FOR $2M
"Insurers and individuals who suffered losses in New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle's fatal plane crash in Manhattan in 2006 have agreed to accept $2 million and drop the pursuit of almost $60 million in property and personal injury claims against the estates of Lidle and his flight instructor, a mediator in the case said Tuesday. The claimants accepted the $2 million because Lidle, 34, and the instructor who died with him, Tyler Stanger, 26, had $1 million liability policies each, and the estates had no other assets worth pursuing, says Michael Cohan, who assisted the mediator in the case, retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Marina Corodemus. Cohan, of counsel to Corodemus & Corodemus in Iselin, says the $2 million will be split among insurance companies that paid $16.5 million to 11 property owners, six property owners who had further claims and five personal injury plaintiffs."

EX-LAWYER FOR BERGEN DEMOCRATS PLEADS GUILTY IN CORRUPTION CASE
"Dennis Oury, a politically connected lawyer in Bergen County, pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding the borough of Bergenfield by steering contracts to a grant-writing business he owned secretly while serving as borough attorney. He also admitted to U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler that he conspired with Joseph Ferriero, the former chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, a co-defendant with whom he was scheduled to go on trial Thursday. After the guilty plea, the remaining defendant's lawyer, Joseph Hayden Jr. of Walder, Hayden & Brogan in Roseland, said the trial was still on and that he did not know whether Oury would testify. Oury, who was counsel to the emocratic organization before last year's indictment, pleaded guilty to conspiring with Ferriero to defraud Bergenfield of his honest services as borough attorney from 2001 to 2005."

PASSAIC P.I. FIRM TO PAY $68,000 FOR FAILING TO FILE SUIT
"A federal judge has ordered Passaic's Fusco & Macaluso to pay $68,000 in a legal malpractice suit for failing to file a complaint for a personal injury client. Worse for the firm, it will have to pay the judgment out of pocket because it failed to timely notify its liability carrier, American Safety Casualty Insurance Co., of the claim, says the plaintiff's lawyer in the case. U.S. District Judge Joseph Rodriguez's judgment, entered on Sept. 24, confirms an arbitration award. Plaintiff Michele Crohn alleged that after a car accident on Jan. 19, 2002, caused by a tractor-trailer spinning out of control during a snowstorm, she met with Roy Macaluso of the Passaic firm on Feb. 9, 2002, and that he agreed to file suit for pain and suffering, expenses, medical bills and wage losses. But after the statute of limitations ran out in 2004, she learned no suit had been filed."

BRYAN CAVE OFF HOOK IN $16M N.J. SUIT ALLEGING CONCEALMENT OF CLIENT FRAUD
"A New Jersey appeals court ruled Tuesday that a victim of Reed Slatkin ? who bilked hundreds of clients out of more than $200 million using a Ponzi-type scheme ? cannot pursue a malpractice claim against the California investor's law firm, Bryan Cave, which allegedly helped him conceal the fraud during an SEC investigation. The Appellate Division said the Atlantic County judge who dismissed the suit did not err in applying the doctrine of forum non conveniens, based in part on his view that a New Jersey fact-finder should not decide whether Bryan Cave conformed to ethics rules in California, where it represented Slatkin. That aspect of forum non conveniens analysis was novel but allowable, Appellate Division Judges Francine Axelrad and Clarkson Fisher Jr. wrote in a per curiam, unpublished opinion, Azeez v. Bryan Cave, A-5848. "

JUSTICES WEIGH SCHOOL BOARD'S POWER TO STIFLE PARENTS' SPEECH AT MEETINGS

"A Mercer County school district is asking the state Supreme Court to throw out $100,000 in damages awarded to a parent who was barred from complaining at a school board meeting about a basketball coach's alleged abusive treatment of his daughter. The appeal argued on Tuesday, in Besler v. West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education, A-81-08, is part of a larger case in which a former athlete claimed that her coach's berating and ill-temperedness caused her to suffer an eating disorder, amenorrhea, emotional distress and other health problems. A trial judge set aside a jury's $1.5 million award to the athlete but let stand the jury's $100,000 award to her father, based on a finding that his First Amendment rights were violated by the school board's refusal to allow his questions about the district's policy towards abusive language."

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