OCTOBER NEWSLETTER

Charlie Faruki has been appointed as the 2003-2004 State Chair for Ohio, for the American College of Trial Lawyers. 

In a Decision and Entry filed October 9, 2003, Chief Judge Walter H. Rice in U.S. District Court in Dayton granted a Motion for Preliminary Injunction in the DPL Inc. Securities litigation, enjoining the plaintiffs in the litigation and their attorneys from proceeding to trial in a derivative action pending in Common Pleas Court in Cincinnati, on a claim "which is predicated upon the theory that the director/officer defendants in that lawsuit permitted or caused the violation of federal securities law."  FI&C represents the officer defendants in that derivative litigation, and the officer defendants and DPL Inc. in the consolidated federal securities actions.  Arguing that the state court derivative plaintiff was trying to do an end run around the federal securities reform legislation (the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act), the defendants in the action succeeded in obtaining a ruling from Chief Judge Rice that a state court derivative plaintiff may not proceed to trial on the theory that defendants breached their fiduciary duties by causing the company to violate the federal securities laws.  The damage claim sponsored by the state court plaintiff's economist, which was attributed to such a theory, would have resulted in $1.3 billion in alleged damages.  In ruling that the plaintiff may not circumvent a federal court's exclusive jurisdiction to handle federal securities cases, Chief Judge Rice wrote that the injunction was not barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283, and was justified under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651.

Jeff Cox gave two CLE seminars in Dayton on October 10, 2003 for the National Business Institute, entitled "Practical Legal Ethics in Ohio -- Issues and Answers."  Jeff's presentation focused on solutions to the most common ethical problems, as well as the disciplinary rules and proceedings in Ohio, under the Code of Professional Responsibility.

FI&C associate Ron Raether's article entitled "E-mail Maelstrom -- Electronic documents must be managed," was featured in the September-October 2003 edition of Business Law Today.  A bimonthly publication of the American Bar Association, Business Law Today has a circulation of approximately 70,000 lawyers nationwide.  Ron's article examines the risks and benefits available through electronic discovery, and provides a set of recommendations and tools for dealing with electronic documents in the context of business litigation.

Charlie Faruki, Jeff Ireland, and Jeff Cox joined 250 other federal court practitioners and members of the federal judiciary at the 2003 Federal Bench-Bar Conference held jointly by the United States District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Ohio on October 2-3 in Columbus.  Charlie was a presenter at the conference on "Effective Motion Practice."