February 5, 2008

Last month, to quote the Law.com summary, "U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Major sanctioned five attorneys from Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder and one from Heller Ehrman for their roles in 'monumental' discovery violations in a patent infringement case between Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp." David McGowan at Legal Ethics Forum sums up the ruling (PDF) here and here, and both John Steele and the NLJ's Solovy & Byman predict that it foreshadows a more serious crackdown on discovery abuse in federal litigation. More links here.