Cary Depel Named Of Counsel in L&G’s London Office

In recognition of his long professional and personal relationship with Lowis & Gellen, and in the firm’s continuing commitment to provide top tier counsel to our US and international clients, Cary Depel has been named Of Counsel to the firm, resident in the London office. He will continue to serve as IRM Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Compliance, Legal and Risk Management at ECU Group plc, a London-based alternative investment manager and hedge fund. Cary is a solicitor licensed to practice in England and Wales, and also admitted to practice in California.

Cary was the Compliance, Risk & Legal Director for City Index Ltd (formerly IFX Markets Ltd). He holds non-executive directorships in mining, financial services and strategy consultancy businesses. He has served as a Director of a major UK stockbroker, Chief Legal Officer for the largest UK insurer, and Special Counsel to Lloyd's, as well as maintaining a private legal practice in London and San Francisco.

For additional information on Cary’s credentials and details on his practice, please see his biography at click here. He invites your inquiries at cdepel@lowis-gellen.com.

$5 Million Copyright Battle Yields Rare Verdict for Doctor

Rob Smeltzer, a partner in Lowis & Gellen's Chicago office, and Deb O'Brien of the firm's Orlando office, along with the support of associate Ethan Hayward, recently obtained a not guilty verdict defending a surgeon in a highly publicized copyright claim in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The hotly contested case involved a multiple-count complaint concerning the ownership of an internet domain name and of web site content written by our client during his employment in a medical facility.

After leaving the medical facility to start his own business, the surgeon transferred the domain name and modified the content of the website to promote his new practice. Mr. Smeltzer and Ms. O’Brien contended that the surgeon had not created the website content "in the scope of his employment" with the medical facility and that, as the original registrant of the domain name, the surgeon owned it.

Mr. Smeltzer and Ms. O'Brien successfully dismissed two of the ten counts in the complaint before the trial, and another two after the jury verdict. And although the jury originally found that the medical facility (and not the surgeon) had owned and paid for the domain name and copyrighted web site content, the jury ultimately found for the surgeon on the basis that Plaintiff's copyright registration in the web site was invalid because it had been obtained fraudulently from the Copyright Office. Obtaining a verdict on this basis is extremely rare and resulted in a winning verdict for our client on the key copyright count at issue.

Although the jury did find in Plaintiff's favor on several other counts of the complaint, Mr. Smeltzer and Ms. O'Brien were able to manage the surgeon's risk by attacking Plaintiff's damages claims and the importance of the website in driving patients to the client's cosmetic surgery practice.

In the end, the jury awarded Plaintiff only $90,000 of the more than $5 million dollars sought. Significantly, however, due to the prevailing party attorneys' fees provisions of the Copyright Act, as well as our lawyers’ pre-trial use of the federal offer of judgment statute (Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68), we are now pursuing a net recovery in the surgeon's favor. Moreover, the extremely favorable result was obtained at a cost that was less than one-third of Plaintiff's costs. For further information about the case, or Lowis & Gellen's national intellectual property practice, please contact Rob Smeltzer (rsmeltzer@lowis-gellen.com)

Peer Recognition

Jennifer Lowis, Pam Gellen, Robert Smith and Gerald Haberkorn were recommended by their peers to be among the Top Civil Defense Lawyers in Illinois, according to a Leading Lawyers Network listing in the October 2007 issue of Chicago Lawyer. Haberkorn was honored in the area of Professional Malpractice Defense. Lowis, Gellen and Smith were each recognized for their expertise in Medical Malpractice Defense representations.

Directorships

L&G partner Gerald Haberkorn has been appointed to serve on the Boards of Directors of four U.S. subsidiaries of Ontario-based Energy Savings Income Fund, an open-ended, limited-purpose trust to hold securities and to distribute the income of its wholly owned subsidiaries and affiliates. Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, Energy Savings markets natural gas to residential customers and small to mid-sized commercial businesses in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Illinois and New York, as well as solely to commercial customers in Quebec and British Columbia. Energy Savings also markets electricity to residential and small to mid-sized commercial customers in Ontario, Alberta, New York and Texas.

Successful Defense of Hospital and Emergency Physicians

Lowis & Gellen partner Brian Levin successfully defended Sherman Hospital and its emergency department physicians in a recent trial. The case was brought on behalf of a 58-year old woman with multiple co-morbid conditions. Plaintiff’s counsel claimed the emergency room physicians, on two separate visits, failed to diagnose Coumadin toxicity (a condition that hampers the blood's ability to clot when a bleed occurs) and failed to reverse the potentially fatal condition in a timely manner. When an acute, but not active, brain hemorrhage was detected, Vitamin K (which reverses Coumadin toxicity) was given and the patient was transferred to the care of a neurosurgeon at another hospital. The bleed healed without surgery, and the patient was placed back on Coumadin. She experienced a series of subsequent bleeds, and died more than five months later, due to an infection contracted from a central IV line. Plaintiff’s counsel asked the jury for $4.9 million in closing arguments. The jury returned a defense verdict for the hospital in under three hours.