American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG - News), the world's largest insurer, has filed a complaint in New York Supreme Court against former Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and six other former directors and officers, accusing them of breaching their fiduciary duty.

In the complaint, filed on Wednesday, AIG alleges Greenberg, former Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith and five others breached their fiduciary duty through "misappropriation of a special block of AIG shares worth approximately $20 billion in 2005."

Read the full story here on the Yahoo! Finance website.

This is a great article from BusinessWeek Online that talks about Rick Frenkel, the patent attorney working for Cisco Systems who in his spare time kept an anonymous blog titled “Patent Troll* Tracker”.

He was posting anonymously, making examples of those “Trolls” who were abusing the system and even calling into question the ethical practices of some attorneys. Finally, a bounty of $15,000 was offered to anyone who could identify the mystery blogger, and he was forced to reveal his identity after he was discovered by an internet sleuth.

The interesting part of this story is how it illustrates the questions and risks related to blogging (whether anonymous or not) and not just to the blogger, but the company that employs them.

*“Patent Trolls” is a derogatory term used to describe businesses that make money purchasing patents and then suing big companies for infringement.

Lawsuits can proceed on behalf of thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected as they cleaned up the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.

Lawyers for New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, had argued that they are immune from nearly 8,000 workers' claims.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals however said it is too early to decide whether the defendants are protected from these sorts of lawsuits.

A federal judge has signed off on Walgreen Co.'s plan to pay $24 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging racial bias at the nation's largest drugstore chain.

Roughly 10,000 past and present black Walgreen workers will split $20 million under the consent decree given final approval Monday by U.S. District Judge G. Patrick Murphy.

Wall Street banks, brokerages and hedge funds may report $460 billion in credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, or almost four times the amount already disclosed, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Profits will continue to wane, other analysts said.

 Read the full story behind this headline here on the Bloomberg website.

Risk management practices have become critical to health care facilities attempting to reduce liability, and medical provider risk managers wrestling with advances in technology and heightened patient expectations are trying to ensure their programs don't fall by the wayside, experts say.

"Risk management has come to the forefront in the last 10 years," said Paul Greve, senior vp in the health care practice of Willis Group Holdings Ltd. in Nashville. He participated in a session at the Professional Liability Underwriting Society's Medical Professional Liability Symposium March 11-12 in Chicago.

Read the full article here on BusinessInsurance.Com.

Prominent attorney Melvyn Weiss has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering in a lucrative kickback scheme involving payments to plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits targeting some of the largest U.S. corporations, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Weiss, 72, also will acknowledge that he and others concealed secret payment arrangements that his firm, Milberg Weiss, had with named plaintiffs in the lawsuits, prosecutors said in a statement.

Read the entire story here from the International Herald Tribune.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the events leading up to the collapse of Bear Stearns, specifically a surge in options contracts betting that the investment bank's share price would fall sharply, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In an article from BusinessWeek Online, the question is raised of how many other banking institutions on the verge of collapse. Here is an excerpt:

The Federal Reserve most likely did the right thing when it backed JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) purchase of Bear Stearns (BSC) on Mar. 16. But the sudden collapse of a well-known Wall Street firm and the penny stock, $2-per-share price that JPMorgan is paying—less than 10% of Bear's already battered market cap on Mar. 14—rattled European and Asian markets on Mar. 17.

If Bear is close to worthless, the thinking goes, what does that mean for other troubled institutions in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere? Can other failures be far behind? A wide range of European banking shares, including UBS (UBS), which has been hit hard by subprime writedowns, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), whose capital base has been stretched by the ABN Amro takeover, and smaller British banks such as Alliance & Leicester (ALLL.L), took a pounding on Mar. 17.

Read the full article here on the BusinessWeek Online Website.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Sunday that it would acquire troubled Wall Street firm Bear Stearns for a mere fraction of what it was once worth amid deepening fears about further erosion of the world's financial markets.

The rock-bottom price left investors feeling queasy. Asian markets tumbled, with Japan's benchmark Nikkei index finishing Monday's session nearly 4% lower. U.S. stock futures plunged, indicating a miserable start for Wall Street.

The all-stock deal values Bear Stearns at $236 million, or just $2 a share. The company's stock had closed at $30 on Friday, down a staggering 47% for the day.

Read the full article here on CNNMoney.com.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned.

"I look at my time as governor with a sense of what might have been," Spitzer said.  "There is much more to be done, and I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work."

You can read the full article here on MSNBC.Com.

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that individual participants in defined contribution plans can sue to recover losses incurred by their individual plan accounts. The long anticipated decision in LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates, Inc. will affect the rights and obligations of participants, sponsors, and fiduciaries of all defined contribution plans, including 401(k), profit-sharing, and employee stock ownership plans.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the crusading politician who built his career on rooting out corruption, apologized Monday after he was accused of involvement in a prostitution ring. He did not elaborate on the scandal, which drew calls for his resignation. His stoic wife at his side, Spitzer told reporters at a hastily called news conference: "I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family."

Spitzer's involvement in the ring was caught on a federal wiretap as part of an investigation opened in recent months, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry.

WCBS News Channel 2 in New York is citing anonymous sources in the New York State Legislature that say Governor Spitzer will not continue in office.  He didn't say anything about his future in his press conference.

The FBI is in the early stages of an inquiry into whether company officials misrepresented its financial position and the quality of its mortgage loans, The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday, citing law enforcement officials and finance executives with knowledge of the development.

The Justice Department is also involved in the investigation into the nation's largest mortgage lender, said the New York Times, which also cited anonymous sources who said they were not authorized to discuss ongoing criminal matters.

"We are not aware of any such investigation," Countrywide spokeswoman Susan Martin told the Times.

Read the full story here on Yahoo! Finance.

Mario A. Barrera and Lacey L. Gourley, Partners with Bracewell & Giuliani, have a great synopsis of the admissibility of “Me Too” evidence in employment discrimination cases and the Supreme Court’s decision that it should be determined on a “Case by Case” basis.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he issued new subpoenas to Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., and other health insurers in a broadening investigation of possible fraud costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reportedly are theorizing that a former finance chief and an ex-controller took part in an accounting fraud to generate fake profits and boost executive bonuses, according to Canada’s Financial Post.

The paper also noted that the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas is continuing its four-year criminal investigation into the accounting practices at the company. Nortel employs about 12,900 people in the United States and its U.S. headquarters are in Richardson, Texas. 

The Mississippi Supreme Court will consider a federal appeals panel's request to clarify when the clock starts ticking on the filing of certain medical malpractice claims.

Specifically, the Mississippi court has been asked to clarify how the statute of limitations applies in circumstances "where the alleged negligence is either the administration of a drug by a physician or the physician's failure to disclose about the risks of a drug, and experts disagree as to whether the drug caused the plaintiff's injuries." In 2006, the 5th Circuit overturned a medical malpractice verdict for Barbara Huss, who had sued a Memphis, Tenn., clinic over medical treatment provided during her pregnancy. Huss lives in Mississippi and filed her lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford.

Read the full article here on the CNBC website.

Carol I. Buckman, Counsel in the New York office of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, has written an article detailing how the subprime mortgage crisis will accelerate the trend of lawsuits against 401(k) plan fiduciaries, and how these fiduciaries can reduce their risk of becoming a target.

You can read her full article here on the Employee Benefit News website.

A mortgage dispute between a giant Maryland bank and a Cedarburg couple has grown into a closely watched federal court battle with potentially far-reaching impact on the

At issue before the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago is whether a federal lawsuit won by Bryan and Susan Andrews last year can retain its class-action status.

Kevin Demet, an attorney for the Andrewses, said a victory would open the door for some 8,000 other Chevy Chase Bank customers to cancel their refinanced mortgages and demand the return of their interest payments and closing costs.