Jay Reeves

December 29, 2006 | Law.com

Under a settlement between 18 adult nightclubs and the Alabama attorney general's office -- similar to practices followed in other regions where nude or topless dancing has become a legal issue -- dancers statewide are spritzing their buttocks and breasts with flesh-colored latex to comply with the state's anti-nudity law, one of the most restrictive in the country. The manager of Alabama club Sammy's says of the latex, "The girls don't really like it. But Sammy's always complies with the law."

By Jay Reeves

3 minute read

March 31, 2006 | Law.com

Rejecting an appeal by video game makers and sellers, the Alabama Supreme Court has kept alive a $600 million lawsuit blaming "Grand Theft Auto" for the murders of the three-person night shift at a rural police department. A lawyer for the victims' families said the decision sets the stage for what could be the nation's first trial over killings blamed on video games. Defense attorneys blamed Devin Moore's actions in part on the hours he spent playing video games from the "Grand Theft Auto" game series.

By Jay Reeves

2 minute read

December 18, 2006 | Corporate Counsel

Alabama jurors sided with drug manufacturer Merck & Co. and rejected the claims of a 57-year-old man who blamed the painkiller Vioxx for his heart attack. Deliberations took only 1 1/2 hours; it was the second time in three days that a jury came back with a quick verdict for Merck in a Vioxx trial. Jurors said after the verdict that the plaintiff had too many health problems before his heart attack to blame Vioxx. "Juries continue to determine that Merck acted responsibly," a Merck executive said.

By Jay Reeves

3 minute read

December 18, 2006 | Law.com

Alabama jurors sided with drug manufacturer Merck & Co. and rejected the claims of a 57-year-old man who blamed the painkiller Vioxx for his heart attack. Deliberations took only 1 1/2 hours; it was the second time in three days that a jury came back with a quick verdict for Merck in a Vioxx trial. Jurors said after the verdict that the plaintiff had too many health problems before his heart attack to blame Vioxx. "Juries continue to determine that Merck acted responsibly," a Merck executive said.

By Jay Reeves

3 minute read

June 29, 2005 | Law.com

By Jay Reeves

5 minute read

June 30, 2005 | The Legal Intelligencer

By walking out of a courtroom a free man, Richard Scrushy became the first high-profile chief executive to escape conviction since a wave of corporate scandals followed Enron Corp.'s collapse nearly four years ago.

By Jay Reeves

4 minute read

May 03, 2005 | Law.com

An Alabama judge has ordered Vioxx manufacturer Merck & Co. to begin settlement talks with a widow who blames the pain medication for her husband's death, attorneys in the case said Monday. The closed-door session will be held today following a hearing on a request from both sides to delay the trial, which would be the nation's first for Vioxx. A federal judge in New Orleans has also asked for a delay so that the Alabama case would not interfere with federal litigation.

By Jay Reeves

2 minute read

June 29, 2005 | Law.com

In a surprise setback for federal prosecutors, jurors acquitted HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy on Tuesday of all charges in a case involving a $2.7 billion earnings overstatement. The case against Scrushy, the first CEO charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reporting law, had been widely considered one of the strongest in a string of fraud claims. Said one stunned corporate law specialist, "There was a mass of evidence against him. I certainly expected the jury to convict."

By Jay Reeves

5 minute read

June 02, 2004 | Law.com

A federal judge in Alabama rejected prison time for a key figure in the HealthSouth fraud scandal Tuesday as the company said its review of the scam found $3.4 billion in false entries and bad accounting. Kenneth Livesay, a former assistant controller and information officer at HealthSouth, was sentenced to six months of home detention and five years on probation.

By Jay Reeves

3 minute read

March 21, 2005 | Law.com

A freelance writer has asked a court to dismiss his $5 million lawsuit accusing author Kitty Kelley of plagiarism in her best-selling book about President Bush and his family. Glynn Wilson said Friday that he dropped the suit because he feared that U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon was about to rule that copyright law didn't cover his story on the Internet about Bush's days in the National Guard. Such a ruling by Clemon would erode the legal protections that cover Web-based writers, Wilson said.

By Jay Reeves

2 minute read