Reliving history: Johns Hopkins University now faces a $1 billion lawsuit because of its involvement in government experiments in the 1940s that infected people with sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala, according to the Baltimore Sun. The university countered that plaintiffs’ lawyers are trying “to exploit a historic tragedy for monetary gain.”
State of white collar: “The hotbed of white-collar enforcement activity is now centered squarely in Washington, D.C.,” former DOJ acting criminal division leader David O’Neil, now a D.C.-based partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, writes in Bloomberg BNA.
Energy practices staffing: Chet Thompson, a Crowell & Moring partner who leads the firm’s environment and natural resources group, will be the next president of the oil refinery lobby, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, according to an energy industry blog. And Vinson & Elkins makes a hire from Texas politics: Barry Smitherman, the only person to have served both on the Texas Railroad Commission and the state’s Public Utility Commission, joins the energy practice as a partner, according to the Texas Tribune.
End of food fight: Heinz, the ketchup makers, didn’t use a Michigan man’s idea when it created its Dip & Squeeze ketchup packet, a federal jury in Pittsburgh has found after a trial regarding the invention, an improvement upon the more messy traditional ketchup packet.
