In April, when Willkie won the dismissal of the case for Merrill, the firm told us the dismissal ruling was an important clarification of notification standards in the credit default swap arena. It's not looking so important anymore.

All good things must come to an end, and from what we gather the global patent war between Research in Motion and Visto has been a very good thing to the lawyers involved. On Thursday, both companies announced that they had agreed to settle all litigation over RIM's Blackberry patents, with RIM paying Visto $267.5 million. In exchange RIM gets access to all Visto patents and acquires some of its intellectual property.

Manhattan federal district court judge Lewis Kaplan is tossing out Lehman cases as if they were old shoes. Last week it was the ratings agency case; this week it's an ERISA class action.

Citing Lehman's infamous Repo 105 balance transfers, federal district court Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that most of the claims in the mammoth Manhattan securities class action against Lehman's directors, officers, auditor, and underwriters could move forward.

Four years after regulators began investigating alleged collusion by the banks controlling the CDS market, private antitrust litigation is finally starting to take shape.

Akin Gump triggered a worldwide criminal probe back in 2008 when it accused Pittsburgh-based Alcoa of racketeering and fraud on behalf of Aluminium Bahrain. On Tuesday, the firm beat prosecutors to the punch yet again, wresting a long-awaited settlement from Alcoa.

Bahrain Aluminum's bribery case against Alcoa was administratively closed in 2008 to allow the Justice Department to build its own criminal case against the company. But Alcoa's lawyers wanted the opportunity to move to dismiss the civil case on the grounds that Bahrain Aluminum's RICO claims are barred by the Supreme Court's Morrison decision. On Tuesday they won their chance.

Lawyers for various Lehman Brothers directors and officers, including former CEO Richard Fuld, filed papers Wednesday in Lehman's Manhattan federal bankruptcy proceedings seeking the release of $90 million in insurance funds to settle securities fraud claims pending since June 2008.