J&J's lawyers from Patterson Belknap were all set to go after Boston Scientific for damages and willfulness at trial in Delaware, but Boston Scientific's new management is in a settling mood.

Who knows what will happen in billionaire Ron Burkle's proxy contest for three Barnes & Noble board seats. But as lead counsel for B&N in the Delaware trial to determine the legality of the bookseller's poison pill, Goldstein helped assure that Burkle goes into the contest owning less than 20 percent of the company's shares.

We're not surprised to see Quinn lawyers showing up at Samsung's side, given the close business relationship between Samsung and Quinn client Google.

Unsecured creditors of bankrupt Champion Enterprises Inc. have come up empty in their breach of contract claim against Credit Suisse. On Thursday, a Delaware federal bankruptcy judge found that while Credit Suisse did breach a $187 million credit agreement with Champion, the breach did not damage the manufacturer of prefabricated housing, nor did it cause Champion's bankruptcy.

There's nothing quite like the spectacle of billionaires being nasty to one another via the court system. And that's what we've now got in the battle for control of the troubled bookseller Barnes & Noble.

Hours after news reports that Barnes & Noble had settled Burkle's Delaware Chancery Court challenge to its draconian poison pill, B&N announced that talks had collapsed. And soon after that, the other shoe dropped: Vice-Chancellor Leo Strine found Barnes & Noble's poison pill is a legitimate takeover defense.