Daily Archives: August 31, 2005

DeGabrielle is the choice for U.S. Attorney

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DOJTX.JPGFirst Assistant U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle — the favored candidate of most of Houston’s criminal defense bar — was recommended to President Bush today by Texas Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to become the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Mr. DeGabrielle will replace his former boss, Michael Shelby, who resigned in June to join Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski’s white collar crime section.Chuck Rosenberg, a former chief of staff to U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey, has been the interim U.S. Attorney since Mr. Shelby’s resignation.
Inasmuch as Mr. DeGabrielle has been with the local U.S. Attorney’s office since 1986, he is well-known to the local criminal defense bar that has become somewhat frustrated with the revolving door nature of the U.S. Attorney’s job in Houston over the past decade. Given the misconduct of the Enron Task Force in a number of high-profile Enron-related criminal cases over the past year, a huge sigh of relief could be heard from Houston’s criminal defense bar when Mr. DeGabrielle was recommended instead of one of the prosecutors off of the Task Force, at least one of whom was known to have applied for the position. Mr. DeGabrielle and the rest of the local U.S. Attorney’s office recused themselves at the outset of the criminal investigation into Enron, which led to the creation of the Enron Task Force in the first place.
Meanwhile, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn also recommended to President Bush that Fulbright & Jaworski partner and well-known local maritime lawyer Gray Miller replace U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr., who is scheduled to take senior status at the end of this year.

AG intervenes in Baylor-Methodist squabble

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TMC5.jpgThe Chronicle’s Todd Ackerman continues his fine reporting on the saga of the Medical Center divorce between The Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine with this report that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has engaged the feuding ex-partners in a series of meetings over the past two weeks for the purpose of ending the bickering between the institutions, which has been going on for the better part of two years now.
In the meantime, Mr. Ackerman reports that, even as the talks took place, eleven Baylor cardiologists left for Methodist, bringing to 80 the total number of physician and faculty defections that Baylor has suffered since the split in April, 2004. Previously, Baylor departments of pathology, neurology/neurosurgery, plastic surgery, anesthesiology and orthopedics suffered physician or faculty losses to Methodist.
A former Houstonian, Mr. Abbott clearly is taking a special interest in resolving the Baylor-Methodist feud that has shaken Houston’s Texas Medical Center. Mr. Abbott was a young attorney in private practice in Houston during the early 1980’s when he was paralyzed from the waist down after being seriously injured by a falling tree branch while jogging at Houston’s Memorial Park. Mr. Abbott was treated at Medical Center hospitals, and he has often publicly expressed his appreciation for the extraordinary treatment that he received there, particularly his rehabilitation stint at The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (known as “TIRR”). As such, he is a powerful voice for the public interest in mediating the Baylor-Methodist dispute.

The David Boies Copy Club

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David Boies.jpgLet’s see if we can keep this all straight.
David Boies — who champions himself as an advocate of honest corporate governance — was Tyco’s outside counsel in connection with investigating corporate fraud by Tyco management, and one of the prosecution’s main witnesses in the corporate fraud trial against former Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz.
On the other hand, Mr. Boies is one of the members of Maurice “Hank” Greenberg’s defense team in connection with defending Mr. Greenberg from Eliot Spitzer’s allegations that Mr. Greenberg perpetrated fraud at AIG.
In the meantime, Mr. Boies just resigned as special counsel for Adelphia for violating the Bankruptcy Code and Rules by failing to disclose to the Adelphia Bankruptcy Court that members of his family indirectly own a substantial interest in a document management services company that did between $5 and $10 million of business with Adelphia. Apparently, other clients of Mr. Boies’ firm also have paid substantial sums to the document management company without knowing of the affiliation to Mr. Boies’ family members.
This Wall Street Journal ($) article has more, as does Larry Ribstein.

Further assessment of Katrina’s economic impact

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mars platform.jpgAs companies involved in the U.S. oil and gas industry continue to assess the damage that Hurricane Katrina has caused to Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Coast production facilities, Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced on Tuesday that its Mars floating production platform, which generates about 220,000 barrels of oil and 220 million cubic feet of natural gas daily, has sustained significant damage, as reflected by the picture on the left. It appears that the platform’s above-water module has overturned as a result of the storm. Here are the previous posts over the past several days on Hurricane Katrina.
Meanwhile, initial damage assessments from the hurricane sent oil and gasoline futures prices sharply higher as the storm appears to have knocked out about 10% of U.S. refining capacity for what could be an extended period of time. Katrina has flooded the areas around several major refineries and possibly the refineries themselves, so even when crude-oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is restored, converting that oil into gasoline and other products requires refineries that may not be online for quite some time. Eight major U.S. refineries in the Gulf Coast that produce gasoline, heating oil and other products for distribution across the Southeast and the East Coast remain closed as damage assessments continue.

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