News

Nirma will buy Lafarge India’s assets for $1.4bn from LafargeHolcim according to reports, with several law firms getting a slice of the action including Ashwath Rau’s old and new firm.

In a relief to Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy, the Supreme Court today extended his parole till 3 August, 2016.

Former Agram Legal Consultants partner Sudipta Routh, who’d joined the firm in May 2015 from Luthra & Luthra, will join Samvad Partners in Mumbai as its third partner.

>Currently CMS partners hand out work to associates directly. The new system will require partners to use a dedicated resource manager employed by consultancy firm Mason & Cook to distribute all pieces of work.

We rereported earlier this week that the SpicyIP blog was cited by Bombay high court Justice Gautam Patel as having made a persuasive argument about not issuing blanket bans of websites against persons unknown (John Doe), in-part swaying Patel to only issue a narrow block of specific URLs on file sharing websites.

Nishith Desai Associates Mumbai acted for Tiger Global and DST Global, which invested $30m (Rs 200 crore) in a series C round in home rental company NestAway, which was advised by K Law.

The Gujarat high court today granted bail to Patidar agitation spearhead Hardik Patel in two sedition cases on the condition that he will stay outside the state for six months.

The much awaited Delhi-Centre turf war case was finally heard today at court No 4 around noon as item 64, with the bench of justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit giving the Delhi Government's counsel, Indira Jaising, enough opportunity to make her submissions, but without compromising its position that it would not direct the high court to first decide the jurisdiction issue.

"Legal education needs to be improved and the Bar Council of India needs to reform itself," Law Commission chairman and retired Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan told the Economic Times in an exclusive interview.

A Supreme Court bench of justices Anil R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel yesterday asked the Law Commission to consider whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) is a suitable regulator of the legal profession within six months.

Retired Supreme Court Judge N Santosh Hegde said, according to NDTV:

>To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that an Indian court has taken note of criticism embodied in a web article into cognizance while crafting its opinion. Justice Patel’s reaffirmation of the proposition that the Internet contains a vast body of sound academic writing, it is hoped, will make his brother and sister judges more open to the idea of taking judicial notice of views that are well-founded, albeit expressed in traditionally unconventional fora.<

On 4 July, the Supreme Court bench comprising justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan, assigned senior advocate, Rajeev Dhavan, an interesting assignment to be executed before 1 August.

The judges of the subordinate courts in Telangana, who were on mass leave since last week, resumed work on Wednesday.

The new Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Wednesday that "comprehensive consultations" were required before taking steps towards a Uniform Civil Code (UCC).