News

It was a series of surprises wrapped in an enigma, so to speak. In the end, the King of Surprises, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, pretty much proved to those who assembled in Court 5 of the Supreme Court on 17 October that no one could beat him in the game of springing surprises.

Kochhar & Co has hired Sarika Raichur as a partner in Delhi focusing on corporate and private equity, merging part of the firm she had started.

According to the allegations in the Bombay high court section 9 petition against former Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) Chennai partner Dorothy Thomas, Thomas “in direct collusion with” Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas instructed associates to “extract confidential files” of CAM’s “in a systematic and pre-planned manner” from 26 September before she and her team had resigned from the firm.

"The acquisition is the biggest foreign acquisition ever in India and Russia’s largest outbound deal. Billionaire brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia have agreed to sell 98 per cent of Essar Group flagship firm Essar Oil to Russian oil major Rosneft and a consortium of oil trading firm Trafigura with private investment group United Capital Partners for $13 billion, making it the largest foreign direct investment in India.” reported The Hindu and others.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) had alleged in the Bombay high court application for interim relief in arbitration proceedings that team members of departing Chennai partner Dorothy Thomas had taken boxes of CAM client files from the office.

In this week’s exclusive subscriber-only newsletter, we reveal:

VC firm DSG Consumer Partners has made a partial exit in food processing industry company Veeba Fine Foods (founded in 1983, making sauces, dips, emulsions and dessert toppings) to Brussels-headquartered Verlinvest Asia, which was created by several families of the Anheuser-Busch InBev empire to make investments in the food and beverage space.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has started arbitration proceedings against Chennai partner Dorothy Thomas, who is due to join Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, filing in the Bombay high court yesterday for interim measures.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has invited the Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf) to help it fine-tune its proposal to the Law Commission, which was called upon by the Supreme Court to take a comprehensive look at the role of the bar councils’ “failure” and “inaction” in regulating the legal profession.

NYT's beautiful smackdown of Donald Trump defamation notice: Reputation already shot, so nothing left to lower (Ps: Bring it on): The New York Times has responded rather cleverly to the legal notice of US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, which was fired off by one of New York’s most feared litigators, Marc E Kasowitz.

The Times’ general counsel, David McCraw wrote: “The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one's reputation. Mr. Trump has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women. He has bragged about intruding on beauty pageant contestants in their dressing rooms. He acquiesced to a radio host's request to discuss Mr. Trump's own daughter as a 'piece of ass.' Multiple women not mentioned in our article have publicly come forward to report on Mr. Trump's unwanted advances. Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.”

McCraw also said the paper stood by the story and that it “welcome[d] the opportunity to have a court set [Trump] straight” - New York Times response to Trump / Trump’s legal notice / Original NYT article alleging Trump sexually harassed them

UP lawyers strike for 100 days per year: “As per the data obtained from the National Judicial Grid, Uttar Pradesh has over 53 lakh cases pending till date, which accounts for nearly a quarter of total pendency in all states taken together. Trial courts generally work for an average of 250 days a year after discounting weekly and religious holidays. With another 100 days disrupted due to strikes, the staggering number of pending cases comes as no surprise.” – Newslaundry

…and in some district courts, strikes go on for 140 days per year: “The five-year data is an eye-opener. In Muzaffarnagar, a total of 753 days was lost due to lawyers' strike, which means an average of 150 days a year. In Aligarh, it was 697 days (140 days a year), Agra 696 days (140 days every year), Faizabad 693 days, Sultanpur 603 days, Moradabad 596 days, Mathura 591 days, Ghaziabad 573 days, Balrampur 560 days and Chandauli 524 days. - Economic Times

Muslim law board unhappy with Law Commission looking into Uniform Civil Code: “The Law Commission is not functioning like an independent body, it is engaging in illegal activities and acting like the government’s agent. Therefore, we have decided to boycott the questionnaire sent by the Law Commission,” says the The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) - The Quint / Law Commission questionnaire

BCI’s revived age limit restriction puts Kerala in a fix: “Meanwhile, the commissioner of entrance exams (CEE) that conducts the qualifying exam for admission to law colleges in the state is in a fix. ‘We have already conducted the entrance exam and the merit list is out. As per the prospectus, there is no age limit fixed. If we suddenly bring in an upper age limit, then it can be challenged in court,’ said a CEE official. - Times of India

Lower courts may lack ‘expertise’ to judge in colourful language, says SC Justice AK Sikri: “Make it (evocative language) a tool, but don’t be swallowed by it. Judges at the lower level should avoid it as they may not have the expertise. A judgement should be said in a perfect manner,” he said. - India Today

Denying sex to husband is mental cruelty and grounds for divorce, says HC again: “In view [of] the foregoing discussion, we are of the considered view that the husband has fully established that he was subjected to mental cruelty by the wife by denying sex to him for a long period despite living under the same roof, without any justification and though she was not suffering from any physical disability,” the Delhi high court bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani, said. – PTI

Despite SC (and Marathi movie Court), still no compensation for manual scavengers: “Two-and-a-half years after the Supreme Court directed the State governments to provide compensation to the families of all manual scavengers who have died clearing sewers since 1993, the Tamil Nadu government has yet to compensate 119 such deaths.” – The Hindu

Kirkland & Ellis and Slaughter & May acted on the biggest Indian M&A transactions among 14 foreign law firms that each advised on more than $1bn worth of Indian M&A deals this quarter.

PDS Legal partner Deepak Chopra will join AZB & Partners in Delhi as a partner and the head of its tax litigation practice, according to a press release from the firm.

LexOrbis partner Pooja Dodd has gone independent again, restarting Delhi intellectual property-led boutique firm Dodd & Co, which would focus on clients in the “creative industry”.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has proposed to tighten its control over the legal profession by assuming more than a dozen new functions, statutorily recognising bar associations, formulating new governing rules for law firms and foreign lawyers, and enacting more stringent standards of professional qualification and conduct.

Khaitan & Co topped the list of 13 domestic law firms’ M&A mandates by value of deals done with $18.7bn worth of transactions, followed by AZB & Partners which topped the list of deals by value, with 43 transactions worth $15.4bn.

AZB & Partners has re-hired Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas corporate senior consultant Jasmin Karkhanis as a counsel, reported Bar & Bench and we have confirmed.