BANKING / FINANCE
Dual Representation: A federal judge in Phoenix recently said he was “absolutely aghast” that the law firm hired a few months ago by jailed Charles H. Keating Jr., the former owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine, also represents federal banking regulators on civil litigation against failed banks.
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Bilby said attorneys from Chicago’s Kirkland & Ellis law firm “would never get one lick of business from me as long as (they) lived, because I would have felt (they) turned on me.”
But after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. failed to show that the law firm learned agency litigation secrets, Bilby dismissed the FDIC’s motion to disqualify Kirkland & Ellis from representing Keating in the bankruptcy of Lincoln’s parent firm, American Continental Corp., and other civil litigation surrounding the collapse of Lincoln.
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