A coughing Italian judge cleared a panicked courtroom when he followed a slutter up with the comment: “I’ve just got back from Mexico.” More than 30 attorneys in Rome told Judge Giovanni Barese they were boycotting the court and adjourning their cases for fear of catching the apparent case of swine flu. “I’ve never seen so many lawyers agree on anything in court so quickly,” one lawyer commented. The judge agreed to see a doctor and has now gone into quarantine. 

E&Y lawyer found guilty of fraud

A former Ernst & Young partner in New York has been found guilty of insider trader after passing information about a proposed multibillion-dollar buyout on to a friend. The 48-year-old lawyer, James Gansman, was a lawyer in E&Y’s transactions division, running the department that advises companies on human resources issues during mergers and acquisitions. But in the year before July 2007, he passed information about seven upcoming takeovers to Donna Murdoch, a friend, who then used the details to trade shares for a profit of about $400,000. Gansman was found guilty of securities fraud. He is on bail and awaiting sentencing.