Wiggin and Dana also announced today that it has promoted Kevin S. Budge of the Litigation Department, and Helen C. Heintz of the Trusts & Estates Department, to counsel. Mr. Budge is based in the firm’s New Haven office, and Ms. Heintz in its Stamford office. Both were previously associates with the firm.

It’s the firm’s lack of depth, however, in other areas of law practice that two now-former principals are citing as the reason for their jump to Wiggin and Dana.

New Haven’s Wiggin and Dana recently did just that, bringing aboard two former federal prosecutors as partners to help clients in cases involving corporate compliance, government investigations and internal audits.

James I. Glasser joined the firm after 19 years in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Connecticut, most recently serving as counsel to U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor and chief of the criminal division. Joseph W. Martini arrived at Wiggin from Pepe & Hazard in Hartford, for whom he practiced after serving as federal prosecutor for nine years.

Mr. Glasser joins the firm from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut and Mr. Martini joins from the firm Pepe & Hazard LLP.

In a recent Business Law Segment of Smart Pros – Knowledge for Professionals, Wiggin and Dana partner, Bob Langer, was the guest antitrust expert on a program entitled “When Can You Set and Enforce Minimum Prices?” The host begins the program as follows: “In an opinion [Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.] released on the last day of the courts term, the Supreme Court held that it was not automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on minimum retail prices. The court struck down the 96 year old rule that resale price maintenance agreements were an automatic or a per se violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In its place the court instructed judges considering such agreements for possible antitrust violations to apply a case by case approach, known as the rule of reason, to assess their impact on competition.”

Bob Langer, along with his partners, Aaron Bayer and Suzanne Wachsstock, in collaboration with the firm of Bryan Cave, filed a friend of the court (amicus) brief in Leegin on behalf of PING, Inc. The PING brief was noted by Chief Justice Roberts and the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States during oral argument and is referenced favorably by Associate Justice Kennedy, author of the court’s majority opinion. Leegin is widely acknowledged to be the most significant antitrust decision issued by the United States Supreme Court in the past thirty years.

Click the title above to view the video of the entire program.

Dunham, named as one of the top four U.S. franchise attorneys in this year’s Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, will serve as Forum Chair for a two-year term. The ABA Forum on Franchising is the preeminent organization dedicated to the legal aspects of franchising.

Antitrust Opinions: No Bright Lines, More Facts. On the antitrust front, Robert M. Langer, head of the antitrust and trade regulation practice group at Wiggin and Dana, Hartford, Conn., submitted that Leegin was the key case of the term, and perhaps the most important since Continental T.V. Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977). Leegin held that vertical price restraints in the form of resale price maintenance agreements between manufacturers and distributors are not per se illegal under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, but instead should be analyzed under the rule of reason in deciding whether those measures are anticompetitive. In reaching that conclusion, the court overruled Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U.S. 373 (1911).