After a year-long litigation culminating in a three-day evidentiary hearing, Morrison & Foerster LLP, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the Public Counsel Law Center, today obtained the entry of an important court-ordered consent decree on behalf of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The plaintiffs, students at some of LAUSD’s most impacted schools, had sued the State and school district over LAUSD’s layoffs of thousands of teachers that fell disproportionately on the most challenged schools, causing such disruption that students’ were denied their constitutional right to equal educational opportunity. The consent decree incorporates broad and sweeping changes that will protect schools similar to those of the plaintiffs’ from hard-hitting reductions in force (RIFs).

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week upheld a judgment achieved by a Milbank team for the Firm’s client, the Central Bank of Mongolia (“BOM”). That victory capped a series of judgments in favor of the Central Bank, each in the amount of $69 million plus attorneys’ fees, on RICO, fraud and civil theft claims.

International law firm King & Spalding advised RockTenn Company in its $3.5 billion acquisition of Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, creating a $9 billion leader in the North American paperboard packaging market.

Global law firm White & Case LLP advised Mexichem SAB de CV, a major Mexican chemical producer, on its US$300 million acquisition of the AlphaGary Plastic Compounding Business Division of Rockwood Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ROC). This is the second acquisition in which White & Case acted for Mexichem in less than a year.

Simpson Thacher represented JPMorgan Chase & Co. in connection with its sale of approximately $400 million of credit card assets to GE Capital Retail Consumer Finance, a consumer lending unit of General Electric Company.  The transaction involves a sale of JP Morgan’s consumer credit card receivables associated with a private label and co-branded MasterCard program for The TJX Companies, Inc., a leading off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions.  The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

Simpson Thacher is representing Apax Partners in connection with the €850,000,000 senior secured debt financing of their acquisition of Takko Group, a German clothing retailer from Advent International. Founded in 1982, Takko operates nearly 1,500 retail outlets across Europe and has a turnover of approximately €1 billion.

Hogan Lovells has advised institutional clients of La Salle Investment Management (LIM) on the acquisition of, and a £50m capital investment in, The Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE)’s main site at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire.

Hogan Lovells US LLP has advised on the sale of Danvers Bancorp, Inc. (Danvers), a Massachusetts-based holding company with approximately $2.6 billion in assets, to People’s United Financial, Inc. (People’s), the holding company for People’s United Bank.