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James McGown, the bar owner, restaurateur and real estate developer who has left a trail of bankruptcy petitions across New York in recent years, has taken a legal hit, and a judge on Thursday denied his request for an injunction that would have stopped his landlord from terminating his lease and evicting him from Brooklyn's oldest bar, Crains New York Business reported on Saturday. Earlier this year, McGown filed for chapter 11 protection for P.J. Hanley's and initially said that he would be auctioning off the business, but eventually rebranded the bar as Goldenrod. As part of the rebranding, he reportedly renovated the space into an 1890s revival alehouse. However, according to legal documents filed by his landlord, McGown did not have permission to make changes or modifications, nor did he obtain the correct permits for such construction. The ruling allows the legal team for the Hanley family to move forward with lease-termination proceedings and eventual eviction. This new lawsuit is just one in a string for McGown, who recently filed six bankruptcy petitions on his business ventures over the last four years.

The Justice Department on Friday asked a federal appeals court to throw out a ruling directing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to testify about the government's 2008 decision to bail out American International Group Inc. (AIG), The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The government asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn a July decision by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas C. Wheeler that Bernanke submit to a deposition in the case, which is being brought by Starr International Co., run by former AIG Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. Judge Wheeler ruled that Bernanke's close involvement in the decision to bail out AIG at the height of the financial crisis warranted his testimony and made it unlikely that other officials could provide the same information. The department challenged that finding in its appeal, arguing that neither Judge Wheeler nor Starr have shown that other sources would not suffice.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $23 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of mishandling the money of pension funds and other clients by investing it in notes from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Reuters reported Friday. The largest U.S. bank denied wrongdoing in its settlement agreement, which it entered into solely to eliminate the burden and cost of litigation, according to papers filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the settlement terms fair, reasonable and adequate. The settlement requires approval by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan. The case is Board of Trustees of the Operating Engineers Pension Trust v. JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-09333.

Five former employees of Bernard Madoff, scheduled to go on trial in October for allegedly helping the convicted con man carry off the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, are seeking a two-month postponement, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain set an Oct. 7 trial date for the fraud case against Daniel Bonventre, Annette Bongiorno, Joann Crupi, Jerome O’Hara and George Perez. The defendants, who have all pleaded not guilty, are charged with crimes including conspiracy, fraud and falsifying records.

Twenty-five Nuveen Investments Inc. funds sued American International Group Inc., claiming that the company and executives committed securities fraud leading to the U.S. financial crisis that intensified in 2008, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Also named yesterday as defendants in a 237-page complaint in federal court in Chicago were former Chief Executive Officer Martin J. Sullivan, ex-Chief Financial Officer Steven Bensinger and Joseph Cassano, who led the AIG Financial Products unit. The funds accused the company, Sullivan and others of violating Illinois and federal securities laws, common law fraud and unjust enrichment. They asked for unspecified money damages.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. must face a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General that accuses the world’s largest custody bank of defrauding clients in foreign-exchange transactions, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Justice Marcy Friedman of the New York state Supreme Court ruled that fraud claims brought by the state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman can proceed, according to a decision dated yesterday. BNY Mellon was sued in 2011 by Schneiderman, who accused the bank of a 10-year fraud through the pricing of foreign-exchange transactions for private and government clients. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara also has a lawsuit pending against the bank over the same issue.

Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president found liable for his role in a failed $1 billion investment, may have lost his case because jurors rejected his defense that as a junior employee he wasn’t primarily responsible for the transaction, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Tourre’s lawyers portrayed him as a young employee who was one of many Goldman Sachs employees who worked on the 2007 deal known as Abacus that had subprime mortgage-backed securities underlying the transaction. The SEC accused Tourre of intentionally misleading participants in Abacus about the role played by Paulson & Co., the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, which helped choose the portfolio of securities, then made a billion-dollar bet it would fail. Tourre was found liable by a jury in Manhattan yesterday on six of seven claims.

A money manager and a real estate developer already facing a regulator’s fraud lawsuit were charged with running a $96 million Ponzi scheme and diverting the proceeds to their New York beachfront resort, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Brian R. Callahan and his brother-in-law Adam J. Manson were charged in a 24-count indictment unsealed today in federal court in Central Islip, New York. They pleaded not guilty and were released on bond. The men are accused of telling investors that their money was going into hedge funds and other investment vehicles while actually much of it was going to the unprofitable 117-unit Panoramic View Resort & Residences in Montauk.

A prolific gang of foreign hackers stole and sold 160 million credit card numbers from more than a dozen companies, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, federal prosecutors charged yesterday in what they described as the largest hacking and data breach case in the country, the New York Times reported yesterday. The scheme was run by four Russian nationals and a Ukrainian, said the United States attorney for the District of New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, who announced the indictments in Newark. The victims in the scheme, which prosecutors said ran from 2005 until last year, include J. C. Penney; 7-Eleven; JetBlue; Heartland Payment Systems, one of the world’s largest credit and debit processing companies; and the French retailer Carrefour. Separate indictments involving some of the same men accusing them of computer attacks on Citibank, PNC Bank and the Nasdaq stock exchange, were also filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Westport National Bank and its parent company, Connecticut Community Bank, were not liable for the losses of investors in Bernard Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme in its role as a custodial bank, a jury found on Wednesday, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. Separately, the bank agreed to pay $7.5 million to 240 investors in a related case, a lawyer for the bank said. A federal jury in Hartford, Conn., had finished hearing eight days of evidence last month in a case before Judge Vanessa L. Bryant of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. The case had consolidated three similar lawsuits against the bank. Two of those cases settled before the jury began its deliberations. After the other cases settled, the jury did evaluate the bank’s custodial duties in a case brought by two Florida investors, but sent a mixed message. After 14 hours of deliberation, the jury said that the bank was not a fiduciary, and thus owed no fiduciary duty to two elderly Florida investors, Audrey Short and Faye Albert.