Presidents named at Mass., Springfield bar associations

The state's two largest bar associations have new presidents. R. Jack Cinquegrana, a partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston, assumes leadership of the Boston Bar Association, and Mark D. Mason, a partner at Cooley Shrair in Springfield, takes the helm at the Massachusetts Bar Association. A former federal and state prosecutor, Cinquegrana is a trial lawyer who now heads Choate's government enforcement and compliance practice group. Mason concentrates in commercial litigation, domestic law, mediation, and gay and lesbian legal affairs. Cinquegrana succeeds Edward P. Leibensperger and Mason succeeds Warren F. Fitzgerald, whose one-year terms ended yesterday. (Sacha Pfeiffer)

Jacquard furniture upholstery fabric maker Quaker Fabric Corp. of Fall River will layoff 225 employees, reducing staffing to just over 1,000. Quaker said the cuts are necessary to offset competition from Chinese imports, rising energy prices, and weakness in the retail furniture sector in general. Quaker said it will continue to cut costs and execute the restructuring plan it launched last year. (AP)

A Lowell company that handles credit-card payments for the direct marketing and e-commerce industries is the fastest-growing privately held company in the United States, according to Inc. magazine's ranking of the top 500 such firms. Litle & Co., with 38 employees and founded five years ago, had revenue of $34.8 million last year. While that was much smaller than many on the Inc. list, Litle's three-year sales growth of 5,629.1 percent outpaced every company listed. OpenPages of Waltham, with sales of $30.8 million in 2005 and 167 employees, ranked 22d, but its 2,033.4 percent three-year growth rate made it the number one software firm. (Keith Reed)

Boston Scientific Corp. said it has enrolled more than 13,000 patients in its Olympia registry, which is aimed at evaluating the safety and performance of the second-generation drug-eluting coronary stent, Taxus Liberte. The Natick company plans to enroll up to 27,000 at more than 500 centers worldwide to test the stent in ``real-world" settings. Boston Scientific said preliminary six-months results from phase one, which enrolled 529 patients from a limited number of international markets in which Taxus Liberte is already commercially available, showed a low overall major cardiac event rate of 2.3 percent. (Dow Jones)

Diomed Holdings Inc., an Andover developer of minimally invasive medical procedures to treat varicose veins and other medical conditions, said US District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton ruled its patent on the EndoVenous laser treatment for varicose veins, which it acquired in 2003, is valid and enforceable. The company sued AngioDynamics Inc. and others in 2004, charging them with patent infringement. The ruling means Diomed can proceed to trial on claims for an injunction and damages. Diomed shares jumped 29 cents, or 28.4 percent, to $1.31. (AP)

An employment agency subjected some female employees in its Worcester office to unlawful job segregation on the basis of gender and then retaliated against one for complaining, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Massachusetts. Preferred People Staffing, a North Carolina-based chain, denied women certain job opportunities based on gender and honored clients' requests for only male employees, the commission alleges. The EEOC said it filed the suit only after attempts to reach a voluntary settlement. A call to Preferred People Staffing was not returned. (Chris Reidy)

UPS Inc. pilots have approved a contract with the world's largest shipping carrier that includes hefty pay raises, large signing bonuses, but also higher healthcare premiums. The deal ends a three-year battle and threats of a walkout. The Independent Pilots Association said 56.5 percent of UPS pilots who voted approved the deal, which runs through 2011. Terms of the pact include immediate hourly raises of 17.7 percent for captains and 18 to 25.8 percent for first officers. (AP)

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(Correction: Because of an editing error, a headline on an item in Friday's Business in Brief column incorrectly identified one of two bar associations, the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association, that named new presidents.)