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Biden Taps Judicial Nominees For 6th Circuit, SDNY
President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a new slate of judicial nominations, including a current U.S. attorney tapped for a Sixth Circuit seat and another federal prosecutor up for a judgeship in the Southern District of New York.
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April 19, 2024
5th Circ. Revives Six Flags Investor Suit Again
The Fifth Circuit has once again restored a securities fraud class action against Six Flags over the amusement corporation's botched plans to expand in China, saying the lower court inappropriately decided the lead plaintiff lacked standing and wrongly denied another plaintiff a chance to lead the suit.
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April 19, 2024
Dr. Says Colo. Plaintiffs Bar Trying To Open Tort Floodgates
A doctor is asking the Colorado Supreme Court to scuttle a proposed ballot initiative that would remove noneconomic damages caps for certain claims, arguing that the measure is unconstitutionally broad and would turn the state into "one of the most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions in the country."
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April 19, 2024
Banking Boss Seeks First Bite In Lawyer-Linked Debt Services
Connecticut's banking commissioner says a trial court judge misapplied case law by sidelining his authority to investigate complaints against a debt collection operation attached to a law firm, saying his office should be the first to decide whether he or the judicial branch has authority over the matter.
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April 19, 2024
Investor Suit Over Intel's Chip Production Won't Be Rebooted
The Ninth Circuit on Friday upheld a federal district court's dismissal of a proposed class action against Intel that alleged the tech giant hid problems with the production of its highly anticipated new computer processors, ruling the suit fails to show the defendants knew the company would miss the projected product release date.
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April 19, 2024
PE Exec Can Recoup $1M 'Varsity Blues' Forfeiture
A private equity executive whose conviction in the "Varsity Blues" college admissions case was almost entirely wiped out by the First Circuit is entitled to a refund of $1 million he paid to the scheme's ringleader, a federal judge ruled Friday.
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April 19, 2024
DC Circ. Won't Reverse Wash. Tribe's Recognition Order
A D.C. Circuit panel rejected a bid by a Washington tribe to vacate an order denying it federal recognition for the fourth time while barring it from raising any further jurisdictional arguments to collaterally attack a lower court's dismissal of the case.
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April 19, 2024
Texas Justices Open Door To Axing $14M Truck Crash Verdict
What started as a monster $80 million trucking crash verdict but later was reduced to $13.7 million was put in further jeopardy Friday when the Texas Supreme Court found that a lower appeals court erroneously declined to hear challenges to how the injured truck driver's employment status was determined.
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April 19, 2024
DC Circ. Backs GOP Operative's Election Finance Conviction
The D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld a political operative's conviction for illegally funneling money from a Russian businessman into Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, ruling that a law enacted in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal can be used to prosecute certain campaign finance crimes.
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April 19, 2024
Sentence For Pandemic Funds Theft Seems To Split 2nd Circ.
A three-judge panel of Second Circuit jurists seemed split Friday over whether a Connecticut man's eight-year prison sentence for stealing COVID-19 funds from the city of West Haven was too harsh, with one judge expressing skepticism and two hinting it was likely appropriate.
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April 19, 2024
Vegas Paper Wants Antitrust Suit Paused For Appeal
The Las Vegas Review-Journal asked a Nevada federal judge to pause the Las Vegas Sun's antitrust suit against it, pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit over the core agreement between the papers that the Review-Journal says the judge wrongly cleared.
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April 19, 2024
Justices Seek Cornell's Response To ERISA Fee Suit Petition
The U.S. Supreme Court asked Cornell University to respond to a March petition by a group of current and former workers seeking to revive a class action against the university alleging retirees' savings were saddled with unnecessarily high fees, in a sign that the case has drawn the justices' attention.
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April 19, 2024
Mich. Panel Backs GM's Win In Supplier Pricing Spat
A Michigan appellate panel has refused to reinstate a supplier's lawsuit claiming General Motors underpaid for five years' worth of deliveries, saying Semco Inc. didn't have the written evidence needed to hold GM to a promise to rectify the alleged shortfalls.
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April 19, 2024
Up Next At High Court: Abortions & Presidential Immunity
The U.S. Supreme Court will return Monday for the term's final week of oral arguments, during which it will consider several high-stakes disputes, including whether a federal healthcare law can preempt state abortion bans and whether former President Donald Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal charges related to official acts.
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April 19, 2024
Insurers Push To Arbitrate Hurricane Damage Case
An arbitrator should decide whether a Louisiana property owner's Hurricane Ida damage claims must be arbitrated, a group of surplus lines insurers told the Second Circuit, urging it to reject a New York district court's reliance on the circuit's precedent to find that the arbitration clause at issue was unenforceable.
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April 19, 2024
9th Circ. Won't Revive J2 Investor's Suit Over Insider Deal
The Ninth Circuit declined Friday to revive a proposed securities fraud class action alleging that J2 Global Inc. hid underperforming acquisitions and dubious investments that benefited company insiders, finding the plaintiff investor did not sufficiently plead scienter as to alleged nondisclosures or that purported misstatements caused his losses.
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April 19, 2024
Fla. Can't Wage Real Estate War On Foreigners, 11th Circ. Told
A group of Chinese citizens and a brokerage firm urged the Eleventh Circuit on Friday to block Florida from enforcing a law prohibiting certain foreign nationals from owning land while they challenge the statute's constitutionality, saying it's discriminatory and preempted by federal authority.
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April 19, 2024
Atty Says False Testimony Justifies Chrisleys' Acquittal
Attorneys for Todd and Julie Chrisley of the reality television show "Chrisley Knows Best," who are in prison after being convicted on federal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion, urged the Eleventh Circuit to undo their convictions on Friday, arguing prosecutors knowingly presented false, prejudicial testimony at trial.
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April 19, 2024
Trump's Trial Is Unprecedented. Attys On Juries? Not So Much
With two BigLaw attorneys tapped for the jury box in Donald Trump's first-in-history criminal case, Law360 spoke to trial vets who said their own experience in this tables-turned situation shows lawyers can make for highly engaged jurors under the right circumstances.
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April 19, 2024
Nevada Justices Stop Block On State's Ghost Gun Ban
The Nevada Supreme Court has reversed an order blocking enforcement of state laws blocking the sale of so-called ghost gun kits, saying the lower court was wrong in finding the laws were unconstitutionally vague.
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April 19, 2024
Del. Justices Revive Margolis Edelstein Malpractice Suit
Delaware's Supreme Court has reversed a lower-court decision that let Margolis Edelstein off the hook on claims that its incompetence caused GMG Insurance Agency to have to settle a case for $1.2 million, saying more consideration is needed to determine whether the firm was negligent.
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April 19, 2024
Lawyer Too Late To Collect Fees From Aretha Franklin Estate
Michigan appellate judges have upheld the denial of a bid for attorney fees for a lawyer who complained he was not properly paid for work he did for Aretha Franklin, with judges determining the claims were time-barred.
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April 19, 2024
Climate Lawsuits Aren't The SEC's Only Legal Headache
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been grabbing headlines over the past couple of months as it attempts to fend off a host of lawsuits challenging recently enacted climate disclosure rules, but the agency has been no stranger to litigation brought by business groups opposing everything from new stock buyback disclosures to the agency's growing private fund oversight to its hands-off approach to crypto rule writing.
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April 19, 2024
Paxton Can't Duck Ethics Suit Over 2020 Election Challenge
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton must face the State Bar of Texas' ethics lawsuit over his attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election since the suit is against Paxton in his personal capacity and does not violate the separation of powers, a Texas appellate court has ruled.
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April 19, 2024
Law Firm Warns Mich. Justices Of Malpractice Fee Deluge
A Michigan law firm has urged the state's Supreme Court not to lower the bar for seeking attorney fees as legal malpractice damages, saying doing so would invite clients to find reasons to sue their lawyers to recover fees even when they won the underlying case.
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April 19, 2024
The Week In Trump: NY Trial And A High Court Date Loom
Despite a few snags, jury selection for Donald Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan unfolded relatively quickly, clearing the way for opening statements Monday in the historic case as the former president prepped for a U.S. Supreme Court debate over his supposed immunity.
Editor's Picks
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DC Circuit Cases To Watch In 2024
As the D.C. Circuit heads into 2024, its judges are poised to answer hotly anticipated political questions about former President Donald Trump and his allies, as well as a number of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cases that could determine the future of certain natural gas projects.
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Appellate Outlook: Circuit Splits & Hot Topics To Track In 2024
The 2024 appellate almanac is looking lively after eye-popping opinions and arguments in 2023's homestretch. As the new year begins, several circuit splits seem more serious, ideological imbalances are in the spotlight, and luminaries of the U.S. Supreme Court bar are locked in a burgeoning battle over alleged corporate complicity in terrorism.
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Law360's Guide To Biden's Judicial Picks
UPDATED April 18, 2024 | President Joe Biden is shaping the federal judiciary by adding to the courts' professional and demographic diversity — a sharp break from former President Donald Trump, who made the judiciary more homogeneous as the judges confirmed under him were 84% white and 76% male.
Expert Analysis
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What Have We Learned In The Year Since Warhol?
In the almost year since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, which was widely seen as potentially chilling to creative endeavors, seven subsequent decisions — while illuminating to some extent — do not indicate any trend toward a radical departure from prior precedents in fair use cases, says Jose Sariego at Bilzin Sumberg.
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The Practical Effects Of Justices' Arbitration Exemption Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries, that a transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, may negatively affect employers' efforts to mitigate class action risk via arbitration agreement enforcement, say Charles Schoenwetter and Eric Olson at Bowman and Brooke.
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Binance Ruling Spotlights Muddled Post-Morrison Landscape
The Second Circuit's recent decision in Williams v. Binance highlights the judiciary's struggle to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's Morrison v. National Australia Bank ruling to digital assets, and illustrates how Morrison's territorial limits on the federal securities laws have become convoluted, say Andrew Rhys Davies and Jessica Lewis at WilmerHale.
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Practical Pointers After Fed. Circ. Double-Patenting Decision
With the Federal Circuit recently denying a full court review of In re: Cellect, a decision regarding obviousness-type double-patenting, affected patent family holders should evaluate their rights through both patent prosecution and future litigation lenses to minimize risks, say Austin Lorch and Jeff Wolfson at Haynes Boone.
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Sorting Circuit Split On Foreign Arbitration Treaty's Authority
A circuit court split over whether the New York Convention supersedes state law barring arbitration in certain disputes — a frequent issue in insurance matters — has left lower courts to rely on conflicting decisions, but the doctrine of self-executing treaties makes it clear that the convention overrules state law, says Gary Shaw at Pillsbury.
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Corp. Transparency Act Could Survive 11th Circ. Several Ways
If the Eleventh Circuit upholds an Alabama federal court’s injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act, the anti-money laundering law could persist as a narrower version that could moot some constitutional challenges, but these remedies would likely generate additional regulatory or statutory ambiguities that would result in further litigation, say attorneys at Perkins Coie.
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Del. Match.com Ruling Maintains Precedent In Time Of Change
Despite speculation that the Delaware Supreme Court could drive away corporations if it lowered the bar for business judgment review in its Match.com stockholder ruling, the court broke its recent run of controversial precedent-busting decisions by upholding, and arguably strengthening, minority stockholder protections against controller coercion, say Renee Zaytsev and Marc Ayala at Boies Schiller.
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The Future Of BIPA Insurance Litigation After Visual Pak
A recent Illinois appellate court decision, National Fire Insurance v. Visual Pak, may have altered the future of insurance litigation under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by diametrically opposing a prominent Seventh Circuit ruling that found insurance coverage for violations of the act, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.
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Macquarie Ruling Raises The Bar For Securities Fraud Claims
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week in Macquarie Infrastructure v. Moab Partners — holding that a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule does not forbid omissions in company disclosures unless they render other statements false — is a major setback for plaintiffs pursuing securities fraud claims against corporations, say attorneys at Skadden.
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Patent Lessons From 8 Federal Circuit Reversals In March
A number of Federal Circuit patent decisions last month reversed or vacated underlying rulings, providing guidance regarding the definiteness of a claim that include multiple limitations of different scopes, the importance of adequate jury instruction, the proper scope of the precedent, and more, say Denise De Mory and Li Guo at Bunsow De Mory.
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NC Rulings Show Bankruptcy Isn't Only For Insolvent Debtors
Two recent rulings from a North Carolina bankruptcy court show that lack of financial distress is not a requirement for bankruptcy protection, particularly in the Fourth Circuit, but these types of cases can still be dismissed for other reasons, say Stuart Gordon and Alexandria Vath at Rivkin Radler.
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A Look At Ex Parte Seizures 8 Years Post-DTSA
In the eight years since the Defend Trade Secrets Act was enacted, not much has changed for jurisprudence on ex parte seizures, but a few seminal rulings show that there still isn’t a bright line on what qualifies as extraordinary circumstances warranting a seizure, say attorneys at Finnegan.
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Series
Whitewater Kayaking Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Whether it's seeing clients and their issues from a new perspective, or staying nimble in a moment of intense challenge, the lessons learned from whitewater kayaking transcend the rapids of a river and prepare attorneys for the courtroom and beyond, says Matthew Kent at Alston & Bird.
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10 Years After Alice, Predictability Debate Lingers
A decade after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice ruling, critics continue to argue that the subject matter eligibility framework it established yields inconsistent results, but that contention is disproved by affirmance data from the Federal Circuit, district courts and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, say Dennis Abdelnour and David Thomas at Honigman.
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Cannabis Ruling Lights Path For Bankruptcy Protection
A recent Massachusetts bankruptcy appellate court ruling in Blumsack v. Harrington leaves the door open for those employed in the cannabis industry to seek bankruptcy relief where certain conditions are met, but rescheduling marijuana as a Schedule III drug may complicate matters, say Jane Haviland and Kathryn Droumbakis at Mintz.