A California judge granted Jeff Bezos' request for attorney fees Friday after defeating a defamation suit by his girlfriend's brother over a phone hacking incident, but signed off on just $218,000 of the $1.68 million Bezos requested, finding his team was "overstaffed" with seven partners and 11 associates from two firms.
The National Labor Relations Board has taken the rare action of asking the D.C. and Ninth circuits for a contempt remedy against five casinos it says are flouting court orders by sabotaging the bargaining process with a union and refusing to negotiate over COVID-19 safety.
Aspects of a recent Ninth Circuit decision "shred" an airline lobbying group's arguments that federal law preempts a Washington state sick pay law that extends to pilots and flight attendants, a flight attendants union has asserted in response to the group's appeal.
A Colorado CBD company has at least temporarily stopped a proposed class action accusing it of selling illegal products after a federal judge stayed the case until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or Congress puts forward regulations on the ingredient.
Hundreds of attorneys and several consumer and legal advocacy organizations on Friday joined dozens of putative class members in the Roundup product liability case in urging a California federal judge not to approve a proposed $2 billion deal to settle claims that the weedkiller causes cancer, saying the "anemic" settlement benefits Monsanto and its parent company Bayer AG more than sick plaintiffs.
File transfer software vendor Accellion, whose recent hack may have exposed data from its BigLaw clients like Jones Day, has hired Latham & Watkins LLP to represent it in a slew of data breach lawsuits in federal court, according to attorney notice filings Thursday.
A proposed class of pharmacy workers asked a California federal judge on Friday to preliminarily approve a $6.8 million settlement that would resolve accusations Walgreens violated the Private Attorneys General Act and other labor laws when it failed to provide meal and rest breaks for its workers.
A California federal judge on Friday explained his reasoning for rejecting Intuit's proposed $40 million settlement that seeks to resolve proposed class claims alleging it duped customers into using its TurboTax's paid software, saying the deal doesn't adequately compensate class members and it makes it too difficult to opt out.
The U.S. Supreme Court dropped a trio of lawsuits concerning state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities, winding down a yearslong battle during the Trump administration over so-called sanctuary cities.
Loeb & Loeb LLP snagged employment law attorney Sarina Saluja from Fisher Phillips for its Los Angeles office, representing the firm's fifth partner addition in 2021.
A California federal judge has declined to sanction an objector to a Wells Fargo settlement over fake accounts after investors accused the objector and his attorneys of extorting $1.75 million from the bank, saying the court won't order disgorgement of a settlement reached in a state court lawsuit.
A California federal judge Thursday tossed a lawsuit alleging Apple doesn't try to combat thieves who trick people into making payments with iTunes gift cards because the tech giant gets to keep a chunk of the scammed proceeds, saying the complaint doesn't show that Apple substantially helps the thieves.
Urban Outfitters Inc. was sued Wednesday in California state court for allegedly selling journals without warning customers that the notebooks contain chemicals known to cause cancer, developmental issues and other negative side effects.
Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC has beefed up its health care bench with a hire from Nelson Hardiman LLP, while home medical equipment company Apria Inc. has named a new general counsel, headlining Law360's latest roundup of personnel moves in the health care and life sciences arena.
In this week's Taxation With Representation, cloud company Okta buys identity authentication company Auth0 for $6.5 billion, Las Vegas Sands sells property holdings for $6.3 billion, and insurance technology company Hippo inks a $5 billion merger.
A California federal judge permitted a beauty salon's proposed class action seeking COVID-19-related insurance coverage to proceed, ruling that it's "plausible" the salon experienced "direct physical loss" after not being able to use its property due to government closure orders.
Panda Express steered an employee to a seminar that resembled a "cult initiation ritual," where she was screamed at, forced to strip to her underwear and hug a nearly naked male colleague, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles.
A California judge ordered an attorney who represented Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers in a faulty billing lawsuit to disgorge $1.65 million in attorney fees and be held in contempt and sanctioned Thursday, saying he disobeyed court orders and withheld information about possible collusion with the city's attorneys.
A California federal judge criticized counsel for both parties Thursday in a putative class action accusing Google of secretly tracking users' browsing activity on third-party mobile apps, saying their arguments on Google's motion to dismiss veered outside the pleadings.
Oportun, a California-based online consumer lender, disclosed Thursday that its debt collection practices and pandemic-related borrower relief efforts are under scrutiny from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Wells Fargo has urged a California federal court overseeing a putative securities fraud class action to reject a request by investors that the bank reveal communications it had with Gibson Dunn, arguing that the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege.
A California federal magistrate judge admonished a Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP attorney Thursday who revealed information about commission rates that Netflix and HBO apparently pay to Apple that he learned through Apple's discovery documents, but declined to sanction the attorney.
A California federal magistrate judge overseeing a bench trial on whether PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP fired an auditor in retaliation for purported whistleblowing refused Thursday to allow the ex-employee's counsel to question PwC's expert witness on the company's auditing track record or on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's impartiality.
The Ninth Circuit on Thursday revived a Somali citizen's asylum claim, finding that immigration officials should not have excluded him from consideration based on his resettlement because he was still being persecuted.
Financial technology company Square said Thursday it will take a majority stake in TIDAL, a music and entertainment company that counts artist Jay-Z among its directors, in a $297 million deal guided by Gibson Dunn, Reed Smith and Cummings & Lockwood.
Considering the Trump administration's aggressive drug reference pricing rules, and more price control measures potentially on the horizon, drug and biotech companies should prepare a comprehensive readiness strategy tailored to country-specific considerations, says Meenakshi Datta at Sidley.
Data from recent Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act litigation suggests that a biosimilar applicant will inevitably face a declaratory judgment action irrespective of the amount and type of information it provides to the brand holder, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will be hard-pressed to argue Tesla CEO Elon Musk's recent tweets about cryptocurrencies amounted to illegal communication of material information to investors, or constituted market manipulation, say Kenneth Breen and Phara Guberman at Paul Hastings.
Attorneys working remotely from jurisdictions in which they are not admitted should take precautionary steps to avoid engaging in unauthorized practice of law, say John Schmidt and Michael Seaman at Phillips Lytle.
Opinion
A recent Law360 guest article criticized attorneys who use California's Song-Beverly Act to fight for consumers who have purchased cars with serious defects — but automakers could avoid litigation if they simply followed the law and bought back defective vehicles promptly, says Nancy Peverini at the Consumer Attorneys of California.
Parenting during the pandemic has introduced a series of competing personal and professional obligations for attorneys and professional staff, and even organizations that are supportive of their parent employees can take steps to do better, says Meredith Kahan at Saul Ewing.
The Second Circuit's recent decision to grant a U.S. Department of Justice motion to dismiss a False Claims Act suit, without weighing in on the standard for assessing the agency’s decision, illustrates a significant trend, given an increase in agency dismissals and the expected uptick in FCA cases amid the pandemic, say attorneys at Baker Botts.
During recent presidential administrations, state attorneys general have challenged federal regulations and obtained nationwide injunctions against executive orders — and there is every reason to believe that Republican attorneys general will continue this trend, resisting Biden administration efforts on climate change, health care, immigration and more, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.
The three degrees of state marijuana legalization regimes throughout the U.S. show that cannabis is only fully illegal in three U.S. states and one territory — not 14 states as some counts indicate — and even in those places, there are stirrings of change, says Julie Werner-Simon at Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law.
Although a California federal court recently ruled a donor-advised fund sponsor did not breach prudent investor standards in Fairbairn v. Fidelity Charitable, the case shows that disgruntled donors may initiate claims against charities over nonbinding advisory privileges, and could introduce a wave of litigation over alleged investment mismanagement, says Karl Mill at Adler & Colvin.
The prospect of joining a law firm during the pandemic can cause added pressure, but with a few good practices — and a little help from their firms and supervising attorneys — lawyer trainees can get ahead of the curve while working remotely, say William Morris and Ted Landray at King & Spalding.
After the recent Desire v. Manna Textiles decision tossing a statutory damages verdict in the Ninth Circuit, copyright plaintiffs there may no longer be able to multiply the number of available statutory damage awards per work based on the number of downstream infringers, says Matthew Gershman at Greenberg Traurig.
The recent federal and state trend toward strengthening equal pay laws is sure to gain momentum, so it is now more important than ever before for employers to develop pay equity strategies, says Erin Connell at Orrick.
Series
The Small Business Reorganization Act's seemingly straightforward amendment to the Bankruptcy Code, attempting to streamline preference litigation by requiring the trustee to consider parties' reasonably known defenses, actually raises a host of questions regarding due diligence and implications for other bankruptcy provisions, say Joel Cohen at Stout, and Robert Michaelson and Howard Magaliff at Rich Michaelson.
A series of recent court decisions illustrate the challenges of litigating against insurers in a state where neither party resides, and demonstrate alternate means of securing jurisdiction, says Richard Mason at MasonADR.