California

  • December 23, 2025

    Biggest Energy & Environmental Court Decisions Of 2025

    Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings that erected stricter boundaries on federal environmental reviews and permitting highlighted an action-packed 2025 for energy and environmental litigation. Here, Law360 looks back at this year's most consequential court decisions in energy and environmental law.

  • December 23, 2025

    Disney Wants ESPN Streaming Rates Suit Sent To Arbitration

    Disney is seeking to force a proposed class of Fubo subscribers to arbitrate their claims that Disney unlawfully made streaming services pay inflated rates for ESPN and other sports channels, telling a California federal judge that the company can enforce Fubo's arbitration clause after its purchase of the streamer.

  • December 23, 2025

    'Surprise' Expert Prompts Axing Of $14M Car Crash Verdict

    A California appellate court has vacated a $13.8 million jury verdict after finding that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing a "surprise" medical expert witness to testify at an auto collision trial, saying his testimony likely affected the jury's substantial award.

  • December 23, 2025

    The Court Cases That Defined Sports Law In 2025

    From a landmark settlement that looks to reshape the future of college athletics to an eye-popping victory for a golf legend, the sports legal world was teeming with cases that commanded attorneys' attention throughout 2025.

  • December 23, 2025

    State Telecom Roundup: AGs Step Up War On Robocalls

    Americans have been pummeled by more than 2.5 billion robocalls every month this year, and stanching the onslaught has become one of the more bipartisan issues in national politics. Federal and state authorities also agree on the magnitude of the issue, and the nation's attorneys general are teaming up for battle across the country at the state level.

  • December 23, 2025

    DHS Finalizes Rule Shifting H-1B Odds To Higher Earners

    The Trump administration finalized changes to the H-1B lottery Tuesday, unveiling a final rule it said will favor higher-paid and higher-skilled positions and tamp down on employers exploiting the program to hire low-wage workers and depress the wages of U.S. workers.

  • December 23, 2025

    Federal Agencies Urge 9th Circ. To Lift Layoff Freeze

    The U.S. government urged the Ninth Circuit to stay a court order barring agencies from laying off workers through next month under the shutdown deal, saying the court intruded on federal labor panels' territory and the funding resolution didn't bar layoffs agencies had in the works.

  • December 23, 2025

    Fast-Track Court Fights Shaped Immigration Litigation In 2025

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s use of the emergency docket drove 2025’s biggest immigration decisions, with the justices stepping in repeatedly to stay nationwide injunctions, greenlight key parts of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, and in some cases preserve due process rights. Here, Law360 looks at the year’s key immigration decisions.

  • December 23, 2025

    4 Judges Who Battled Criminal Charges In 2025

    A number of high-profile cases in 2025 found judges taking on the role of criminal defendants over a wide range of allegations, from murder and sexual assault to corruption and interfering with an ICE arrest.

  • December 23, 2025

    Calif. Chamber Of Commerce Counsel Rejoins Jackson Lewis

    A former California Chamber of Commerce senior employment law counsel has rejoined Jackson Lewis PC as a principal, returning to the firm where she has already done a five-year stint, the firm announced.

  • December 23, 2025

    Ex-Oura CEO Pushes To DQ Quinn Emanuel In Firing Suit

    The onetime CEO of fitness tracker company Oura Health is pushing to disqualify Quinn Emanuel from representing the smart ring maker in his compensation suit, telling a San Francisco federal judge that he shared confidential information when he consulted with the firm about his claims prior to filing suit.

  • December 23, 2025

    Greenberg Traurig-Led Silicon Valley SPAC Raises $200M

    Special purpose acquisition company Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp. began trading publicly on Tuesday after raising $200 million in its initial public offering, with plans to pursue an acquisition of a company undergoing "structural transformation."

  • December 23, 2025

    Pot Investors Say Collective Mishandled Profits And Funds

    A pair of investors is suing the managers of a cannabis retail collective in California state court, alleging that they have been diverting funds and failing to properly distribute profits, instead using them to prop up their own businesses and enrich themselves.

  • December 22, 2025

    Anthropic, Google, Meta Face More Writer Copyright Claims

    A group of writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou, on Monday lobbed yet another copyright infringement suit at tech companies Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI and Perplexity, criticizing Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement in a similar class action as seeming to serve the companies, not creators.

  • December 22, 2025

    NY's James, 21 Other Dem AGs Say CFPB Defunding Unlawful

    New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of nearly two dozen Democratic attorneys general in claiming the Trump administration's effort to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is illegal, telling an Oregon federal court Monday the municipalities are statutorily entitled to the CFPB's resources

  • December 22, 2025

    Citgo Fights Local Gov't Climate Claims Before Calif. Panel

    Citgo urged a California appellate panel Monday to reverse their tentative finding that Golden State courts have personal jurisdiction over certain climate deception claims against oil and gas giants, arguing that local governments' public nuisance allegations are based on "a completely different set of facts" that occurred beyond California's borders.

  • December 22, 2025

    Adeia Resolves Disney Patent Claims With Long-Term License

    Adeia Technologies Inc. said Monday that it had reached a long-term intellectual property license agreement with Disney that will resolve patent claims it brought against the entertainment giant.

  • December 22, 2025

    9th Circ. Sides With Wash. Professor In Free Speech Case

    A split Ninth Circuit panel has determined that the University of Washington violated a professor's First Amendment rights by punishing him for mocking a suggested Native American land acknowledgment, concluding in a new published opinion that "student discomfort" alone is not enough to warrant restrictions on academic free speech.

  • December 22, 2025

    Apple Seeks To Overturn $634M Masimo Patent Verdict

    Apple has urged a California federal judge to grant its combined motion for judgment or a new trial for its $634 million trial loss over a Masimo patient monitor patent, arguing that no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict and that the tech giant was "severely prejudiced" by erroneous court rulings.

  • December 22, 2025

    Rivian Shareholder Sues Top Brass Over Post-IPO Pricing

    Executives and directors of Rivian Automotive Inc. were hit with an investor's derivative suit accusing them of damaging the company by hiding that its flagship electric vehicles were far more expensive to build than advertised, making price hikes after its initial public offering inevitable.

  • December 22, 2025

    Accent Translation Patent Claims Remain In Trade Secret Spat

    A California federal judge has rejected a tech company's bid to dismiss patent claims from a competitor's trade secret lawsuit over accent translation technology, saying the motion was improper because it raised many of the same arguments it used in an unsuccessful attempt to dismiss other claims.

  • December 22, 2025

    X Corp., Apple, OpenAI Hash Out Antitrust Suit Discovery

    X Corp., Apple Inc. and OpenAI Inc. have agreed to run future disputes by a Texas federal judge regarding whether discovery in X's sprawling antitrust suit can be used in a separate suit targeting OpenAI in California.

  • December 22, 2025

    Chipotle Dodges Investor Claims Over Portion Cuts

    Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has escaped a proposed shareholder class action accusing it and its executives of downplaying concerns about meager portion sizes, an issue the company later acknowledged it would correct, with a California federal judge's ruling that the allegations are insufficient to establish that Chipotle's statements were false or misleading.

  • December 22, 2025

    Ed Dept. Ordered To Restore $1B In Mental Health Grants

    The U.S. Department of Education will not be allowed to cut more than $1 billion in mental health grants for schools after a Washington federal judge ruled that the agency acted illegally by citing new, undisclosed Trump administration priorities as a basis for slashing the funding.

  • December 22, 2025

    LawFirms.com Beats LegalForce's TM Suit After Bench Trial

    A California judge has concluded that a company that operates LawFirms.com did not infringe a law firm's trademarks for LegalForce, saying that during a four-day bench trial in October the court found "no one was actually confused or misled."

Expert Analysis

  • Legal Guardrails For AI Tools In The Hiring Process

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    Although artificial intelligence can help close the gaps that bad actors exploit in modern recruiting, its precision also makes it subject to tighter scrutiny, meaning new regulatory regimes should be top of mind for U.S.-centric employers exploring fraud-focused AI-enabled tools, say attorneys at Ogletree.

  • Series

    Building With Lego Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Building with Lego has taught me to follow directions and adapt to unexpected challenges, and in pairing discipline with imagination, allows me to stay grounded while finding new ways to make complex deals come together, says Paul Levin at Venable.

  • The Rise Of Trade Secret Specificity As A Jury Question

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    Recent federal appellate court decisions have clarified that determining sufficient particularity under the Defend Trade Secrets Act is a question of fact and will likely become a standard jury question, highlighting the need for appropriate jury instructions that explicitly address the issue, says Amy Candido at Simpson Thacher.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Networking 101

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    Cultivating a network isn't part of the law school curriculum, but learning the soft skills needed to do so may be the key to establishing a solid professional reputation, nurturing client relationships and building business, says Sharon Crane at Practising Law Institute.

  • Calif. Employer Action Steps For New Immigrant Rights Notice

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    There are specific steps California employers can take ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline to comply with California’s new employee rights notification requirement, minimizing potential liability and protecting workers who may be caught up in an immigration enforcement action at work, says Alexa Greenbaum at Fisher Phillips.

  • Defeating Estoppel-Based Claims In Legal Malpractice Actions

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    State supreme court cases from recent years have addressed whether positions taken by attorneys in an underlying lawsuit can be used against them in a subsequent legal malpractice action, providing a foundation to defeat ex-clients’ estoppel claims, says Christopher Blazejewski at Sherin and Lodgen.

  • How Cos. Can Prep For Tightened Calif. Data Breach Notices

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    Amid California's recent enactment of S.B. 446, which significantly amends the state's data breach notification laws, companies should review and update their incident response plans by establishing processes to document and support any delayed notification, and ensure the notifications' accuracy, say Mark Krotoski and Alexandria Marx at Pillsbury.

  • Series

    The Biz Court Digest: How It Works In Massachusetts

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    Since its founding in 2000, the Massachusetts Business Litigation Session's expertise, procedural flexibility and litigant-friendly case management practices have contributed to the development of a robust body of commercial jurisprudence, say James Donnelly at Mirick O’Connell, Felicia Ellsworth at WilmerHale and Lisa Wood at Foley Hoag.

  • Adapting To Calif.'s Enhanced Regulation Of PE In Healthcare

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    New California legislation enhances oversight on the role of private equity groups and hedge funds in healthcare transactions, featuring both a highly targeted nature and vague language that will require organizations to carefully evaluate existing practices, says Andrew Demetriou at Husch Blackwell.

  • Viral 'Brewers Karen' Incident Teaches Employers To Act Fast

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    An attorney who was terminated after a viral video showed her threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on an opposing team's fan at a Milwaukee Brewers game underscores why employers must take prompt action when learning of viral incidents involving employees, says Joseph Myers at Mesidor.

  • State Child Privacy Laws May Put More Cos. In FTC's Reach

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    Starting with Texas in January, several new state laws requiring app stores to share user age-related information with developers will likely subject significantly more companies to the Federal Trade Commission’s child privacy rules, altering their compliance obligations, say attorneys at Womble Bond.

  • Why Appellees Should Write Their Answering Brief First

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    Though counterintuitive, appellees should consider writing their answering briefs before they’ve ever seen their opponent’s opening brief, as this practice confers numerous benefits related to argument structure, time pressures and workflow, says Joshua Sohn at the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • Notable Q3 Updates In Insurance Class Actions

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    The third quarter of 2025 was another eventful quarter for total loss valuation class actions, with a new circuit split developing courtesy of the Sixth Circuit, while insurers continued to see negative results in cost-of-insurance class actions, says Kevin Zimmerman at BakerHostetler.

  • What's At Stake In High Court Compassionate Release Case

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    The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Fernandez v. U.S. next week about the overlap between motions to vacate and compassionate release, and its ultimate decision could ultimately limit or expand judicial discretion in sentencing, says Zachary Newland at Evergreen Attorneys.

  • Series

    Mindfulness Meditation Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Mindful meditation enables me to drop the ego, and in helping me to keep sight of what’s important, permits me to learn from the other side and become a reliable counselor, says Roy Wyman at Bass Berry.

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