California

  • June 05, 2026

    BREAKING: J&J Cleared Of Talc Liability In LA Bellwether Trial

    A Los Angeles jury cleared Johnson & Johnson of any liability in the deaths of three women from ovarian cancer, finding Friday following a six-week bellwether trial that the company's sales of talcum powder were not negligent. 

  • June 05, 2026

    GOP Lawmakers Target China With 2 Patent Bills

    Republican lawmakers are floating a pair of bills that would block anyone who is considered a national security threat from gaining a U.S. patent and require anyone with connections to "foreign adversaries" to list the association on an application.

  • June 05, 2026

    Wamco Inks $100M SEC Deal Over 'Cherry-Picking' Scheme

    Western Asset Management Co. LLC on Friday agreed to pay $100 million to settle allegations from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the investment management firm "failed to take reasonable steps to detect and prevent" its former executive's purported cherry-picking operation.

  • June 05, 2026

    IRhythm Inks $45M Deal With Investors In Heart Device Suit

    IRhythm Technologies Inc. investors asked a California federal judge to preliminarily green-light a $45 million settlement resolving allegations the digital healthcare company inflated stock prices with misrepresentations about its heart-event monitoring device, noting the deal is a favorable result that warrants approval, given the possibility of no recovery. 

  • June 05, 2026

    Paramount Criticizes Consumers' Antitrust Suit As Unserious

    Paramount Skydance has asked a California federal judge to toss a consumer antitrust challenge to its pending $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the lawsuit lacks essential elements to state a claim and criticizing the opposition for treating the litigation like a "sport" rather than a "serious matter."

  • June 05, 2026

    Judge Rejects Objectors' Bid For More Equity In NIL Proposal

    A California federal magistrate judge has turned down a group of athletes' objection to a proposed addition to the $2.78 billion settlement with the NCAA that the group said would disproportionately benefit men in major revenue college sports.

  • June 05, 2026

    Microchip Co. Can't Dismantle Severance Suit Class Action

    A microchip manufacturer can't decertify a class action alleging it unlawfully revoked its severance program after a merger, with a California federal judge rejecting the company's assertion that a Ninth Circuit decision meant the court had to individually assess workers' decisions.

  • June 05, 2026

    Marilyn Manson Fails To Nix Ex-Assistant's Sex Assault Suit

    Goth rocker Marilyn Manson failed to convince a Los Angeles judge on Friday to permanently toss his former personal assistant's latest amended complaint that accuses him of having sexually assaulted her in 2010, with the judge saying it wouldn't be right to resolve the case at the pleading stage.

  • June 05, 2026

    SoCal Securities Partner Joins Jones Day From Orrick

    Jones Day announced that the former leader of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP's financial and securities litigation practice has joined the firm's Irvine, California, office as a partner.

  • June 05, 2026

    Berkeley Dean Views 1952 Opinion As Executive Power Test

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, has urged the courts to examine a lesser-known concurring opinion in a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court decision on a steel mill case when judging the modern limits of presidential power.

  • June 05, 2026

    MoFo Adds AI-Focused Labor Atty from McDermott In LA

    Morrison Foerster LLP has expanded its employment and labor group in Los Angeles with the addition of a former McDermott Will & Schulte attorney.

  • June 05, 2026

    Polsinelli Hires Career Gunderson Dettmer Lawyer In SF

    Polsinelli PC has hired a career Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP lawyer who focuses on representing technology companies and venture capital investors in a range of corporate matters, the firm announced Thursday.

  • June 05, 2026

    Turo, Insurer Seek $6M For Geico's Denied Renter Claims

    Car-sharing company Turo Inc. alleged in a new California federal complaint that Geico illegally systematically denied coverage to policyholders who were involved in accidents while renting vehicles, forcing Turo and its surplus insurer to unnecessarily shell out more than $6 million in payments.

  • June 05, 2026

    CoStar Gets Antitrust Suit Paused Pending Transfers

    A Virginia federal judge granted commercial real estate information company CoStar's request to pause a brokerage's proposed antitrust class action due to pending transfer motions.

  • June 05, 2026

    Taxation With Representation: Simpson Thacher, Fried Frank

    In this week's Taxation With Representation, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. takes Taylor Morrison Home Corp. private, global real estate investment company Kennedy Wilson forms a residential joint venture with Netherlands pension services provider APG, and Wellington Management acquires Hartford Funds from insurer The Hartford.

  • June 05, 2026

    ITC Opens Patent Probe Of Imported Pickleball Paddles

    The U.S. International Trade Commission announced it is opening an investigation into pickleball paddles made by Adidas AG, Franklin Sports and 18 other companies that a Maryland manufacturer alleges violate two of its patents.

  • June 05, 2026

    Judge Slams Gov't For 'Pretextual' Immigration Filing Pause

    A Rhode Island federal judge ruled on Friday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' indefinite hold on processing immigration applications for individuals from the 39 countries on President Donald Trump's travel ban list is unlawful.

  • June 05, 2026

    4 Argument Sessions For Benefits Attys To Watch In June

    The Ninth Circuit will hear from a benefits administrator that claims federal law preempts state-law data breach claims, and Amazon will defend its win in a military leave bias suit at the Second Circuit. Here, Law360 looks at cases being argued in June that benefits attorneys should have on their radar.

  • June 04, 2026

    Trump Era Worse Than McCarthy For Speech, Law Dean Says

    The dean of UC Berkeley's law school told an audience of lawyers and artists on Thursday that America is experiencing "an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, and on freedom of speech," comparing the country under President Donald Trump unfavorably to the McCarthy era.

  • June 04, 2026

    Draft House Bill Aims To Set Federal AI Regulatory Standard

    A bipartisan pair of House members Thursday released a draft proposal to create a federal framework for AI governance that would require large developers to take steps to address and disclose "catastrophic" risks while prohibiting states from crafting or enforcing laws "targeting the development of AI models" for three years.

  • June 04, 2026

    Meta Says Section 230 Foils Social Media Addiction Verdict

    Meta urged a Los Angeles judge on Thursday to toss a landmark verdict against the social media giant and Google for harming a young woman's mental health, saying it deserves a total victory under Section 230 because the plaintiff was addicted to third-party content, not the platforms themselves.

  • June 04, 2026

    No 'Conspiracy To Hide Asbestos' In Talc, J&J Atty Tells Jury

    An attorney for Johnson & Johnson said Thursday during closing arguments of a six-week bellwether trial that the only way three women's deadly ovarian cancers were caused by the company's talc would be a vast worldwide conspiracy to hide that asbestos is present in the products, but it just "doesn't make sense."

  • June 04, 2026

    Atkore Inks Additional $50M Deal In PVC Pipe Antitrust Row

    Atkore Inc. has reached another settlement in litigation claiming it conspired with other polyvinyl chloride pipe producers to fix prices, this time agreeing to pay $50 million to a class of end-user plaintiffs, according to a motion for preliminary approval of the deal filed Thursday in Illinois federal court.

  • June 04, 2026

    Alibaba's Money-Back Guarantees Are 'Illusory,' Shoppers Say

    Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding makes "illusory" money-back guarantee and refund promises if shipped items are damaged or missing, despite it having "unfettered discretion" to choose whether to provide refunds regardless of the evidence provided by customers, according to a proposed class action in California federal court. 

  • June 04, 2026

    Ex-Football Stars Sue NCAA, Conferences For Lost NIL Pay

    Two college football stars, who went on to play in the NFL, have filed antitrust suits claiming the NCAA, Big Ten and Southeastern conferences exploited them for their abilities while denying them compensation for their names, images and likenesses.

Expert Analysis

  • Series

    The Biz Court Digest: Shoring Up Corporate Law In Maryland

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    Launched more than 20 years ago to improve complex corporate adjudication, Maryland's Business and Technology Case Management Program has been a solid success in some areas, but there always is room for improvement, says Bill Krulak at Miles & Stockbridge.

  • State Enviro Agencies Give Cosmetics Regulation A Makeover

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    As state oversight of cosmetics rapidly expands, the new statutes and regulations governing these products are being implemented by environmental agencies rather than consumer product regulators, requiring manufacturers, distributors and retailers to reevaluate their supply chains and procedures, say attorneys at Baker Botts.

  • How End Of SEC 'Gag Rule' Affects Free Speech Certiorari Bid

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    The Securities and Exchange Commission's recent rescission of the so-called gag rule, which forbade defendants in settlements from denying the SEC’s allegations, may sway the outcome of a petition to the Supreme Court in a case challenging the rule on First Amendment grounds, say attorneys at Troutman.

  • Perfectus Settlement Illuminates DOJ's Tariff Fraud Strategy

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    The Department of Justice's recent False Claims Act settlement with Perfectus Aluminum illustrates the government's continuing interagency focus on customs and tariff enforcement, and the related criminal indictment provides insight into conduct enforcers may associate with tariff evasion schemes, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Product-Or-Content Question Is Pivotal In AI Litigation

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    A growing range of civil cases against OpenAI address the question of whether the output of a generative artificial intelligence system is a product, subject to traditional tort doctrine, or third-party content — and the framing courts adopt will shape software liability well beyond AI, says David Meldofsky at Lawsuit Informer.

  • Citron Founder Verdict Tests Reach Of 'Half-Truth' Fraud

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    A California federal jury's conviction this week of Citron founder Andrew Left may be remembered less as a conventional manipulation prosecution than as a case about how far the "half-truth" doctrine can reach when applied to modern market speech, says Elisha Kobre at Sheppard.

  • Series

    Competing At Poker Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing poker in male-dominated rooms taught me to treat skepticism as background noise when my opponents seem to underestimate me, to apply pressure when it matters and to adapt without losing strategic discipline — skills that are all indispensable in restructuring and insolvency matters, says Alexis Gambale at Pashman Stein.

  • Why IPR Slowdown Has Not Led To More Patent Litigation

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    Despite sustained strength in patent application filings and a decline in inter partes review and post-grant review, 2026 has not seen the anticipated surge in patent litigation in district courts and at the U.S. International Trade Commission, potentially due to four reasons, say attorneys at Sterne Kessler.

  • Revisiting TransUnion's Underused Standing Rule, 5 Years On

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    The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' recent use of the U.S. Supreme Court’s now five-year-old TransUnion v. Ramirez rule specifying that the "mere risk of future harm" isn't concrete enough to support a damages claim presents an opportunity to revisit this underutilized standing rule, say attorneys at Horvitz & Levy.

  • 5 Things Associates Must Ask About Their Firm's Merger Plan

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    The associates who navigate law firm mergers best ask the right questions early, such as inquiring about partners' plans, to assess how the merger could affect their workflow and career path, says Jackie Bokser-LeFebvre at Major Lindsey.

  • Turning To The Courts When PBM Reform Falls Short

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    The effectiveness of state laws intended to regulate pharmacy benefit managers remains uncertain, but litigation — utilizing tried-and-true theories like breach of contract and fair dealing — offers another mechanism through which stakeholders may seek relief from PBMs, say attorneys at Reed Smith.

  • 2 'Rocket Dockets' And The Rules That Propel Them

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    The fastest civil trial courts in the country are currently in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Florida, and their chief judges provide insights into the court rules that keep them ahead, says Robert Tata at Hunton.

  • Retailer Risk Reduction Tips As Email Marketing Suits Surge

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    Amid a flood of email marketing lawsuits following last year's Washington Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Old Navy, retailers seeking to avoid high litigation costs can take several steps to reduce risks by focusing on their email subject lines advertising sales, says Gonzalo Mon at Kelley Drye.

  • NY's Tax On 2nd Homes Compounds Residency Tax Risks

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    New York’s recently enacted surcharge on high-value second homes reflects a nationwide legislative trend of using the residency tax framework more aggressively, which brings new considerations for business owners who maintain a residence while asserting domicile elsewhere, says Mark Parthemer at Glenmede.

  • Calif. Ruling Lowers Bar For Health Data Breach Claims

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    The California Supreme Court's ruling in J.M. v. Illuminate Education offers protection for non-healthcare companies that maintain health-related data but also adopts a new and more plaintiff-favorable standard for breach of confidentiality that companies maintaining any health-related data should address, say attorneys at Cooley.

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