California

  • April 15, 2026

    Judge Ices Calif. Climate Suit As Justices Mull Boulder Case

    A California state court judge has put on hold coordinated climate litigation that state and local governments have filed against oil and gas companies while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a similar case brought by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado.

  • April 15, 2026

    Cinemoi Trustee Moves To Seize $43M Film Library In Ch. 7

    The Chapter 7 trustee for bankrupt television network Cinemoi North America on Wednesday asked a California bankruptcy judge to hold the company in contempt for allegedly refusing to turn over a hard drive containing a film library valued at about $43.4 million. 

  • April 15, 2026

    9th Circ. Skeptical About Erasing Rail Workers' $7.8M Vax Win

    The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday appeared likely to uphold a $7.8 million verdict for former San Francisco public rail employees who were ousted after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine on faith-based grounds, with one judge saying the transit system's argument would mean public health guidance effectively cancels out religious rights.  

  • April 15, 2026

    Chamber Backs 9th Circ. Rehearing Of Funko Investor Suit

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is backing Funko Inc.'s call for Ninth Circuit to rehear an investor dispute over the toy-maker's write-down of excessive inventory, arguing that the court's decision to revive the lawsuit "degrades a critical firewall against abusive litigation."

  • April 15, 2026

    Palisades Fire Suspect Can't Toss Warrants, ChatGPT Images

    A California federal judge Wednesday held that the Palisades Fire arson suspect cannot suppress all evidence discovered via search warrants — including ChatGPT images on his phone depicting a city on fire — finding the government didn't rely only on his mere presence near the crime scene to obtain the warrants.

  • April 15, 2026

    US Says It Will Stay Out Of Calif. Monument Venue Dispute

    The U.S. Department of the Interior won't weigh in on whether a dispute between a miner, tribal nations and conservation groups over the Chuckwalla National Monument's establishment in California should stay in a Michigan district court.

  • April 15, 2026

    DOJ Atty Slapped With $250 Sanction For Missed Deadlines

    A California federal judge hit a U.S. Department of Justice attorney with a $250 sanction for repeatedly missing deadlines in a noncitizen's habeas corpus case, rejecting his assertions that his need to juggle tasks under a 300-plus caseload should excuse him.

  • April 15, 2026

    Jury Finds Live Nation Monopolized Concert Ticketing

    Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary harmed competition in the live entertainment sector by willfully monopolizing ticketing services to major concert venues and unlawfully tying artists' use of large amphitheaters to Live Nation's promotional services, a Manhattan federal jury found on Wednesday.

  • April 15, 2026

    Willkie Adds O'Melveny Litigator To Los Angeles Office

    Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP expanded its Los Angeles office with the recent addition of a litigator who moved her practice after nearly 15 years with O'Melveny & Myers LLP.

  • April 15, 2026

    Pot Co. CFO Says Attys Must Be DQ'd In Embezzling Suit

    The former CFO of four related cannabis companies, who is accused of embezzling from those companies, is urging a California state court to disqualify the plaintiffs' attorneys, saying there is a conflict of interest between the company plaintiffs and the individual plaintiffs.

  • April 15, 2026

    Biopharma Co. Says Ex-Worker Used Files To Build AI Rival

    A biopharmaceutical consulting firm's ex-contractor illegally downloaded thousands of proprietary internal files and emails that he then used to launch a rival company powered by artificial intelligence, the firm claimed in a lawsuit, alleging that the former contractor violated federal trade secrets law.

  • April 15, 2026

    MoFo Brings On Former Federal Prosecutor In San Francisco

    Morrison Foerster LLP announced Wednesday that it has expanded its investigations and white collar defense group with a partner in San Francisco who has served as an assistant U.S. attorney and as a deputy attorney general with the California Attorney General's Office.

  • April 15, 2026

    Solar Co. Freedom Forever Hits Ch. 11 With Over $500M Debt

    California-based home solar panel installer Freedom Forever filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware bankruptcy court Wednesday with more than $500 million in debt, including $114 million owed to residential solar panel financing firm Mosaic.

  • April 14, 2026

    Google Sued By Rival Over 'Interrelated Web' Of Monopolies

    Google's "anticompetitive chokehold" over Android app distribution and in-app billing markets has kept Portugal-based Android app store alternative Aptoide from being able to compete with the tech giant, Aptoide alleged in a complaint filed Tuesday in California federal court challenging Google's "interrelated web" of monopolies.

  • April 14, 2026

    Armistice Capital Used COVID To Juice Vaxart Stock, Jury Told

    Hedge fund Armistice Capital and two of its executives exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to issue press releases that falsely inflated their controlling share in pharmaceutical company Vaxart, then dumped the shares for $250 million before the bottom fell out, investors told a California federal jury at the start of trial Tuesday.

  • April 14, 2026

    9th Circ. Orders ICE Agent Resentenced For Child Enticement

    A former U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement supervisor sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for trying to entice a 13-year-old girl cannot challenge the evidence against him or argue he was conducting a human trafficking investigation, but he should be resentenced, the Ninth Circuit said Monday.

  • April 14, 2026

    Alphabet Investors Near Class Cert. In Google Probe Case

    A California federal judge on Tuesday indicated she was leaning toward granting class certification for Alphabet Inc. investors in a suit against the Google parent company over an allegedly false statement CEO Sundar Pichai made to Congress in 2020 about the fairness of ad auctions.

  • April 14, 2026

    Westlake Inks $67M Antitrust Deal With PVC Pipe Buyers

    Purchasers of polyvinyl chloride pipe urged an Illinois federal judge Tuesday to sign off on a proposed $67 million deal with Westlake Corp. that would put to rest allegations it and other PVC pipe producers conspired to fix prices, according to a motion filed in Illinois federal court.

  • April 14, 2026

    Ex-UCLA Gynecologist Pleads Guilty Before Sex Abuse Retrial

    A former University of California, Los Angeles, gynecologist on Tuesday pled guilty to sexually assaulting five patients and was once again sentenced to 11 years in prison, entering the plea at a pretrial hearing two months after a California appellate court tossed his initial convictions and ordered a new trial.

  • April 14, 2026

    26 State AGs Urge FTC To Ban Deceptive Rental Fee Tactics

    A bipartisan coalition of 26 state attorneys general led by New Jersey and Colorado are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to adopt a requirement that residential landlords clearly disclose all costs to tenants up front, responding to the agency's notice last month of potential rulemaking to combat hidden rental fees.

  • April 14, 2026

    States Denied Time For Talks To Settle Drug Price-Fixing Suit

    A Connecticut federal judge Tuesday denied a request by dozens of U.S. states to freeze their antitrust case against generic-drug manufacturers, a pause the states argued would allow the parties to focus on settlement talks rather than pending discovery and motion deadlines.

  • April 14, 2026

    Ye Accused Of 'Cowardly' Attack At Chateau Marmont

    A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday alleges the rapper Ye attacked a man at the Chateau Marmont for no reason, with the "cowardly" assault leaving him unconscious and injured.

  • April 14, 2026

    Judge Keeps Avène 'Preservative-Free' Labeling Lawsuit Alive

    The makers of the Avène skin care brand can't end a proposed class action accusing them of adding citric acid to products advertised as being free of preservatives, a California federal judge has ruled, saying whether the acid is considered a preservative is a question to be addressed later in the litigation.

  • April 14, 2026

    Calif. Federal Judges Weigh Audio Access For Civil Jury Trials

    California Northern District federal judges are seeking public comment on modifying local court rules to allow jurists to audio stream civil jury trials in the district, which regularly presides over high-stakes courtroom fights involving tech giants such as Google, Meta, OpenAI and Apple.

  • April 14, 2026

    Evidence Cut In Weinstein's 3rd NY Rape Trial As Jury Picked

    Six years after the first #MeToo verdict against Harvey Weinstein, a New York state judge on Tuesday began picking a jury for the disgraced producer's third rape trial in Manhattan and ruling on what evidence would come in.

Expert Analysis

  • What Recent Dataset Suits Signal For AI Training Litigation

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    Plaintiffs are moving away from abstract debates about artificial intelligence at large and toward dataset provenance, and three filings illustrate how provenance is pled using public dataset documentation, archives and discovery‑ready allegations about copying, retention and downstream handling, says Yulia Leshchenko at Name & Fame.

  • Planning For M&A Complexity After New State 'Mini-HSR' Laws

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    After the recent enactment of California's mini-HSR law, and with Indiana poised to pass its own, requiring the submission of Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notifications to state attorneys general, practitioners should expand their deal planning to include state-by-state reportability as more states adopt similar mandatory merger-notification requirements, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • What New Packaging Waste Laws Mean For Franchisors

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    With states ramping up laws establishing extended producer responsibility programs for packaging materials, paper products and single-use food service ware, restaurant and hospitality franchisors face special compliance challenges as they navigate a delicate balance between conflicting priorities, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.

  • What's Next After NLRB Dismissal Of SpaceX Suit

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    Though the National Labor Relations Board’s recent decision to dismiss its long-running unfair labor practice complaint against SpaceX on jurisdictional grounds temporarily resolves a circuit split over injunctions, constitutional and employee-classification questions remain, say attorneys at Proskauer.

  • Series

    Playing Piano Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing piano and practicing law share many parallels relating to managing complexity: Just as hearing an entire musical passage in my head allows me to reliably deliver the message, thinking about the audience's impression helps me create a legal narrative that keeps the reader engaged, says Michael Shepherd at Fish & Richardson.

  • AI Trade Secret Conviction Highlights Espionage Risks

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    A California federal court's conviction last month of an ex-Google engineer who stole artificial intelligence trade secrets for the benefit of China is the latest in a series of foreign economic espionage cases and illustrates the urgent need for U.S. companies to implement robust security measures, says attorney Peter Toren.

  • Rebuttal

    Substantial Legal Grounds Supported HPE-Juniper Challenge

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    A recent Law360 guest article argued that the Hewlett Packard-Juniper Networks settlement was part of a trend of antitrust agencies reanchoring themselves in evidence by resisting ill-founded merger challenges, but the complaint against HPE-Juniper actually relied on substantial legal grounds and modern analytical frameworks, says attorney Richard Wolfram.

  • NY RAISE Act Raises The Bar For Frontier AI Developers

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    For organizations developing or substantially modifying highly capable artificial intelligence models, the New York Responsible AI Safety and Education Act represents a meaningful escalation beyond California's S.B. 53, even though it applies to a narrower group of developers, so companies should expect additional obligations, particularly around accelerated incident reporting, say attorneys at Kilpatrick.

  • Opinion

    A TVPRA Safe Harbor Would Boost Antitrafficking Efforts

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    Adding a well-thought-out safe harbor measure to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which is currently up for amendment and reauthorization, would motivate proactive cooperation from hotels and other businesses to combat sex trafficking, say attorneys at Snell & Wilmer.

  • AI-Generated Doc Ruling Guides Attys On Privilege Risks

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    A New York federal court's ruling, in U.S. v. Heppner, that documents created by a defendant using an artificial intelligence tool were not privileged, can serve as a guide to attorneys for retaining attorney-client or work-product privilege over client documents created with AI, say attorneys at Sher Tremonte.

  • The Law Firm Merger Diaries: Leadership Strategy After Day 1

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    For law firm leaders, ensuring a newly combined law firm lives up to its promise, both in its first days of operation and well after, includes tough decisions, clear and specific communication, and cheerleading, says Peter Michaud at Ballard Spahr.

  • Monetizing EV Charging Stations For Long-Term Success

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    An electric vehicle charging station's longevity hinges on monetizing operations through diverse revenue streams, contractual documentation of charge point operators' and site hosts' rights and responsibilities, and ensuring reliability and security of facilities, says Levi McAllister at Morgan Lewis.

  • Calif.'s Civility Push Shows Why Professionalism Is Vital

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    The California Bar’s campaign against discourteous behavior by attorneys, including a newly required annual civility oath, reflects a growing concern among states that professionalism in law needs shoring up — and recognizes that maintaining composure even when stressed is key to both succeeding professionally and maintaining faith in the legal system, says Lucy Wang at Hinshaw.

  • Locations, Permits And Power Are Key In EV Charger Projects

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    To ensure the success of public electric vehicle charging infrastructure projects, developers, funders, site hosts and charge point operators must consider a range of factors, including location selection, distribution grid requirements and costs, and permitting and timeline impacts, says Levi McAllister at Morgan Lewis.

  • Series

    Trivia Competition Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing trivia taught me to quickly absorb information and recognize when I've learned what I'm expected to know, training me in the crucial skills needed to be a good attorney, and reminding me to be gracious in defeat, says Jonah Knobler at Patterson Belknap.

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