Commercial Contracts

  • January 14, 2026

    Sony Suit Over Music In USC Social Media Ads Stays In NY

    Sony Music's lawsuit against the University of Southern California over music used in social media videos promoting the school's athletic teams will remain in New York, after a federal judge found the case had compelling ties to the Empire State.

  • January 14, 2026

    Vizient Beats Spurned Medical Tape Supplier At 5th Circ.

    A Fifth Circuit panel refused to revive an antitrust suit accusing medical supplies group purchasing giant Vizient of locking in hospital customers, agreeing with a district court that a spurned would-be supplier failed at the threshold question of showing a market in which Vizient could be dominant.

  • January 14, 2026

    Nationals' Broadcasts Leave MASN For MLB After Settlement

    Major League Baseball will produce and broadcast Washington Nationals games on the league's cable and streaming services this season, it announced Wednesday, following a deal that resolved a yearslong legal battle over the team's broadcast rights with the regional network operated by the Baltimore Orioles.

  • January 14, 2026

    Poultry Co. Reaches $5M Deal In Okla. Water Pollution Suit

    A poultry producer found to have polluted waters in Oklahoma reached a settlement with the state Wednesday, agreeing to pay $5 million for remediation and conservation projects, according to Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

  • January 14, 2026

    Zillow, Redfin Look To Toss FTC's Antitrust Case

    Zillow Group Inc. and Redfin Corp. have urged a Virginia federal court to toss the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case against them, saying a partnership between the companies is meant to make their rental listing businesses more competitive, not to remove competition.

  • January 14, 2026

    Supreme Court Rejects Cigar Maker's Appeal Over Atty Fees

    The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear cigar maker Swisher International Inc.'s appeal in a long-running contractual and antitrust dispute with Trendsettah USA Inc., leaving intact a Ninth Circuit ruling that revived part of a jury verdict and more than $10 million in related attorney fee awards.

  • January 14, 2026

    Software Co. Loses Trade Secrets Appeal At 7th Circ.

    The Seventh Circuit has refused to revive claims that an energy management services company stole trade secret information from an appointment booking software application and incorporated its features into a new platform.

  • January 14, 2026

    Payscale Presses Del. Justices To Revive Noncompete Claims

    The Delaware Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether the state's Chancery Court went too far in dismissing Payscale's lawsuit seeking to enforce an 18-month noncompete clause against a former sales executive, focusing on when a court may decide, at the outset of a case, that a restrictive covenant is unenforceable as written.

  • January 13, 2026

    CoStar, Quinn Emanuel Spar Over Litigation Representation

    CoStar urged a California federal judge Tuesday to disqualify Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP from helping a rival commercial real estate platform pursue antitrust counterclaims in CoStar's copyright infringement suit, while the law firm moved to drop its representation of CoStar in separate litigation.

  • January 13, 2026

    Insurer, IT Co. Settle Coverage Claims Suit In Colo.

    An insurance company, an IT company and an investment firm have reached a settlement in the insurer's federal lawsuit in Colorado that alleged it owed no coverage to the IT company, which a jury found liable for making misrepresentations and breaching its cybersecurity agreement with the investment company.

  • January 13, 2026

    Judge Dismisses $146M Chilean Award Suit In Connecticut

    A Connecticut federal judge on Monday dismissed a Chilean construction company's petition to enforce a $146.5 million arbitral award against Italian construction giant Webuild, saying the court lacks jurisdiction and the matter belongs before the courts of Italy.

  • January 13, 2026

    PE Firm Says No Deal In $132M Denver Skyscraper Fight

    A private equity firm Tuesday argued in state court that the claims against it from a real estate investment firm should be dismissed because the two parties never had a binding agreement in the $132 million commercial real estate deal of a downtown Denver skyscraper that led to competing lawsuits from both parties.

  • January 13, 2026

    Spencer Fane Atty's Advice Challenged In $5M Poaching Suit

    In a $5 million lawsuit over a Connecticut financial adviser's exit, Wealth Enhancement Group LLC on Tuesday challenged a Spencer Fane LLP partner's belief that regulatory and professional ethics rules require both advisers and their former investment firms to contact clients when advisers switch employers.

  • January 13, 2026

    Texas Appeals Panel Skeptical Pipeline Death Falls Under FAA

    A Texas appeals panel seemed hesitant to buy Energy Transfer's argument that it can compel arbitration in a suit brought by the family of a man killed in a pipeline explosion, asking Tuesday whether the employee's work qualifies as interstate commerce and therefore falls outside the Federal Arbitration Act.

  • January 13, 2026

    USPTO Launches New Pilot For SEP Development

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said Tuesday it has created a new pilot program encouraging the development of standard-essential patents by smaller entities.

  • January 13, 2026

    2nd Circ. Hints Ex-Luxottica Worker Has ERISA Standing

    Second Circuit judges sounded sympathetic Tuesday to the idea that a former Luxottica employee has standing to pursue changes to its defined benefit pension plan, expressing skepticism at the company's notion that her case is barred because she is seeking unavailable remedies.

  • January 13, 2026

    Epic Systems Alleges Data Cos. Stole Records To Sell To Attys

    Epic Systems, the nation's largest electronic health records company, told a California federal court on Tuesday that a health information network and a group of "bad actors" stole over 300,000 confidential patient records from health information exchange frameworks to illegally sell to third parties, including personal injury lawyers.

  • January 13, 2026

    Emails Show Deceit In Medicare Advantage Deal, NC Court Told

    Internal documents from Atrium Health Inc. show the company never intended to follow through on a partnership for a new Medicare Advantage health plan with a plan provider who spent tens of millions of dollars to get it off the ground, the providers' counsel told a North Carolina Business Court judge Tuesday.

  • January 13, 2026

    Finnish Sports Co., NHL Agent Settle Arbitration Dispute

    A Finnish sports management company has settled its suit seeking to collect $1.2 million in arbitration awards from its former American partner in a deal to develop and manage National Hockey League players, the parties told a Massachusetts federal judge Tuesday.

  • January 13, 2026

    5th Circ. Urged To Revive Southwest 737 Max Overcharge Suit

    Consumers have urged the Fifth Circuit to revive their claims alleging Southwest Airlines overcharged them for riskier flights on Boeing 737 Max 8 jets, saying they've asserted a classic benefit-of-the-bargain injury that gives them standing to sue.

  • January 13, 2026

    Beasley Allen Talc Work Sends 'Bad Signal,' J&J Says

    Johnson & Johnson's talc unit told a New Jersey appeals panel on Tuesday that a lower court's ruling permitting Beasley Allen Law Firm attorneys to represent plaintiffs in multicounty litigation over its talc-based baby powder "sends a very bad signal" to the state bar.

  • January 13, 2026

    HVAC Supplier Says Ex-Shareholders Defected To Rivals

    Two former shareholders in a Pittsburgh company supplying pumps, boilers and other commercial heating and cooling equipment violated a noncompetition agreement after selling their stakes and going to work in the same field, the company alleged in a Pennsylvania state court lawsuit.

  • January 12, 2026

    5th Circ. Won't Revive TMX's Texas Challenge To $52M Pa. Fine

    An affiliate of consumer lender TMX Finance can't use Texas federal courts to challenge the enforcement of Pennsylvania's consumer lending interest rate cap by the Keystone State's financial regulator, the Fifth Circuit has determined.

  • January 12, 2026

    Oil Businessmen Look To Arbitrate $650M Ecuador Dispute

    A father and son targeted by Ecuador's state-owned oil shipping company in a $650 million lawsuit over events at the heart of a corruption and impeachment scandal involving former Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso told a Pennsylvania federal court that the dispute belongs in arbitration.

  • January 12, 2026

    8th Circ. Lifts Injunction On Advisory Firm's Rival, Ex-Staff

    Investment advisory firm Choreo LLC improperly got a preliminary injunction after claiming that former employees and a competitor stole trade secrets, the Eighth Circuit found Monday, ruling that the injunction was unwarranted because relevant losses to Choreo are calculable and associated damage has already been done.

Expert Analysis

  • Opinion

    Section 1983 Has Promise After End Of Nationwide Injunctions

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the practice of nationwide injunctions in Trump v. Casa, Section 1983 civil rights suits can provide a better pathway to hold the government accountable — but this will require reforms to qualified immunity, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.

  • Corp. Human Rights Regulatory Landscape Is Fragmented

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    Given the complexity of compliance with nations' overlapping human rights laws, multinational companies need to be cognizant of the evolving approaches to modern slavery transparency, and proposals that could reduce mandatory due diligence and reporting requirements, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • Opinion

    Premerger Settlements Don't Meet Standard For Bribery

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    Claims that Paramount’s decision to settle a lawsuit with President Donald Trump while it was undergoing a premerger regulatory review amounts to a quid pro quo misconstrue bribery law and ignore how modern legal departments operate, says Ediberto Román at the Florida International University College of Law.

  • Series

    Playing Soccer Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Soccer has become a key contributor to how I approach my work, and the lessons I’ve learned on the pitch about leadership, adaptability, resilience and communication make me better at what I do every day in my legal career, says Whitney O’Byrne at MoFo.

  • Forced Labor Bans Hold Steady Amid Shifts In Global Trade

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    As businesses try to navigate shifting regulatory trends affecting human rights and sustainability, forced labor import bans present a zone of relative stability, notwithstanding outstanding questions about the future of enforcement, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Learning From Failure

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    While law school often focuses on the importance of precision, correctness and perfection, mistakes are inevitable in real-world practice — but failure is not the opposite of progress, and real talent comes from the ability to recover, rethink and reshape, says Brooke Pauley at Tucker Ellis.

  • Recent Decisions Caution Against Broad Indemnity Provisions

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    Two recent decisions in disparate jurisdictions are reminders that businesses and practitioners should be mindful of contractual indemnity rights and draft indemnity provisions that enhance the predictability of enforceability without being overly broad, says Gregory Jaske at Olshan Frome.

  • Series

    Adapting To Private Practice: From ATF Director To BigLaw

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    As a two-time boomerang partner, returning to BigLaw after stints as a U.S. attorney and the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, people ask me how I know when to move on, but there’s no single answer — just clearly set your priorities, says Steven Dettelbach at BakerHostetler.

  • Tips For US Investors Eyeing Middle East Data Centers

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    While Middle East data center investment presents a compelling opportunity in light of renewed U.S.-Gulf cooperation on artificial intelligence and critical technologies, these projects require a nuanced understanding of regional legal and regulatory regimes, says Haykel Hajjaji at Covington.

  • 4th Circ. Favors Plain Meaning In Bump-Up D&O Ruling

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    The Fourth Circuit's latest denial of indemnity coverage in Towers Watson v. National Union Fire Insurance and its previous ruling in this case lay out a pragmatic approach to bump-up provisions that avoids hypertechnical constructions to limit the effect of a policy's plain meaning, say attorneys at Kennedys.

  • Series

    Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Skillful Persuasion

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    In many ways, law school teaches us how to argue, but when the ultimate goal is to get your client what they want, being persuasive through preparation and humility is the more likely key to success, says Michael Friedland at Friedland Cianfrani.

  • Litigation Inspiration: How To Respond After A Loss

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    Every litigator loses a case now and then, and the sting of that loss can become a medicine that strengthens or a poison that corrodes, depending on how the attorney responds, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • The Metamorphosis Of The Major Questions Doctrine

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    The so-called major questions doctrine arose as a counterweight to Chevron deference over the past few decades, but invocations of the doctrine have persisted in the year since Chevron was overturned, suggesting it still has a role to play in reining in agency overreach, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Series

    Playing Mah-Jongg Makes Me A Better Mediator

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    Mah-jongg rewards patience, pattern recognition, adaptability and keen observation, all skills that are invaluable to my role as a mediator, and to all mediating parties, says Marina Corodemus.

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