A Pennsylvania federal judge has adopted a special master's recommendation that a lawyer who lost her malicious prosecution case against several Blank Rome LLP attorneys and an aviation parts company should pay fees covering the defendants' bid to sanction her over alleged deposition conduct.
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2026 Law360 iOS App Law360 Android App Follow Law360 on Facebook Follow Law360 on LinkedIn Follow Law360 on Twitter

TOP NEWS

Atty Who Sued Blank Rome Lawyers Ordered To Pay Fees

By P.J. D'Annunzio

A Pennsylvania federal judge has adopted a special master's recommendation that a lawyer who lost her malicious prosecution case against several Blank Rome LLP attorneys and an aviation parts company should pay fees covering the defendants' bid to sanction her over alleged deposition conduct.

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GAO Says State Is Taking Steps To Boost Ukraine Aid Oversight

By Tom Lotshaw

A contract to help the U.S. Department of State manage more than $4 billion of nonmilitary, nonhumanitarian assistance to Ukraine has helped inform some decisions, but not as many as expected, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

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Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2026 Editorial Boards

Law360 is looking for avid readers of our publications to serve as members of our 2026 editorial advisory boards.

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POLICY & REGULATION

Rubio Says There's No Plan For Military Action In Venezuela

By Madeline Lyskawa

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Wednesday that future military action is not off the table in Venezuela but that the Trump administration has no intention to take such action at this time, while laying out plans to "normalize" the country's oil industry.

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Missile Detection System Readiness Miscalculated, GAO Says

By Elaine Briseño

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday said the Space Development Agency overestimated the readiness of technology it plans to use to detect and track potential missile threats in outer space, which could lead to delays for unplanned modifications.

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ENFORCEMENT

Ex-Google Engineer's Trade Secret Theft Case Goes To Jury

By Bonnie Eslinger

Software engineer Linwei Ding "stole, cheated and lied" when he worked at Google LLC, taking its artificial intelligence trade secrets to help himself and China, a California federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, urging them to convict him of economic espionage and trade secret theft.

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LITIGATION

Unions Say FEMA Staff Cuts Threaten Disaster Readiness

By Lauren Berg

A coalition of unions, nonprofit organizations and local governments that are challenging the Trump administration's federal worker layoffs and agency reorganizations asked a California federal judge Tuesday for permission to add the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a defendant, saying ongoing staff cuts threaten its legally mandated responsibility to respond to disasters.

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GAO

GAO Dismisses Ohio Co.'s Challenge To VA Bid Rejection

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said an Ohio company's disagreement with a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs decision to reject its bid for a medical center renovation over performance concerns belonged with the Small Business Administration.

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EXPERT ANALYSIS

FTO Designations: Containing Foreign Firms' Legal Risks

Non-U.S. companies can contain legal risks related to foreign terrorist organizations by deliberately structuring operations to demonstrate that any interactions with cartel-affected environments are incidental, constrained and unrelated to advancing harm on the U.S., says David Raskin at Nardello & Co.

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Bid Protest Spotlight: Evaluations, Redactions, Remands

Victoria Angle at MoFo examines three December bid protest decisions highlighting the scope of agency discretion when evaluating contractor proposals, the extent to which an agency may redact documents that comprise the record of its evaluation decisions, and the breadth of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' discretion to grant government requests for remand.

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Series

Judges On AI: How Judicial Use Informs Guardrails

U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado discusses why having a sense of how generative AI tools behave, where they add value, where they introduce risk and how they are reshaping the practice of law is key for today's judges.

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LEGAL INDUSTRY

ICE Violated Nearly 100 Court Orders, Minn. Judge Says

By Rae Ann Varona

The Minnesota federal court's chief judge admonished U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday for violating nearly 100 court orders concerning the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota while another judge, on the same day, temporarily blocked ICE from unlawfully arresting and detaining refugees in the North Star State.

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Tobey Maguire Says He Rerouted Fee To Goldstein

By Jared Foretek

"Spider-Man" star Tobey Maguire told the jury Wednesday in Thomas Goldstein's tax fraud trial that he paid $500,000 for his legal services to another poker player the former SCOTUSblog founder owed money to, rather than Goldstein's law firm.

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Tom Goldstein Saga Could Go From Courtroom To Big Screen

By Rachel Rippetoe

As federal prosecutors are two weeks into detailing SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein's storied descent into the world of high-stakes poker during his tax fraud trial in Maryland, Hollywood producers are gearing up to tell the same story on-screen.

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Fla. Prosecutors' Detention Defense Met With Sanction Threat

By Adrian Cruz

The U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, Gregory Kehoe, along with an assistant U.S. attorney have been threatened with sanctions by a federal judge for the methods their office used in defending the mandatory detention of noncitizens.

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Brief

Trump Announces Pick For New Assistant AG For Fraud Role

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday evening that he would be nominating Colin McDonald, associate deputy attorney general, for the newly created assistant attorney general for fraud role.

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USPTO Seeks 'Serious Sanctions' For Chinese Co.'s 19K Apps

By Rae Ann Varona

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says the "most serious sanctions" are warranted against a China-based company for filing more than 19,000 trademark submissions using names of U.S.-licensed attorneys who did not review the applications, saying submissions were at times filed in 3-minute intervals "or less."

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Prosecutors Form New Group To Fight Federal Overreach

By Ryan Boysen

Several progressive prosecutors have launched a new group to hold accountable federal officials who "exceed their lawful authority," amid a growing backlash to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and the recent killing of two protesters by immigration agents in Minneapolis.

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Analysis

Trade Secret Filings Hit Record High In 2025, Report Finds

By Ivan Moreno

Trade secret litigation reached an all-time high in 2025, with more than 1,500 federal cases filed for the first time ever, according to a new report by legal analytics firm Lex Machina, which also highlights trends about damages, the busiest courts and the law firms most frequently involved.

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Promo that reads 2025 Practice Groups of the Year

COMPANIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

American Bar Association

American College of Trial Lawyers

American Federation of Government Employees

American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations

Avco Corp.

Berkeley Research Group LLC

Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law

City Attorney of San Francisco

Council on Foreign Relations

Democracy Forward Foundation

FIRST

Google LLC

Grover Gaming

Insulet Corporation

International Refugee Assistance Project

JTH Tax LLC

LafargeHolcim Ltd.

Lex Machina Inc.

LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LinkedIn Corp.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nardello & Co. LLC

Natural Resources Defense Council

New York County Lawyers' Association

Public Rights Project

RELX PLC

Service Employees International Union

Southwest Gas Holdings Inc.

Tetra Tech Inc.

Tiger Natural Gas Inc.

Waymo LLC

LAW FIRMS IN TODAY'S NEWS

Adler Pollock

Altshuler Berzon

Arroyo Law Firm

Ballard Spahr

Berger Montague

Blank Rome

Campbell Conroy

Faegre Drinker

Fisher & Phillips

Goldstein & Russell

Goodwin Procter

Gordon Rees

Greenberg Traurig

Jackson Lewis PC

Jones Day

Littler Mendelson

Morrison & Foerster

Munger Tolles

Napoli Shkolnik

Ogletree Deakins

Ojala-Barbour Law Firm

Taft Stettinius

Weil Gotshal

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

Defense Logistics Agency

European Union

Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Federal Trade Commission

Harris County Attorney's Office

Internal Revenue Service

Minnesota Attorney General's Office

Small Business Administration

U.S. Agency for International Development

U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland

U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota

U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California

U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of State

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas

U.S. Government Accountability Office

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Navy

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Senate

U.S. Supreme Court

US Office of Management and Budget

United Nations

United States District Court for the District of Colorado