Vanguard Will Pay $29.5M To Settle Red States' ESG Suit

By Spencer Brewer

The Vanguard Group Inc. will pay $29.5 million to settle claims brought by several conservative states accusing it and other large asset managers of driving up coal prices by pressuring publicly traded energy companies to lower their output to meet carbon emission reduction goals.

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DOL Unveils Independent Contractor Rule Replacement

By Max Kutner

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the details Thursday of a long-awaited proposed rule to rescind and replace a previous administration's regulation that outlined how to decide if a worker is an employee or independent contractor.

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Starbucks, Army Veteran Resolve Paternity Leave Firing Suit

By Patrick Hoff

An Army veteran and former Starbucks employee has agreed to end his lawsuit accusing the coffee giant of failing to address his supervisor's insulting comments about veterans and firing him for taking parental leave, according to a Thursday filing in Washington federal court.

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9th Circ. Backs L3Harris In Fired Worker's PTSD Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

The Ninth Circuit backed defense contractor L3Harris' win in a suit claiming it unlawfully fired a painter because of his post-traumatic stress disorder, finding he admitted in an application for disability benefits that he wasn't able to work by the time he was terminated.

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VA Rescinds Veteran Disability Rating Rule After Pushback

By Madeline Lyskawa

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday moved to rescind a controversial rule that would have required evaluators to account for the effects of medication in assigning veterans' disability ratings, after facing strong opposition from veterans and lawmakers.

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Atty Owns 'Sloppy' Incorrect Citations Before Texas Justices

By José Luis Martínez

A Houston attorney told a Texas appellate panel Thursday that incorrect case citations in his brief were "sloppy" and "embarrassing," taking responsibility for errors that included nonexistent cases and inaccurate quotations.

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Ex-Exec. In $2B Denmark Tax Scheme Hid Assets, Court Told

By Kat Lucero

A Florida man involved in a $2 billion Danish tax refund scheme fraudulently transferred millions of dollars to a U.S. company to prevent the Danish government from seizing those assets, Denmark's tax agency told a New Jersey federal court.

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NLRB Orders Region To Recalculate Union Payouts

By Katherine Smith

A National Labor Relations Board official must recalculate payments owed to employees who were excluded from a concrete company's profit-sharing plan and to a pension fund on behalf of the workers, the board has ruled, finding that the calculations must account for the payments the workers received in the past.

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Rehab Participants Not Employees, Court Told In Wage Suit

By Benjamin Morse

Participants in several Texas-based recovery programs for addiction cannot plausibly allege they were employees entitled to compensation, the faith-based nonprofit that operates the programs told a federal court, seeking to dismiss a proposed class and collective wage action.

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Brief

Hegseth Appeals Block On Sen. Kelly's Rank Reduction

By Madeline Lyskawa

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appealed a district court order blocking him from reducing the U.S. Navy rank of Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., after the lawmaker told members of the military they don't have to follow unlawful orders. 

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IRhythm Investors Say 2021 Goldman Ruling Doesn't Bar Cert.

By Bonnie Eslinger

IRhythm Technologies investors urged a California federal judge Thursday to certify a class that bought 30 million shares while the digital healthcare company allegedly jacked its stock price with false and misleading statements about a heart-event monitoring device, saying the U.S. Supreme Court's 2021 Goldman price impact ruling doesn't apply.

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How Del. High Court's Moelis Reversal Fits Into DExit Debate

By declining to decide the facial validity of the provisions at issue in Moelis & Co. v. West Palm Beach Firefighters Pension Fund, the Delaware Supreme Court's recent reversal of the Court of Chancery's 2024 ruling highlights broader implications for the ongoing debate over whether companies should incorporate elsewhere, say attorneys at Akin.

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Series

Playing Piano Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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.

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How Epstein Referred Clients To BigLaw Partners In His Orbit

By Aebra Coe

Billionaire and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein always had top lawyers in his orbit. He also had extensive and lasting relationships with several partners at BigLaw firms, files newly released by the Department of Justice show.

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Goldstein Placed Under Home Confinement Until Sentencing

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein was placed under home confinement by a Maryland federal judge until his sentencing, but will likely be able to keep his $3 million D.C. home after the jury that convicted him separately found there wasn't a clear nexus between the property and his mortgage fraud conviction.

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'One Way Or Another, ICE Will Comply,' Minn. Judge Vows

By Lauren Berg

The Minnesota federal court's chief judge who admonished U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for violating nearly 100 court orders concerning the Trump administration's immigration operations in the state vowed Thursday "to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law," including holding government officials in criminal contempt.

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IRS Broke Law 42K Times By Giving Info To ICE, Judge Says

By Anna Scott Farrell

The federal judge who stopped the Internal Revenue Service from sharing taxpayer addresses with immigration authorities said Thursday that a recent admission by the agency showed that it broke the law more than 42,000 times last summer when it disclosed addresses by relying on a computerized matching system.

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Calif. Atty Agrees To Discipline From State Bar Over AI Errors

By Hailey Konnath

A Los Angeles attorney has agreed to be disciplined for filing appellate briefs rife with artificial intelligence-hallucinated case law quotations, according to a stipulation approved Wednesday by the California State Bar Court, which found that he "recklessly and with gross negligence failed to perform legal services with competence."

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Reed Smith Says Atty Can't Expand Pay Bias Damages Period

By Grace Elletson

Reed Smith LLP is urging a New Jersey state court to rule that an attorney who claimed the firm unlawfully underpaid her cannot expand the time window for which she's seeking damages, arguing a legal doctrine used to revive continuing claims can't be used to collect back pay.

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Feds Seek To Toss DOJ Official's Suit Over Epstein-Talk Firing

By Lynn LaRowe

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a D.C. federal court to ax a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former DOJ official who was fired after he was surreptitiously filmed talking about Jeffrey Epstein on what he thought was a date, saying district courts don't have jurisdiction and the matter belongs in front of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

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Brief

Senate Judiciary Advances Illinois US Atty

By Nadia Dreid

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nomination of Gregory Gilmore to be U.S. attorney for the Central District of Illinois in a quick vote that passed without comment.

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