Calif. AG Says Amazon Pressured Major Brands To Fix Prices

By Lauren Berg

Amazon bullied major brands like Levi Strauss & Co. and Hanesbrands Inc. to pressure Walmart, Target Corp. and other competing retailers to increase their prices on certain products to match Amazon's prices and ensure it can maintain its profit margins, according to new details unsealed Monday in California's price-fixing suit against the e-commerce giant.

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NFL, Teams Try To Ditch Flores' Latest Discrimination Claims

By David Steele

The National Football League and three teams that appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to have a proposed racial discrimination class action sent to arbitration have asked a New York federal court to throw out the suit's civil rights claims.

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Live Nation Wants Expert, Damages Cut After Antitrust Verdict

By Matthew Perlman

Live Nation is asking a New York federal court to strike the testimony of a key expert witness for the states and to wipe the damages awarded by the jury based on her work, in the antitrust case accusing the company of monopolizing the live entertainment industry.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court this past week delivered another mix of procedural rulings, fiduciary duty disputes and deal litigation, highlighting both the court's gatekeeping role and its continued focus on stockholder rights and transactional fairness.

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Credit Agricole's Hedging Strategy Cost Investors, Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

Credit Agricole Group has been hit with a suit in New York federal court alleging that the French bank engaged in a yearslong scheme to fraudulently induce two clients into a trading strategy it deemed the "perfect hedge" against certain market risks, when in reality, the strategy created hidden liabilities, forced liquidations and tens of millions of dollars in damages. 

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Conn. Regulator Hit With Suit Over Pole Attachment Rate Hike

By Nadia Dreid

Connecticut's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has "significantly altered years of precedent" to approve a rate change that would allow Avangrid Networks Inc.'s United Illuminating Co. to charge significantly more for pole attachment rates, a trade group says in a new lawsuit.

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Wash. Justices Won't Be Asked About Reed Hein Insurer Fight

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge on Monday denied two consumers' bid to certify insurance coverage questions to the Evergreen State's highest court in a lawsuit accusing insurers of failing to defend a now-defunct timeshare exit company from an unfair business practices class action that resulted in a $630 million deal. 

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Insurer Intentionally Avoiding $200M Loan Claim, Court Told

By Hope Patti

A litigation funding firm has accused its insurer of wrongfully refusing to pay out its policy's guaranteed $200 million in coverage for an unpaid loan, saying the insurer buried it in duplicative and burdensome information requests to avoid paying a valid claim.

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School Shooting Claims Belong In Arbitration, Lloyd's Says

By Joyce Hanson

Lloyd's of London underwriters have asked a federal judge to order the School Board of Broward County, Florida, to arbitrate its claims for coverage of settlements due to a high school shooting that resulted in the murders of 17 people in 2018 on Valentine's Day.

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Home Insurer Says Rival Used Failed Deal To Steal Business

By Hope Patti

A home insurer has told a Texas Business Court that a rival company used its confidential and trade secret information obtained during failed acquisition talks to undercut its prices and solicit top agents to move books of policies to the competitor.

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Mich. AG Fights Approval Of DTE-Oracle Data Center Plan

By Melanie Dorsey

The Michigan attorney general has filed two claims of appeal challenging orders from the Michigan Public Service Commission approving energy supply contracts between DTE Energy and a subsidiary of cloud-computing platform Oracle Corp. tied to a massive 1.4 gigawatt AI data center project, alleging regulators unlawfully bypassed a contested case process.

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Justices Won't Review Doctor's Captive Insurance Tax Fight

By Asha Glover

The U.S. Supreme Court won't review the Internal Revenue Service's rejection of a Texas doctor's claim to $1 million in tax deductions linked to his urgent care network's captive insurance company, the court said Monday.

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Del. Ruling Shows Power Of Postclose Governance Provisions

After the Delaware Court of Chancery reinstated a target company's CEO as part of the equitable remedy in Fortis Advisors v. Krafton, deal parties should emphasize the importance of postclosing governance provisions to earnout economics, knowing that they will have to live with these provisions for the duration of the earnout period, say attorneys at Sidley.

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Calif. Truck Regs Now Require Multiple Compliance Strategies

California's various vehicle and truck emissions programs now move on different legal tracks, impose different obligations and create different business risks on different timelines — so companies that treat them as one package subject to a federal Clean Air Act waiver risk missing deadlines and mispricing contracts, says Thierry Montoya at FBT Gibbons.

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Black McDermott Atty Says White Men Favored For Partner

By Lauren Berg

A Black female McDermott Will & Schulte attorney accused the firm of gender, race and pregnancy discrimination in a lawsuit lodged in California state court, saying she has been consistently bypassed for promotion by less-experienced white attorneys and was yanked off casework after taking medical leave following a life-threatening illness during pregnancy.

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'Kind Of Lawyering We Don't Like': Judge Rips Quinn Emanuel

By Bonnie Eslinger

Guardant Health Inc. urged a California federal judge on Monday to make Quinn Emanuel pay nearly $1.3 million on top of $3 million in sanctions already imposed over misrepresentations lawyers made representing its rival Natera Inc., prompting the judge to criticize Quinn Emanuel lawyers for making distinctions so fine they veer into misrepresentation.

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Q&A

She Has A Point: Fish & Richardson's Nitika Gupta Fiorella

By Dani Kass

Fish & Richardson PC principal Nitika Gupta Fiorella is "a no-stone-unturned, always super prepared" lawyer who "epitomizes professionalism and respect," according to Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP partner Cora Holt.

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Fox Lawyer In Dominion Case Confirmed To Texas Bench

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 47-46 Monday evening to confirm Andrew Davis, a partner at Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP who defended Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, to serve on the bench in the Western District of Texas.

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Justices Won't Consider IP Theft Allegations Against Akin

By Dani Kass

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a former Cornell University graduate student's petition trying to revive his malpractice suit against Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP stemming from patent litigation against Illumina Inc. over DNA sequencing intellectual property.

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DC Ethics Office Says Ex-Interim US Atty Can't Remove Case

By Emily Sawicki

Washington, D.C., ethics officials have asked a federal court to send U.S. Department of Justice official Ed Martin's ethics case back to the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, arguing the D.C. federal court lacks jurisdiction over a disciplinary matter, which is neither a civil action nor a criminal prosecution.

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Ex-Newman Clerks, Judges Back High Court Suspension Fight

By Adam Lidgett

A group of former clerks for Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, as well as former federal judges, have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the challenge to her suspension imposed by her colleagues.

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Judge Says Ill. Justices Can't Fire Him Over MAGA Op-Ed

By Jack Karp

Illinois Supreme Court justices have no authority to remove a state judge from the bench for alleged misconduct, so their effort to dismiss a retired state trial judge's claims that his removal for penning a political opinion column violated his constitutional rights should be rejected, the retired jurist has said.

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