CEO Of Auto Mat Maker WeatherTech Tapped For FTC Spot

By Craig Clough

The founder and CEO of automobile accessories-maker WeatherTech, David MacNeil, was nominated to a seat on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by President Donald Trump, the White House announced Tuesday. 

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Financial Aid-Fixing Antitrust Claims Heading To Trial

By Matthew Perlman

An Illinois federal judge refused a bid from the remaining elite private universities accused of fixing financial aid offerings to end the case ahead of trial after accepting the students' view of the market, along with evidence suggesting they paid inflated costs.

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Google Gets 6 Ad Tech Rivals' Complaints Consolidated To 2

By Bryan Koenig

The six antitrust lawsuits from Google's advertising placement technology rivals will soon be consolidated into two, under a New York federal judge's ruling Tuesday combining the four suits originally filed in Virginia and pairing up the two filed in New York.

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DOJ Fights For May Trial Against Agri Stats

By Bryan Koenig

Justice Department attorneys pushed a Minnesota federal judge in oral arguments Tuesday to let them go to trial in May on claims that Agri Stats' protein industry reports help major producers hike prices, arguing they're entitled to leapfrog private plaintiffs and the company cannot toss or winnow their allegations.

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Express Scripts Can't Impel FTC Atty Views On Insulin Makers

By Matthew Perlman

A Federal Trade Commission in-house judge has denied a bid from Express Scripts to force a commission attorney to sit for a deposition to discuss an investigation into insulin manufacturers as the pharmacy benefit manager defends against the agency's insulin pricing case.

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9th Circ. Says Loggers' Suit Does Not Show A Monopoly

By Elaine Briseño

The Ninth Circuit declined Tuesday to revive a lawsuit by a coalition of logging groups that accused a U.S. Forest Service contractor of monopolizing the industry in the Pacific Northwest, finding the plaintiffs' antitrust claims lacked adequate details.

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Google Moves To Toss Penske Media's AI Overview Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

Google has urged a D.C. federal court to dismiss Penske Media Corp.'s antitrust lawsuit accusing it of unlawfully coercing publishers into providing content for artificial intelligence-generated answers at the top of Google search result pages, painting its conduct as a lawful "refusal to deal" on PMC's preferred terms.

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Credit-Card Fight Heats Up As Trump Backs Swipe Fee Bill

By Jon Hill

Bankers moved swiftly Tuesday to push back on President Donald Trump's late-night endorsement of legislation that he said will stop "out of control" credit-card swipe fees, his latest broadside against the credit card industry that has lenders on the defensive over costs.

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College Baseball Player Latest To Sue NCAA Over Eligibility

By David Steele

A pitcher attending Pepperdine University has asked a California federal judge to allow him to play for the baseball team despite NCAA rules barring him from doing so after transferring there from a non-NCAA school.

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HVAC Supplier Says Ex-Shareholders Defected To Rivals

By Matthew Santoni

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.

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CoStar, Quinn Emanuel Spar Over Litigation Representation

By Lauren Berg

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.

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The Atlantic Sues Google In Latest Ad Tech Antitrust Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

The Atlantic became the latest publisher Tuesday to launch an ad tech antitrust suit against Google LLC, accusing the search engine giant in New York federal court of cutting the publisher and ad-tech companies out of billions of dollars in revenue by monopolizing the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets.

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Google Engineer Cut-And-Pasted To Evade Security, Jury Told

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Google security manager took the stand Tuesday in the criminal trial of an engineer accused of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets, testifying that his investigation showed that Linwei Ding evaded Google's internal security systems by cutting and pasting the data in a way that stripped information identifying Google's authorship.

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Emails Show Deceit In Medicare Advantage Deal, NC Court Told

By Abigail Harrison

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.

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Brief

USPTO Launches New Pilot For SEP Development

By Dani Kass

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.

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Brief

Vietnamese Steel Pipe Faces 90% Antidumping Duties

By Dylan Moroses

An imported stainless steel pressure pipe from a Vietnamese exporter was sold at less than fair value and faces antidumping duties over 90%, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce determination issued Tuesday.

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2026 State AI Bills That Could Expand Liability, Insurance Risk

State bills legislating artificial intelligence that are expected to pass in 2026 will reshape the liability landscape for all companies incorporating AI solutions into their business operations, as any novel private rights of action authorized under AI-related statutes signal expanding exposures, say attorneys at Wiley.

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5 E-Discovery Predictions For 2026 And Beyond

2026 will likely be shaped by issues ranging from artificial intelligence regulatory turbulence to potential evidence rule changes, and e-discovery professionals will need to understand how to effectively guide the responsible and defensible adoption of emerging tools, while also ensuring effective safeguards, say attorneys at Littler.

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No Jury Yet In Goldstein Trial, But Celeb Witnesses Possible

By Jared Foretek

Day two of jury selection in Tom Goldstein's tax and mortgage fraud case wrapped without a jury being seated Tuesday, but did reveal that the government could call celebrities Tobey Maguire and Kevin Hart to the stand.

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Ex-Duane Morris Tax Partner Charged With Murdering Wife

By Hailey Konnath

A former tax partner at Duane Morris LLP's Chicago office has been charged with killing his wife a little more than a year ago, according to an announcement made Tuesday by Illinois prosecutors.

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

By George Woolston

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.

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Ex-Atty, Others Charged In Staged New Orleans Crash Scheme

By Hope Patti

A disbarred attorney was hit with new charges claiming that he induced a witness to commit perjury and obstructed justice in the federal investigation of an insurance scam involving staged car crashes in the New Orleans area.

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Halligan Blasts Court's 'Inquisition' Over US Atty Status

By Ryan Boysen

Lindsey Halligan said Tuesday that she is still the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia despite a recent ruling to the contrary, dismissing a federal judge's questions about why she's still using the title as an "inquisition" and a "gross abuse of power."

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Approach The Bench: Judge Bough On Ethics

Years of experience as a plaintiff's attorney influenced U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough's disclosure rules for litigators appearing in his court.

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DLA Piper Can't Counsel Hudson Hotel In Ch. 11, Judge Says

By Alex Wittenberg

A Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday rejected a bid by two bankrupt entities tied to the former Hudson Hotel to retain DLA Piper LLP as special counsel in their Chapter 11 case, saying the law firm's work for the entities' lender presented a conflict of interest.

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Sen. Whitehouse Presses AG On Boasberg Complaint Results

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., ranking member of the courts panel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the results of the disciplinary complaint she filed against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia when the investigation wraps up.

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Jack Smith To Testify Publicly Next Week

By Courtney Bublé

Former special counsel Jack Smith is slated to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 22 after, according to his attorney, having been "ready and willing" to do so for a while.

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4th Circ. Combines DOJ Appeals Of Comey, James Dismissals

By Jack Karp

The Fourth Circuit has granted the Trump administration's request to combine its previously separate appeals of the dismissals of prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

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