'Bad Faith' Subpoenas On Apple Execs Spur Fee Sanctions

By Bryan Koenig

A California federal magistrate judge imposed sanctions Thursday on Joseph M. Alioto of Alioto Law Firm for repeatedly trying to depose senior Apple executives, including then-CEO Tim Cook, in an attempt to drag the iPhone-maker back into consumer antitrust litigation accusing Google of shutting out rival search engines.

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Court Slams 'Half-Hearted Compliance' In Crab Price-Fix Suit

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A California federal magistrate judge has given a seafood company until Sept. 11 to meet the discovery obligations it has repeatedly fallen short of in a proposed class action accusing it of fixing prices for Dungeness crabs.

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Concrete Giants Duck Price-Fixing MDL Again, For Good

By Bryan Koenig

The globe's three dominant producers of admixtures for concrete, cement and mortar are permanently free of price-fixing claims after a New York federal judge held that U.S. concrete distributors and construction companies still haven't adequately alleged a conspiracy or synchronized price increases in the country.

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McKesson Owns Antitrust Claims, Not Rite Aid, Judge Finds

By Yun Park

A New Jersey bankruptcy judge has ruled that antitrust claims against pharmaceutical companies belong to drug distributor McKesson Corp., not the trustee overseeing Rite Aid's Chapter 11 distributions.

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NextEra's $67B Deal Clears Vote Ahead Of Regulatory Hurdles

By Al Barbarino

The shareholders of Kirkland & Ellis LLP-advised NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy, advised by McGuireWoods LLP, have approved the companies' planned $67 billion merger, as regulatory scrutiny mounts at the state and federal levels.

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Verisign, ICANN Accused Of Locking In .Com Monopoly

By Lauren Berg

Verisign, which controls the database that makes every .com website functional, has monopolized .com registry services and keeps its power through a financial arrangement with the nonprofit charged with promoting competition in the domain name marketplace, according to a consumer antitrust lawsuit filed Friday in California federal court.

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SpaceX Presses For Opening 3 Bands To Direct-To-Device

By Nadia Dreid

SpaceX has its eye on three bands of spectrum it wants the Federal Communications Commission to open for direct-to-device satellite services, a move it told the agency would be good for both competition and the integration of satellite and terrestrial networks.

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Teva MDL Loss Shows DPAs Can Return To Haunt Civil Suits

Teva’s recent partial summary judgment loss in antitrust multidistrict litigation reinforces the importance of carefully scrutinizing any statement of facts a company admits to in a deferred prosecution agreement, and illustrates the potential costs of resolving a criminal investigation this way, say attorneys at Sheppard.

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2 ECJ Rulings Give Guidance On Sport Agent Regs

The European Court of Justice recently settled two long-running disputes, Rogon and RRC Sports, by finding that the antitrust rules governing these leagues offer exceptions for regulating players' agents, and offering a path for sports associations to implement rules controlling services ancillary to their sport, say lawyers at Skadden.

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Senior Lawyers Survey: Tell Us About Your Career

How are senior lawyers adapting to evolving career paths and emerging technologies? Share your perspective in this five-minute survey.

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Legal Sector Hiring Grows For 5th Month, But At Slower Pace

By Rachel Rippetoe

The legal sector saw 600 more jobs in August, growing for the fifth consecutive month, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

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3rd Circ. Revives Malpractice Claim Against Kirkland Atty

By Emily Sawicki

A New Jersey divorcee may once again pursue a legal malpractice claim against a Kirkland & Ellis LLP attorney who she said lost her millions by mishandling estate documents, after the Third Circuit found it could be possible to link her alleged damages to the lawyer's work.

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Quinn Emanuel DQ'd In Defamation Case Over Stock Reports

By Lynn LaRowe

A Texas federal court on Friday booted Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP from representing a Hong Kong manufacturing company in its defamation lawsuit against investment research service Muddy Waters LLC after finding that the law firm had received relevant confidential information when it represented Muddy Waters in a related government probe.

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DC Panel's Rare Rebuke Over AI Errors Flags Rules Gap

By Andrea Keckley

A D.C. appellate court panel issued a rare sua sponte sanctions order on Thursday after finding nonexistent case citations in a brief filed by a McCabe Weisberg & Conway LLC attorney representing Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. in a foreclosure action, noting an apparent gap in the rules governing the court's sanctions authority.

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Motley Rice Founder Remembered As Titan Of Mass Tort Bar

By Adrian Cruz

Motley Rice LLC co-founder Joseph F. Rice, who died Thursday, was remembered by former colleagues and friends as a "transformational" attorney and "giant in the civil litigation bar" who spent decades working on some of the most high-profile mass torts and obtaining landmark asbestos, opioid and tobacco settlements.

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Sinema Can't Duck Suit Over Affair With Ex-Security Guard

By Y. Peter Kang

A North Carolina federal judge Friday denied former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's bid to escape the suit brought by the ex-wife of a former member of her security detail with whom she allegedly had an affair, saying the district court indeed has the authority to adjudicate the case.

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Roundup

Injury Law Roundup: Meta's Social Media Addiction Deal

By Y. Peter Kang

A $17.1 billion social media addiction settlement between Meta and 29 states and Johnson & Johnson's $5.5 billion ovarian cancer deal over its talc products lead Law360's Injury Law Roundup.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Morgan Verkamp LLC and Sparacino PLLC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Eleventh Circuit held that the False Claims Act's qui tam provisions do not violate the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Attorneys and academics differ over whether the moves by Meta's in-house lawyers ahead of its $17 billion settlement over claims its content harmed children were legal missteps or defensible efforts to manage litigation risk. And the co-founders of a partner-only law firm told Law360 Pulse how their technology reduces intake, billing and other nonbillable tasks that attorneys would normally perform. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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