Barnes & Noble Joins Visa, Mastercard Settlement Objectors

By Jared Foretek

A new collection of major retailers is joining Target Corp. and Grubhub in objecting to a proposed settlement deal cut by Visa and Mastercard, saying the deal would actually codify an illegal price-fixing agreement.

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FTC Clears $60B Exxon Deal With Pioneer Executive Ban

By Al Barbarino

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday cleared the way for the close of the $60 billion mega-merger between Exxon Mobil Corp. and Pioneer Natural Resources, subject to an agreement barring former Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield from gaining a seat on Exxon's board. 

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Google Judge Ponders Search Engine's Might At Trial Closings

By Bryan Koenig

The quality of Google's search engine, and what it would take to actually challenge the company's grip on default placements on Apple browsers and Android phones, were top of mind Thursday for the D.C. federal judge weighing U.S. Department of Justice monopolization allegations.

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Calif. Justices To Review Gilead's HIV Drug Negligence Fight

By Dorothy Atkins

The California Supreme Court has granted Gilead Sciences Inc.'s request to review an appellate court's holding that the drugmaker must face claims it held back a safer HIV drug to maximize profits on an older medication.

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Plaintiff To Share 'Horrific' Story In First Zantac Cancer Trial

By Celeste Bott

The first trial in sprawling state and federal litigation over whether a chemical in Zantac heartburn medication and its generic counterparts causes cancer began Thursday in a packed Chicago courtroom, with counsel for an 89-year-old Illinois woman telling jurors her colorectal cancer diagnosis and the suffering it's caused can be attributed to her 20-year use of the drug.

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No Atty Fees For Objectors To $5.6B Swipe Fees Settlement

By Lauren Berg

Class members who initially objected to a $5.6 billion settlement with Visa and Mastercard cannot collect nearly $1 million in attorney fees, a New York federal judge ruled Thursday, saying they haven't shown their objections to the original 2013 settlement substantially benefited the class.

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Endo Judge Hopes Criminal Sentence Warns Opioid Makers

By Danielle Ferguson

A Michigan federal judge said Thursday she hoped Endo's criminal sentence for falsely advertising a pain medication as "abuse deterrent" would itself be a deterrent for other opioid makers, as she accepted the company's recent $200 million settlement deal with federal prosecutors. 

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Chicken Buyers Request $37M More In Price-Fixing Deal Fees

By Lauraann Wood

Direct broiler chicken purchasers who've inked more than $284 million in price-fixing settlements are asking an Illinois federal judge for more than $37 million in what would be a third distribution of fees and reimbursed costs to their co-lead counsel in the massive case.

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TikTok, Users Push 9th Circ. To Keep Block On Montana Ban

By Allison Grande

TikTok and its users are hitting back at Montana's bid to convince the Ninth Circuit to unblock a new law that would ban the social media app in the state, arguing that the state's position that the statute is a consumer protection measure that regulates conduct and not constitutionally protected speech is "premised on fiction."

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Wells Fargo Discloses Zelle Dispute-Handling Scrutiny

By Jon Hill

Wells Fargo & Co. on Thursday became the latest financial institution to disclose government scrutiny of how customers' dispute claims for potentially mistaken or fraudulent instant payments are being handled.

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House Seeks FTC Info On Scuttled Amazon-IRobot Deal

By Jared Foretek

The Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is launching an investigation into the Federal Trade Commission's purported efforts to block Amazon's purchase of iRobot, according to a Wednesday letter from Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.

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Tech, Finance Experts Urge CFTC To Consider AI Regs

By Jessica Corso

Tech advisers urged the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday to consider policies to manage the risks associated with artificial intelligence, along with a list of other recommendations detailing potential approaches to the growing use of AI in financial markets.

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Biden Announces $3B To Fund Lead Pipe Replacement

By Jonathan Capriel

The Biden administration is distributing $3 billion to states so they can replace lead water pipes that pose a health risk to those who rely on them for drinking water, as part of the larger goal to remove all lead service lines nationwide.

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Discover Ups Liability Costs For Card Pricing Issue To $1.2B

By Katryna Perera

Discover Financial Services has put a $1.2 billion price tag on remediation for its previously disclosed credit card pricing misclassification, which is now the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, representing an increase of nearly 230% from the $365 million liability it recorded nearly a year ago.

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Hahn Air To Pay Feds $26.8M To End FCA Travel Fees Suit

By Dorothy Atkins

Hahn Air Lines agreed to pay $26.8 million to resolve a whistleblower's allegations that the German airline-ticketing company violated the False Claims Act by intentionally failing to remit to the U.S. government certain travel fees the company collected from U.S. commercial airline passengers.

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SEC Lands $25M Judgment In TikToker-Wannabe Ponzi Suit

By Henrik Nilsson

A South Carolina man and his companies must pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission nearly $24.9 million to settle claims that he misappropriated investors' money to make Ponzi payments to earlier investors and to pay for luxury cars and over $1 million to TikTok creators, according to judgments issued in Georgia federal court.

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Attys Due For Spam Suit Sanction, But Not $750K, Judges Say

By Greg Lamm

Class counsel's misconduct in helping instigate a spam text suit against stock-trading app Robinhood Financial LLC warranted sanctions, a Washington state appeals court panel ruled Thursday, but the judges said the $750,000 penalty went over the top in deterring the bad behavior.

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Cisco Counterfeiting Scheme Earns Fla. Man 6½ Years

By Elliot Weld

A Florida resident was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after pleading guilty to running what New Jersey federal prosecutors said was an "enormous" scheme to sell over $1 billion worth of counterfeit and broken Cisco networking devices.

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Lawmaker Wants Antitrust Probe Of Health Insurance Data Co.

By Matthew Perlman

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is calling for antitrust enforcers to investigate concerns that MultiPlan and other healthcare data companies are hurting competition by helping health insurers effectively collude when making pricing decisions.

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Immigrant Bond Co. Buyer Wants In On $811M Fine Appeal

By Britain Eakin

Libre Immigration Services has moved to intervene at the Fourth Circuit to fight an $811 million judgment against companies it recently acquired that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued over abusive immigrant bonding practices.

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Kind Keeps Win At 2nd Circ. In MDL Over 'All Natural' Labeling

By Mike Curley

The Second Circuit on Thursday affirmed a summary judgment for Kind LLC against a group of buyers who said the company misled consumers by labeling products as "all natural," saying the plaintiffs failed to establish through evidence how a reasonable buyer would understand the term.

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Split Conn. Supreme Court Says No To 'Ratio' Utility Bills

By Aaron Keller

In a rare 4-3 opinion, the Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a corporate landlord cannot use a ratio utility billing system to divide monthly costs among units not equipped with precise individual meters, stressing a legislative policy of protecting tenants from fluctuating fees beyond their immediate control.

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USAA Wrongly Denied Fire Damage Claim, Wash. Couple Says

By Ganesh Setty

A Washington couple accused their homeowners insurer of unreasonably denying their fire damage claim despite their timely response to all of the insurer's claim inquiries and requests, further accusing the insurer of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act and Insurance Fair Conduct Act.

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Davis Wright Brings On MoFo Appellate Litigator In San Fran

By Emily Johnson

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP has brought on a former Morrison Foerster LLP partner in San Francisco, strengthening its appellate practice with an experienced appellate litigator who clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court justice, a California Supreme Court justice and other judges, the firm announced Thursday.

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FDIC Bank Disclosure Rules Raise Important Questions

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s new rules mandating disclosures for nonbanks offering deposit products leave traditional financial institutions in a no-man's land between fintech-oriented requirements and the reality of personal service demanded by customers, say Paul Clark and Casey Jennings at Seward & Kissel.

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Setting Goals For Kicking Corruption Off FIFA World Cup Field

The unprecedented tri-country nature of the 2026 men's World Cup will add to the complexity of an already complicated event, but best practices can help businesses stay on the right side of anti-corruption rules during this historic competition, say Sandra Moser and ​​​​​​​Emily Ahdieh at Morgan Lewis.

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Don't Use The Same Template For Every Client Alert

As the old marketing adage goes, consistency is key, but law firm style guides need consistency that contemplates variety when it comes to client alert formats, allowing attorneys to tailor alerts to best fit the audience and subject matter, says Jessica Kaplan at Legally Penned.

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Legal Industry Gains Jobs In April Following Downward Trend

By Tracey Read

The U.S. legal sector eased back into a positive trajectory in April, with a gain of 3,200 jobs compared with the previous month, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Boies Schiller's Sigrid McCawley

By Hannah Albarazi

Sigrid McCawley was barely back from parental leave with her fourth child in February 2015 when she flew to New York City to take on a case that would turn her life upside down, and change the world.

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Q&A

NJ Judge Kugler Reflects On 32 Years Spent As Federal Jurist

By George Woolston

With the fates of his colleagues who didn't get the chance to enjoy retirement weighing on his mind, Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler decided this year it was time to call it a career on the bench in Camden, New Jersey, after three decades of service.

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Graham Blasts Mass. Judge Nom For 'Radical' Policing Letter

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted a Massachusetts judicial nominee on Friday for failing to disclose prior to his nomination hearing that his name appears on the letterhead of a 2020 public statement issued in the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd by police.

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Judge In Trump's Georgia Case Raises $320K For Election Bid

By Chart Riggall

In his bid for election to his first full term on the bench, the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case is enjoying support from a broad swath of the Atlanta legal community, raising over $127,000 in the last three months.

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Robbins Geller Attys To Take Stand In $8M Sanctions Dispute

By Bryan Koenig

A petroleum refiner will put current and former Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP attorneys on the stand May 7 in an extraordinary evidentiary hearing testing what the plaintiffs' lawyers knew about an analyst's now-discredited findings as they pursued since-nixed price-fixing claims.

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California Judge Ousted For 'Willful,' 'Prejudicial' Misconduct

By Jake Maher

A California state judge has been removed from the bench after an investigation found that he conducted a campaign of retaliation against court employees he suspected of being "moles" in a probe against him and lied about his actions to investigators afterward.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Clement & Murphy PLLC and Yetter Coleman LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Fifth Circuit reversed a Texas federal court's $1.6 billion ruling against IBM in an operating agreement dispute with Houston-based software company BMC.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

A former general counsel testified Thursday in the criminal fraud trial of former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch that the company's chief operating officer didn't want a whistleblower's claims to get into court, and a South Carolina man and his companies must pay the SEC nearly $24.9 million to settle claims that he misappropriated investors' money to make Ponzi payments. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

The past week in London has seen rapper Ivorian Doll hit with a copyright claim, private members club Aspinalls file a claim against a Saudi sheikh, and Motorola Solutions file a claim against the British government on the heels of its dispute over losing a £400 million ($502 million) government contract. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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