Judge Skeptical Of Bid To Toss FTC's Zillow, Redfin Case

By Matthew Perlman

A Virginia federal judge seemed skeptical on Wednesday as Zillow Group Inc. and Redfin Corp. pushed their bid to toss the Federal Trade Commission's case over an alleged agreement between the real estate listing companies to not compete for rental ads.

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Social Media Contributed To Mental Health Issues, Jury Hears

By Craig Clough

A therapist who treated the plaintiff in a landmark bellwether trial alleging Instagram and YouTube harm children's mental health told a California jury Wednesday that social media use contributed to the plaintiff's struggles, while acknowledging that social media addiction is not a diagnosis formally recognized in her field.

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Live Nation Judge Not 'Inclined' To Delay Trial For Appeal

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge said Wednesday he is likely to deny counsel for Live Nation's request to appeal rulings sending the government's monopolization claims to trial, after antitrust regulators called that request a "desperate plea" for a delay.

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Amazon, DC AG Delay Antitrust Trial, Again

By Jared Foretek

A local D.C. judge has agreed to delay trial in the city's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon once again, pushing the scheduled start next year from May to September, with the two sides citing the government shutdown's impact on a related Federal Trade Commission case as the cause for the hold-up.

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9th Circ. Nixes ID Theft Sentence In Medicare Fraud Case

By Gianna Ferrarin

The Ninth Circuit ordered resentencing of a defendant in a case over a $24 million scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare for power wheelchairs and wheelchair repair, finding evidence presented at trial did not support her conviction by a jury on two aggravated identity theft charges.

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9th Circ. Upends $8M Asbestos Verdict Against BNSF

By Linda Chiem

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that BNSF Railway Co. cannot be held strictly liable under Montana law for transporting asbestos-containing vermiculite and letting vermiculite dust collect on tracks and its railyard, upending the $8 million jury verdict awarded to the estates of two former Libby, Montana, residents who developed mesothelioma.

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T-Mobile Tells Justices FCC's Fines On 'Unsound' Footing

By Christopher Cole

T-Mobile waded Wednesday into a high-stakes U.S. Supreme Court fight between its rivals AT&T and Verizon and the Federal Communications Commission, telling the justices that an FCC theory that companies facing penalties can eventually get a jury trial was "unsound."

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Netflix Swaps Out Latham For Munger Tolles In Antitrust Suit

By Bonnie Eslinger

Latham & Watkins LLP withdrew Wednesday as defense counsel for Netflix in a proposed consumer class action in Illinois federal court claiming Meta cut an illegal deal ceding the video streaming market to Netflix, which is now represented by Munger Tolles & Olson LLP.

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Dems Demand Explanation For DOJ Antitrust Chief's Exit

By Lauren Berg

Two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded Wednesday that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi explain to lawmakers why the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust chief was forced to resign, expressing concern about the administration's potential interference with merger reviews and antitrust litigation.

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Senate Dem Bill Adds To Trump's Wall Street Home Buy Ban

By Nate Beck

Senate Democrats are proposing to end tax breaks for Wall Street's single-family home purchases and ramp up antitrust enforcement, offering a rival plan aimed at housing affordability as President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address Tuesday repeated a call to ban big investors from the market.

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EU, UK To Share Info On 'Significant' Antitrust Probes

By Bryan Koenig

British and European Union officials signed a new agreement Wednesday promising to notify each other of major merger and antitrust probes and coordinate their efforts "when necessary," in what they called the first dedicated competition cooperation agreement following the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU.

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It's Kickoff Time For FCC Look At Sports Media Marketplace

By Christopher Cole

Sports streaming's rise and the impact of a fragmenting sports programming marketplace on local broadcasters will get new attention from regulators at the Federal Communications Commission.

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Senate Bill Would Make Gov't Admit It Perused Your Emails

By Nadia Dreid

Courts issue hundreds of thousands of criminal surveillance orders each year, allowing law enforcement to spy on suspects beyond the bounds of what is normally legal, but a bill reintroduced Wednesday in the U.S. Senate aims to shed light on the process by informing someone when the government wanted their digital information.

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OCC Unveils Landmark Stablecoin Rule Proposal

By Jon Hill and Aislinn Keely

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency took a significant step Wednesday toward standing up its oversight framework for stablecoin issuers, proposing rules that lay out how licensing will work, what activities will be allowed and what prudential standards will apply.

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Brief

Solar Cells From Laos, Indonesia, India Face Steep US Duties

By Dylan Moroses

The U.S. Department of Commerce has found that imported solar cells from Laos, Indonesia and India have been subsidized and preliminarily determined significant countervailing duties, according to notices published Wednesday.

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Brief

FCC Yanks Another Chinese Lab From Equipment Program

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission continues to plow forward with its plan to ban Chinese test labs and telecommunications certification bodies from being used on devices destined for the United States by pulling the accreditation of yet another Chinese test lab.

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Valve Promotes Illegal Gambling In Its Games, NY AG Claims

By Katryna Perera

The New York attorney general Wednesday sued Valve Corp., claiming the video game developer has been illegally promoting gambling to children through games like Counter-Strike by "enticing" them to pay for chances to win virtual items, some of which can be rare and hold significant monetary value.

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Ga. GOP Operative Referred For Charges Amid Ponzi Probe

By Chart Riggall

A man leading a Republican political organization in Georgia who has been accused of participating in a $140 million Ponzi scheme involving lender First Liberty Building & Loan was referred for prosecution Wednesday by state securities regulators, who said he used his job as an insurance agent and investment adviser to steer clients toward the scam.

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Online Abortion Pill Provider Illegally Ships To Texas, AG Says

By Gina Kim

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Aid Access, its founder and a California doctor in state court Tuesday alleging they operate an "abortion-by-mail enterprise" that ship abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents, which is endangering the lives of unborn children and their mothers. 

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FTC Backs Age Verification Use With New Enforcement Stance

By Allison Grande

The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that it won't use its enforcement authority under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to bring actions against certain websites and services that collect kids' personal information without parental consent for the sole purpose of verifying users' ages. 

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CFTC Taps Ex-SDNY Prosecutor To Lead Enforcement

By Aislinn Keely

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's enforcement division is set to be led by a former federal prosecutor who tackled financial fraud and insider trading cases in the Southern District of New York before turning to private practice, most recently as a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig LLP.

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Crypto Hedge Fund Manager Charged With Tax Evasion

By Emilie Ruscoe

Federal prosecutors have charged a crypto hedge fund manager who has renounced his U.S. citizenship with filing false tax returns and willfully failing to disclose millions of dollars' worth of foreign assets.

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Dance School Ordered To Cease, Desist After Securities Probe

By George Woolston

A self-described "charitable dance and entertainment organization" has been issued a cease and desist order, the New Jersey attorney general's office announced Wednesday, accusing the organization of selling unregistered securities and misleading investors.

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Cox Tells Calif. It Needs Final Ruling On Charter By July

By Nadia Dreid

Cable behemoth Cox Communications has told the California Public Utilities Commission that it needs a final decision by July on its $34.5 billion merger with Charter so that the companies have time to close the deal before their federal merger clearance period expires.

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$17.9M Drug Price-Fixing Deal Advances Despite Objections

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut federal judge on Wednesday advanced a $17.9 million generic drug price-fixing settlement between 48 states and territories and pharmaceutical companies Bausch Health US LLC, Bausch Health Americas Inc. and Lannett Co. Inc., sidelining objections by consumers suing separately in a Pennsylvania multidistrict litigation case.

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PepsiCo Will Allow Shareholder Proposal Following Lawsuit

By Sarah Jarvis

PepsiCo Inc. has agreed to include an animal welfare-focused shareholder proposal in its corporate ballot this year following the shareholder suing the beverage giant last week for moving to exclude the proposal.

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Conn. Insurance Chief Fights Intervention In Liquidation Row

By Hope Patti

Connecticut's interim insurance commissioner urged a state court not to allow a pair of universal life policyholders that are over a $300,000 cap on death benefits to intervene in his plan to liquidate a struggling insurer, saying they are seeking an inequitable premium holiday on their policies.

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OppFi Nears Win Over Calif. Regulator's 'Rent-A-Bank' Case

By Jon Hill

A California state judge has preliminarily ruled that state regulators cannot treat Opportunity Financial's lending partnership with an out-of-state bank as an unlawful "rent-a-bank" scheme, potentially handing a major win to the fintech firm in a long-running legal battle over enforcement of California's interest-rate limits.

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Kalshi, Robinhood Look To Dismiss Calif. Tribes' Gambling Suit

By Elaine Briseño

Prediction market Kalshi Inc. is pushing back against the efforts of three California indigenous groups in federal court to stifle its sports event contract activity in the state, arguing the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act does not authorize the tribes to regulate their activity.

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Centene Says Filed Rate Doctrine Dooms RICO, Fraud Claims

By Celeste Bott

Centene Corp. urged an Illinois federal judge Tuesday to grant it partial judgment in a proposed class action by patients alleging the company violated racketeering laws and cheated them out of billions with bogus policies, arguing the filed rate doctrine bars the refunds they seek for alleged overcharges.

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Philly Says PBMs Can't Exit Suit Over Opioid Crisis

By P.J. D'Annunzio

The city of Philadelphia on Wednesday defended its lawsuit against CVS Health Corp. and other pharmacy benefit managers over allegedly fueling the opioid crisis, urging a Pennsylvania federal judge to reject the PBMs' arguments that they should be let out of the litigation for lack of a valid legal claim.

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Lawsuit Over Recalled Lowe's Batteries Tossed, For Now

By Jonathan Capriel

Tool company Chervon North America Inc. and retailer Lowe's Home Centers LLC have, for now, beaten a proposed class action accusing them of selling lithium-ion batteries that caught fire, after an Illinois federal judge ruled that the buyer failed to point to any particular "promise regarding safety."

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NJ Judge Trims J&J And Neutrogena Benzene Suit

By Jonathan Capriel

A New Jersey federal judge has slashed state and common law claims in a multistate proposed class action alleging that acne cream produced by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. and Kenvue Inc. contained a cancer-causing chemical without warning labels, saying the buyers' claims missed "a step" and were "circular."

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Fungi-Nail Co. Says False Advertising Class Action Must Fail

By Emily Field

Arcadia Consumer Healthcare Inc. on Tuesday urged a North Carolina federal judge to toss once and for all a proposed class action alleging that its Fungi-Nail product is falsely marketed as a treatment for nail fungus, saying that the plaintiff has tried and failed several times to point to specific statements that it treats the infection.

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Takeaways From CFPB's Retreat On Immigrant Fair Lending

Practices discouraged under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Justice Department's 2023 statement on the treatment of immigration status under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act may now be permissible following its recent withdrawal, making it crucial for lenders to follow unfolding fair lending developments in this area, say attorneys at Steptoe.

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How To Counter 7 Logical Fallacies In Legal Arguments

Many legal arguments are riddled with reasoning flaws that can effectively distract or persuade the fact-finder, but these tactics lose much of their power when attorneys recognize and strategically shine a light on them, says Allison Rocker at BakerMcKenzie.

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Tom Goldstein Guilty On Tax Evasion, 11 Other Counts

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog founder and famed U.S. Supreme Court advocate Thomas Goldstein was found guilty of tax evasion, as well as aiding in the filing of false tax returns and lying on loan applications, by a Maryland federal jury Wednesday. 

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Patterson Belknap Adds Ex-SDNY Prosecutor Maurene Comey

By Alison Knezevich

Former Manhattan federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who handled some of the nation's highest-profile cases before she was fired by the Trump administration, has joined Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, the firm announced Wednesday.

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Cat Cover Story In Ginsburg Health Hack Gives Judge Pause

By Hayley Fowler

A Fourth Circuit jurist on Wednesday seemed fixated on the feline excuse a former hospital transplant coordinator gave FBI agents when he was questioned in 2019 about accessing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's healthcare records.

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Democrats Cast Doubt On New DOJ Fraud Role

By Courtney Bublé

During the confirmation hearing on Wednesday for President Donald Trump's nominee for the new assistant attorney general for fraud role, Democrats expressed anxiety about the White House's involvement in the fraud crackdown and how genuine the effort is.

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Florida Co. Blames Holland & Hart For $21M Judgment

By Zach Dupont

A Florida-based company claimed in Colorado federal court Wednesday that a Holland & Hart LLP attorney was negligent in representing it in a lawsuit from the city of Fort Collins that eventually ended in a more than $21 million judgment against the company.

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'Do Not Lie To Me': Calif. Judge Panel Agrees Credibility Is Key

By Bonnie Eslinger

California federal judges speaking at a Federal Bar Association panel in San Francisco have urged attorneys to protect their credibility in the courtroom, with one judge bluntly telling lawyers "do not lie to me" and another revealing it's "shocking" how frequently judges share notes about lawyers.

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Justices Set New Limits On Recess Testimony Talks

By Cara Salvatore

A unanimous Supreme Court set limits Wednesday on the right to counsel during overnight breaks in a defendant's testimony under the Sixth Amendment, ruling that prohibiting talk about "testimony for its own sake" strikes an appropriate constitutional balance.

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Foley & Lardner Wants 'Scattershot' Malpractice Suit Tossed

By Rose Krebs

Foley & Lardner LLP is urging the Delaware Superior Court to toss a malpractice suit accusing the firm of negligence in representing an officer of a now-defunct food recycling company in a Chancery Court case that led to a $1.6 million judgment, saying it "suffers from basic pleading defects."

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