'Profits Won': States Say Meta Targeted Kids As Trial Opens

By Dorothy Atkins

An attorney for more than two dozen states told a California federal jury during opening statements Tuesday that Meta hid what it knew about social media's mental health harms and prioritized profits over safety in a yearslong effort to hook kids on its platforms, while Meta defended its safety practices as best-in-class.

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Zuckerberg Waved Off Filter Criticism, Tenn. Jury Hears

By Cara Salvatore

A former Meta executive overseeing responsible innovation testified Tuesday that Mark Zuckerberg iced out her thoughts regarding the harm to teens of cosmetic surgery image filters, but said generally the company's employees are well intentioned when it comes to user safety.

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Publishers Target Google's 'Fake Privilege' In Ad Tech MDL

By Bryan Koenig

A group of website publishers targeting Google's advertising placement technology dominance in a wider multidistrict litigation asked a New York federal judge Monday to force discovery into corporate policies allegedly hiding evidence that have continuously haunted the technology giant across antitrust cases from government and private plaintiffs.

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Attys In Ebay Harassment Suit Seek Lion's Share Of $15M Fee

By Julie Manganis

Counsel for a Massachusetts couple who recently reached a $55.7 million settlement over a harassment campaign by former eBay employees have asked a state court judge to find the couple's original attorney is entitled to no more than 5% of the fees in the case.

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Rising Star: Keker's Christina Lee

By Steven Lerner

Christina Lee of Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP secured several defense wins in a wave of privacy litigation targeting new technologies, including high-profile class actions in the past year for companies like LinkedIn and Google, earning her a spot among the cybersecurity and privacy law practitioners under age 40 honored by Law360 as Rising Stars.

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NJ Justices Signaled Likely End To Daniel's Law, Experts Say

By George Woolston

First Amendment experts said the New Jersey Supreme Court likely doomed the state's judicial privacy law when it found that the statute did not require those seeking damages to establish mental state, a decision that the Third Circuit hinted could result in the measure being struck down.

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Feds Bring New Charges Over $3.4B Iran-Backed Cybertheft

By Stewart Bishop

Manhattan federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced new charges against a group of Iranians accused of running a global, state-backed hacking campaign against private companies, government agencies and universities, in a wide-ranging cybertheft conspiracy that stole at least $3.4 billion in academic data and intellectual property.

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Calif. Says Academy Mortgage Must Pay Data Breach Penalty

By Isaac Monterose

Residential mortgage lender and servicer Academy Mortgage Corp. must pay a penalty for a March 2023 consumer data breach that impacted more than 34,000 Californians, the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation announced.

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Microsoft Harvests K-12 Student Data, Class Action Claims

By Ben Adlin

Microsoft Corp.'s partnerships with K-12 schools in Washington have allowed the technology giant to collect and profit from swaths of personal student data in violation of state and federal law, according to a proposed class action filed by four minor students who attend public schools in Spokane, Washington.

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Sofia Vergara's Underwear Co. Moves To Nix AI Deepfake Suit

By Gina Kim

EBY urged a California federal judge to dismiss a content creator's suit alleging that, while she agreed to be a brand ambassador, the underwear company used AI to create a "deepfake" version and publish a video where she appeared partially nude, arguing Monday that the video is not "pornography" as commonly understood.

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7th Circ. Says Resort Co. Waited Too Long For TCPA Suit Arb.

By Gina Kim

The Seventh Circuit on Tuesday concluded Club Exploria's conduct in a long-running Telephone Consumer Protection Act case was inconsistent with its intent to arbitrate as it waited four years to raise arbitration and finding its decision to hire new lawyers "late in the game cannot excuse prior counsel's lack of diligence."

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Troutman Sidelined Associate After Heart Attack, Suit Says

By Patrick Hoff

Troutman Pepper Locke LLP derailed an associate's career because he took medical leave to recover from a heart attack and spoke up about senior attorneys' fraudulent billing practices, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in New Jersey federal court.

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Property Management Co. Hit With Suit Over Data Breach

By Isaac Monterose

A proposed class of consumers accused property management company Cambridge Management Inc. on Tuesday of failing to protect their personally identifiable information from hackers who breached the company's systems.

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Snap Says Pixel Suit Refiled To Avoid Skeptical Calif. Judge

By Allison Grande

Snap is pushing to move a proposed pixel-tracking class action from federal court in Los Angeles to San Francisco, arguing that the dispute "bears all the hallmarks of strategic forum selection designed to avoid" litigating in front of a Northern District of California judge who's called the state's wiretap statute "a total mess."

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Jackson Lewis Atty Appointed Privacy, AI Lead Of L&E Global

By Matt Perez

Labor and employment firm Jackson Lewis PC announced Tuesday that its attorney Mary T. Costigan was appointed co-leader of data protection and artificial intelligence at L&E Global, an alliance affiliated with Jackson Lewis.

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Barnes & Thornburg Picks Up 12 K&L Gates Healthcare Attys

By Tracey Read

Barnes & Thornburg LLP announced Tuesday that it has brought on a 12-lawyer healthcare team from K&L Gates, including that firm's two former practice group leaders.

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AI Chatbot's Medical Claims Highlight Enforcement Risks

The Pennsylvania State Board of Medicine's recent lawsuit against Character Technologies, arguing that an artificial intelligence chatbot engaged in the unlicensed practice of medicine, may provide other state licensing boards with a road map for going after AI platforms, and counsel should advise clients to calibrate compliance accordingly, say attorneys at Cooley.

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SCOTUSblog Founder Goldstein Seeks Release During Appeal

By Rachel Rippetoe

SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein on Tuesday asked to be released from federal custody while he appeals his 12 tax and mortgage fraud convictions and a six-year prison sentence, saying he is not a flight risk and it would be a "grave injustice" for him to begin a sentence he believes will eventually get axed.

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Davis Wright Vets Scolded: Don't Tell Foes 'How To Run Firm'

By Jeff Overley

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP veterans have failed to dodge six-figure sanctions in a prominent discovery donnybrook, and a California magistrate judge added invective to the financial injury, lambasting "troubling" omissions in case citations and heavy-handed "nitpicking" akin to commandeering an adversary's law firm.

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Atty, Son Charged In Probe Of Alleged Penn State Drug Ring

By Rose Krebs

An equity partner based in Meyer Darragh Buckler Bebenek & Eck PLLC's Pittsburgh office has been charged with tampering with evidence and obstructing an investigation in connection with an alleged cocaine ring at Penn State University that allegedly involved his son, according to news reports.

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Texas Judge Flags 'Alarming' Number Of Bogus Citations

By Emily Sawicki

A federal judge presiding over an Austin, Texas, immigration case is warning of possible future sanctions after an attorney included an "alarming" number of "hallucinated" case citations in support of a habeas corpus petition.  

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Jackson Walker Says US Trustee Can't Claw Back Legal Fees

By Clara Geoghegan

Jackson Walker said this week that the U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog is beyond the bounds of its authority in a yearslong effort to force the firm to return millions of dollars in legal fees over an undisclosed relationship between a former partner and a Texas bankruptcy judge.

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Over 120 Ex-Judges Demand Probe Of DHS GC's 'Worst' Posts

By Adrian Cruz

A pair of nonprofits along with a bipartisan group of 128 former state and federal judges have asked the Florida Bar to investigate the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a recent series of social media posts attacking sitting judges.

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Polsinelli Can't Rep Doctor In 'Bad Faith' IP Suits, Cos. Say

By Lauren Berg

Two medical device companies suing Polsinelli PC and its longtime client, a patent-holding doctor, for allegedly pursuing "bad faith" infringement claims asked federal courts in Tennessee and Mississippi to disqualify the firm from defending the doctor in the lawsuits, citing their "diverging interests and liabilities."

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Ex-US Attys Protest Trump's Swift Firing Of Rogoff In Seattle

By Rachel Riley

Thirty former U.S. attorneys backed Roger Rogoff's bid for reinstatement as Seattle's top federal prosecutor after President Donald Trump fired him on the heels of his court-ordered appointment, arguing Tuesday that Trump is trying to "sidestep the Senate's advice-and-consent role and sideline the judiciary" by letting unappointed individuals play such roles.

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DOJ Urges Court Not To Dismiss Suit Against DC Bar

By Alison Knezevich

The U.S. Department of Justice is urging a federal judge not to toss its lawsuit against Washington, D.C., attorney disciplinary authorities, saying the court "needs to halt defendants' flagrantly unconstitutional overreach into the president's executive power."

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Firms Cut From $101M Anthropic Atty Fees Appeal To 9th Circ.

By Lauren Berg

Two law firms involved in securing artificial intelligence company Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement with a class of authors and publishers are appealing to the Ninth Circuit an order excluding them from attorney fees awarded to court-appointed class counsel.

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USPTO Says Patent Atty's Suit Shouldn't Stop Discipline Case

By Theresa Schliep

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has said an Ohio federal court shouldn't pause professional discipline proceedings against an attorney while he sues the agency, saying he's likely to fail with his suit challenging the fact that a judge from another agency is overseeing his discipline case.

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Sinema Says Brief Signal Chat Can't Anchor NC Affair Suit

By Hayley Fowler

A single exchange on the encrypted messaging app Signal became the focal point of former Arizona U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's testimony on Wednesday as she sought to convince a North Carolina federal judge that she cannot be hauled into court in the Tar Heel state over an affair — which she declined to characterize as a "passionate" romance — she had with her married security guard.

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