CFPB Audit Flags Cybersecurity Gaps Amid Staff Departures

By Jon Hill

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has failed to promptly fix serious cyber weaknesses and consistently track data in its possession as staffing losses have hampered the agency's ability to safeguard its systems, according to a federal watchdog audit released Wednesday.

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4th Circ. Judge Sees 'Big Brother' In Va. Social Media Limits

By Hayley Fowler

A Fourth Circuit judge Wednesday expressed concern with a Virginia law limiting children's access to social media, telling counsel for the commonwealth that the provision has a "Big Brother atmosphere" to it and suggesting he'd back the district court's injunction halting enforcement of the regulation.

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Meta Wants Ex-WhatsApp Security Head's Suit Axed For Good

By Bonnie Eslinger

Meta has urged a California federal judge to permanently dismiss a whistleblower retaliation suit from a former cybersecurity head for WhatsApp, saying the fourth version of his complaint repleads theories the court has tossed and still doesn't show the managers responsible for the alleged retaliation knew about his claimed protected activity.

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Jury Selection Starts In 2nd Social Media Bellwether In LA

By Craig Clough

Jury selection began Wednesday in a California courtroom for the second bellwether trial focused on allegations that major social media companies are harming the mental health of children, with Meta Platforms Inc. returning to the defense table next to Snap Inc., which is facing jurors on the claims for the first time.

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Proskauer, Reddit Attys Called To Testify In Data-Scraping Suit

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge on Wednesday called for live testimony from two Proskauer Rose LLP attorneys and Reddit's deputy general counsel as he weighs the law firm's bid to represent Perplexity AI in a lawsuit from Reddit, the firm's former client, over alleged data scraping.

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CFTC's Selig Vows 'Grounded' Oversight Of Agentic Finance

By Aislinn Keely

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig said Wednesday that his agency plans to take a "grounded" approach to agentic finance that's also mindful of the risks it poses and courted industry feedback on how to address the rise of artificial intelligence in derivative markets.

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Roundup

Product Liability's Regulatory & Legislative Recap So Far

By Emily Field

Over the summer and early fall, lawmakers proposed measures aimed at putting safeguards around the rapidly growing industry of artificial intelligence, as public concerns over its safety climb in tandem. The new nominee to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also faced sharp queries over her views on vaccines and birth control.

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FTC Probes Delta, Uber, Others Over Data-Driven Pricing

By Allison Grande

The Federal Trade Commission is pressing Delta, Uber, Target and a half-dozen other companies to detail how they're using personal data to set individualized pricing for consumers and compensation for workers, marking the latest escalation of the agency's growing scrutiny of the increasingly prominent business practice.

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Brief

DOD Contractor Owes $1.2M In Whistleblower Suit, Jury Says

By Zach Dupont

An ex-employee of a U.S. Department of Defense contractor won a $1.2 million award after a Colorado federal jury found the contractor liable for wrongful discharge and violations of the Defense Contractor Whistleblower Protection Act, according to the final judgment, entered Wednesday. 

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Texan Claims Austin Firm Hasn't Alerted Him To Data Breach

By Andrea Keckley

Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson LLP, an Austin, Texas-based law firm focused on collecting debts and taxes for public-sector clients, failed to protect its clients' personal information from a data breach, the plaintiff in a proposed class action claimed in Texas federal court Tuesday.

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Denver Law Firm Sued Over Delayed Data Breach Notice

By Zach Dupont

A Denver law firm was hit with a proposed class action in Colorado federal court Tuesday from an Oklahoma man accusing it of allowing his and thousands of others' personally identifiable information to be stolen in a cyberattack.

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Watchdog Seeks Privacy Guardian In Character.AI Ch. 11 Sale

By Clara Geoghegan

The U.S. Trustee's Office said a Delaware bankruptcy judge must appoint a consumer privacy ombudsman to review the sale of artificial intelligence entertainment platform Character Technologies' assets, saying its Character.AI platform includes identifiable information from users' chats.

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Patients Seek OK Of Connecticut Rehab Data Breach Deal

By Brian Steele

Patients accusing a Connecticut medical rehab network of waiting almost a year to disclose a cyberattack have asked a state court judge to preliminarily bless a deal that would provide about 61,000 people up to $2,500 in cash, plus $1 million in identity theft insurance.

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Tort Liability When AI Goes Rogue: Product Liability

The recent Hugging Face cyberattack led by artificial intelligence agents, as well as reports from AI companies themselves, suggest that sometimes there may be no reasonable way to predict or prevent harm by rogue agentic AI — but product liability law could provide a remedy in some cases, says Donald Hawthorne at Carter Ledyard.

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Online Presence Complicates Defamation's Public Figure Test

Recent defamation cases demonstrate that online presence can affect how courts distinguish between public and private figures, so litigants should consider several questions when evaluating potential claims and defenses where public figure status may affect the litigation, such as whether there is a connection between the plaintiff's public activities and the alleged defamation, say attorneys at Brown Rudnick.

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New Manhattan DA Task Force Puts Antitrust In Its Crosshairs

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office's new corporate crime and antitrust task force is adding local criminal enforcement to a field long led by federal authorities, meaning companies need to account for potential parallel federal and state antitrust investigations when responding to misconduct, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

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3 Strategies To Reduce AI Sycophancy In Legal Work

The tendency of generative artificial intelligence models to tell users what they want to hear can reinforce attorneys’ confirmation bias when testing the strength of arguments, and it can’t simply be prompted away — but a few practices can help mitigate it, says Michael Ott at Ice Miller.

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Weil To Wind Down As Top Attorneys Abandon Firm

By Daniel Moritz-Rabson, Alex Wittenberg and Aebra Coe

Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, the restructuring powerhouse that led Lehman Brothers, Enron and General Motors through bankruptcy, told Law360 Pulse Wednesday that the firm is preparing to wind down operations.

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BigLaw Tip Middleman To Admit Role In $3.5M Trading Scheme

By Chris Villani

An alleged middleman in a sweeping scheme to trade off of deal information stolen from major law firms has agreed to plead guilty and potentially faces a prison term of nearly a decade, according to a plea agreement filed Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court.

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Judge Hellerstein, Gruff Moderator Of Major Cases, Dies At 92

By Pete Brush

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, a former litigator and sometimes impatient Manhattan federal jurist who presided over decades of high-profile cases that often came under close appellate scrutiny, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

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LA's Top Federal Prosecutor 'Unlawfully Serving,' Judge Finds

By Christine DeRosa

A federal judge has ruled that Los Angeles' top federal prosecutor isn't legally serving in the role and that he is disqualified from participating in or supervising two criminal prosecutions.

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BakerHostetler Malpractice Case To Expand With RICO Claim

By Emily Johnson

A Georgia federal judge has allowed a trustee who has accused BakerHostetler and an Atlanta-based attorney of legal malpractice to file an amended complaint after the trustee asked to add claims of Georgia RICO Act violations.

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Mich. Judge Weighs Toshiba Legal Bills Discovery Fight

By Melanie Dorsey

A Michigan federal judge on Wednesday questioned whether she needs to review specific objections to DTE Electric Co. and Consumers Energy Co.'s multimillion-dollar attorney fee request before deciding whether Toshiba Corp. must disclose its own legal bills and litigation expenses following a nearly $394.4 million jury verdict over a botched power plant overhaul.

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SC Gov.'s Counsel Still In The Running For Federal Judgeship

By Courtney Bublé

The chief legal counsel for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is "being actively considered" for a federal judgeship, according to the White House, but it's not a done deal yet.

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Analysis

Albright Left Key Issue In Billion-Dollar IP Fight Unanswered

By Dani Kass

In May 2025, then-U.S. District Judge Alan Albright watched a jury hold that VLSI Technology is controlled by Fortress Investment Group, but by the time he left the bench in August 2026, the judge had yet to decide whether that ownership would let Intel avoid billions of dollars in patent infringement verdicts.

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