Chancery Tosses Meta Activist Investor Suit Over Social Ills

By Dorothy Atkins

A Delaware vice chancellor tossed a Meta activist investor's suit seeking to prioritize wider social impact over company profits, saying Delaware's single-firm corporate model assumes directors owe fiduciary duties to their company's stockholders, and there's no case law articulating that because it's "so basic," just as "fish don't talk about water."

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Pharmacyclics Can't Score Fees After Imbruvica Patent Win

By Andrew Karpan

Delaware's top federal judge on Tuesday told AbbVie's Pharmacyclics LLC unit that it was "also guilty of vexatious conduct" and had no standing to seek legal fees after it won a patent infringement suit against generic-drug rivals over its branded blockbuster cancer drug Imbruvica.

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Chancery Partially Vacates Trump Media Suit Fast-Track Order

By Jeff Montgomery

A Delaware vice chancellor pulled the plug Tuesday on a bid to fast-track part of a suit brought by two co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group against former President Donald Trump's Truth Social media company before it went public.

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Roundup

3rd Circ. Preview: Kavanaugh Classmate Takes On HuffPost

By P.J. D'Annunzio

The Third Circuit's May lineup will find the court weighing HuffPost's battle with an allegedly libeled former classmate of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and claims by consumers alleging they bought defective Bayer antifungal medicine.

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Genius Sports Investors Urge Chancery To Save Merger Suit

By Leslie A. Pappas

The special-purpose acquisition company that took Genius Sports Ltd. public in 2021 didn't fully disclose how a newly inked agreement with the National Football League would affect the sports data company, investors told Delaware's Court of Chancery on Tuesday, urging a judge to preserve their case against the SPAC and its directors.

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UK Fund Cites Jacobs' Qatar Oversight Failings In Del. Suit

By Jeff Montgomery

A UK pension fund investor in the U.S.-based business that oversaw construction of 2022 World Cup soccer facilities in Qatar has sued the company's directors in Delaware's Court of Chancery, seeking recovery of damages arising from director failures to monitor human rights violations reported by workers.

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Analysis

Where VLSI-Intel's High-Stakes Patent Battle Stands Now

By Dani Kass

Intel has managed to turn the tide on litigation where it had faced the daunting possibility of owing VLSI Technology more than $3 billion for infringing microchip patents, with the tech company winning patent invalidations and a large verdict do-over. Here's a look at where the multifaceted litigation between the companies stands.

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3rd Circ. Denies Rehearing In Pa. Mail-In Ballot Case

By Matthew Santoni

The Third Circuit has rejected a do-over of its decision not to count Pennsylvania mail-in ballots with missing or incorrect dates on their outer envelopes, denying a request from voting rights groups for a rehearing Tuesday.

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Ex-Rugby Team Owner Sues Over $6M Franchise Sale

By Leslie A. Pappas

The former owner of an Atlanta, Georgia-based rugby team who sold it to a New Hampshire club for $6 million sued the buyer and another rugby team operator in Delaware federal court Monday, alleging that she is still owed $3.75 million from the sale.

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Think Like A Lawyer: Follow The Iron Rule Of Trial Logic

Many diligent and eager attorneys include every good fact, point and rule in their trial narratives — spurred by the gnawing fear they’ll be second-guessed for leaving something out — but this approach ignores a fundamental principle of successful trial lawyering, says Luke Andrews at Poole Huffman.

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Here's Why This GC Went Public With Her Bipolar Diagnosis

By Michele Gorman

Kelly Rentzel, who has held several general counsel positions throughout her career, largely credits her law degree for giving her the confidence to talk publicly about her bipolar diagnosis — which is something she had contemplated for two decades before taking the initial steps that ultimately led her to a lectern.

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NJ, NY Law Firms Dominate Class Action Filings Since 2021

By Rae Ann Varona

Class actions have been steadily increasing over the past decade, with two firms from New Jersey and New York filing the most suits over the past three years, according to a new Lex Machina report surveying the class action field.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Baron & Budd's Scott Summy

By Madison Arnold

Fighting early in his career on behalf of two North Carolina trailer parks across the street from a gas station that was leaking a gasoline additive, Scott Summy of Baron & Budd PC had an idea that would reshape drinking water litigation in the United States and even lead to him being called "the most important water lawyer in American history" by his co-counsel.

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Skadden Atty To Join Simpson Thacher's New Boston Office

By Tracey Read

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP announced Wednesday it will open an office in Boston later this year with the help of a new registered funds partner who recently left Skadden's investment management group.

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Analysis

In Trump Staredown With NY Judge, 'Somebody Has To Blink'

By Phillip Bantz

Experts say Donald Trump will likely continue to ignore warnings from the court, and possibly his own attorneys, as his Manhattan hush money trial resumes Thursday with a fresh set of arguments over the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's out-of-court statements.

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Trump's Firm Can't Yet Withdraw After Atty-Client 'Breakdown'

By Lauren Berg

A Manhattan federal judge won't yet allow the attorneys representing Donald Trump's campaign to withdraw from a pregnancy retaliation suit brought by a former campaign aide over what they called an "irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship," but on Wednesday set a conference to review the request behind closed doors.

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NJ Judge Kugler Retiring From Federal Bench At Month's End

By George Woolston

Senior U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler will step down from the New Jersey federal bench at the end of the month, concluding nearly 22 years there, Law360 has learned.

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Federal Prosecutor Confirmed As Illinois District Judge

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 54-44 on Wednesday to confirm Assistant U.S. Attorney Georgia N. Alexakis as a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois.

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Kirkland Rips 'Tortured' Theory In Texas Judge Romance Suit

By Jack Karp

Kirkland & Ellis LLP's inclusion in a Texas federal suit accusing it of conspiring with Jackson Walker LLP, a disgraced Texas bankruptcy judge and a former Jackson Walker partner who was his romantic partner to oust a CEO is based on "a tortured theory" and "flimsy facts," the firm declared.

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Eastman Denied Stay Of Inactive Status To 'Safeguard' Public

By Lauren Berg

A State Bar Court of California judge on Wednesday denied a request from Donald Trump's onetime attorney John Eastman to delay placing him on inactive enrollment while he appeals the recommendation for his disbarment, saying he hasn't shown that "he no longer presents a threat to the public."

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The Top In-House Hires Of April

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past few weeks included high-profile appointments at Sony Pictures, TikTok and IBM. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from April.

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Median Patent Damages Awards Are Shrinking

By Andrew Karpan

A New York accounting firm that provides damages experts for intellectual property cases has found in a new study that median damages awards in patent cases have declined over the last 15 years.

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NY Lawmakers Call For Cop-Shoving Judge's Replacement

By Frank G. Runyeon

New York State Senate Judiciary Committee members said that either the governor or senate should ensure Justice Mark Grisanti is ousted after an ethics panel opted not to remove the Buffalo judge who brawled with neighbors, shoved a cop and invoked his ties to power, among other unethical behavior.

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Fed. Judge's Handcuffing Of Girl Was Misconduct, Panel Says

By Craig Clough

The Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit found Wednesday that a California federal judge who ordered a crying 13-year-old girl in his courtroom be handcuffed engaged in judicial misconduct, issuing a reprimand for his actions and ordering that the judge not be assigned new criminal cases for three years.

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Ex-FDIC Atty Gets 20-Year Sentence In Child Exploitation Case

By Rose Krebs

A former attorney with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who admitted to participating in online groups aimed at sexually exploiting children has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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Law Firm Fabiani Hit With Race, Gender Bias Suit

By Andrea Keckley

A Black female insurance and construction law attorney sued Fabiani Cohen & Hall LLP and its three name partners Tuesday in New York federal court, alleging she was subjected to a "despicable campaign" of harassment for more than a decade.

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