9th Circ. Judge Calls Out Whole Foods For Standing Flip-Flop

By Rachel Riley

A Ninth Circuit judge confronted Whole Foods on Wednesday for reversing its position in a proposed class action alleging failure to include wage information in job listings, pressing its counsel on why an appellate panel should accept its new standing argument and let the case proceed in federal court instead of Washington state court.

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Wood Smith Beats Suit Over Nixed Atty Defamation Claims

By Jack Karp

Wood Smith Henning & Berman LLP has escaped a malpractice suit stemming from an allegedly improperly drafted settlement agreement in an employment dispute, with a California appeals court finding that the agreement did not shield an opposing attorney from an ex-Wood Smith client's defamation claims.

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Ex-Manager's Severance Suit Heads To Trial Over Denial Letter

By MJ Koo

A Pennsylvania federal judge Wednesday sent a former office manager's fight over nearly $468,000 in severance to trial, ruling that she didn't have to appeal a construction equipment supplier's denial internally first because its rejection letter never explained how.

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Amazon Wins Bid To Decertify Md. Security Screening Class

By Benjamin Morse

A Maryland federal judge reversed an earlier decision certifying a class of Amazon warehouse workers seeking pay for time spent undergoing mandatory security screenings, but refused to throw out a former employee's individual wage claims.

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NY Judges Question Court Agency's Withholding Of Records

By Andrea Keckley

Two judges on a New York state appeals court panel pushed back on arguments by the state's Office of Court Administration that no reports related to investigations of court personnel can be considered final under the state Freedom of Information Law until all proceedings have concluded.

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Meatpacking Cos. Can't Escape Haitian Workers' Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

Two meatpacking companies must face a proposed class action alleging they lured Haitian workers to Colorado with false promises and subjected them to harsh working conditions because of their race, with a federal judge saying Wednesday that the bid to toss the case is based mostly on technicalities.

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Hotel Group Settles LGBTQ+ Bias Suit Over Medical Leave

By Grace Elletson

A hotel management company agreed to settle and close a former manager's suit claiming she was fired out of discrimination when she asked for time off to undergo gender-affirming medical procedures, according to a North Carolina federal court filing.

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Conn. Firm Gets $3.1M For FedEx Security Check Deal

By Brian Steele

A Connecticut federal judge Wednesday awarded more than $3.16 million to Hayber McKenna & Dinsmore LLC after granting final approval of a $9.5 million settlement between FedEx and workers who were not paid for going through security before and after their shifts.

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Nike Ad Crew Member Reaches Deal In Wage Suit

By MJ Koo

A production assistant who worked on a Nike commercial has reached a deal to end his lawsuit in California federal court accusing the sportswear giant, its advertising agency and a production company of shorting film crew members on wages and breaks, according to a court filing.

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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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5th Circ. Bars Immunity In Texas A&M Wage Retaliation Suit

By MJ Koo

Government officials can't use a special legal protection to escape lawsuits accusing them of punishing workers who complain about their pay, the Fifth Circuit found, allowing a former Texas A&M University adviser to pursue her claim that her supervisor fired her over a paycheck dispute.

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FEMA Contractors Say No-Poach, Wage-Fixing Suit Still Faulty

By Bryan Koenig

Fluor Federal Services and some of its federal disaster response subcontractors urged a Florida federal judge Tuesday to definitively end a proposed class action accusing them of agreeing to fix wages and avoid hiring each other's workers, arguing the amended complaint still doesn't fix shortcomings identified by the court.

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NLRB Closes Memphis Subregional Office

By Braden Campbell

The National Labor Relations Board announced Wednesday that it has closed its Memphis subregional office to save money, splitting its work between staff in New Orleans and Little Rock.

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Ex-Chemical Co. Owner Fights $69.2M Trade Secrets Award

By Jarek Rutz

The former owner of a chemical manufacturer and his nephews urged the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a nearly $69.2 million trade secrets judgment, arguing the award rests on an inflated estimate of what it would cost to recreate stolen formulas, while buyer Arxada insisted the defendants should not profit from taking them.

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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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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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Cruise Co. Settles Fla. Doc's Whistleblower Suit Over Billing

By David Minsky

A Florida doctor said he reached a quick settlement with Norwegian Cruise Lines Holdings Ltd. one month after filing his lawsuit alleging he was fired for opposing the company's practice of overbilling passengers, the state's federal court records show.

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MSU Trustee Says Ethics Code Violates First Amendment

By Susan Smiley

A Michigan State University trustee filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the board chair and secretary Wednesday, alleging that recent revisions to the board of trustees code of ethics are unconstitutional and intended to silence trustees who criticize the university or dissent from majority decisions.

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Navigating Criminal Liability Under Calif. Worker Safety Law

A new California law mandates agency investigation across several types of workplace safety incidents, eliminates prior discretion and imposes unprecedented parallel criminal investigations, but employers can take steps to manage the heightened enforcement risk, say Stacey Geis at Crowell & Moring and Karen Tynan at Ogletree.

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Mass. High Court Raises Bar For Trade Secret Injunctions

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent decision in Daikin v. Russo confirms that trade secret plaintiffs must prove irreparable harm under ordinary equitable principles when seeking a preliminary injunction, putting an end to potential theories of automatic presumption, says Gregory Bombard at Greenberg Traurig.

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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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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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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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