Analysis

Trump AI Push Runs Up Against Cost, Enviro Concerns

By Juan-Carlos Rodriguez

President Donald Trump's push to rapidly build infrastructure for the booming artificial intelligence industry could drive up energy costs in markets supporting data center growth and even hit roadblocks if state and local governments resist new developments.

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Bellwether Plaintiffs Want Redo Of GE Pollution Trial

By Mike Curley

The plaintiffs in a bellwether pollution suit against General Electric Co. and a former subsidiary are asking for a new trial, arguing the jury should not have been able to find in the subsidiary's favor after it had admitted to responsibility in prior court filings.

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Green Groups Cleared To Join EV Funding Freeze Challenge

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge will let the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations enter a multistate lawsuit against the federal government seeking to preserve funding for new electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, concluding the groups have a significant interest in protecting the project funds.  

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FERC Chair Bids Goodbye At Last Monthly Meeting

By Madeline Lyskawa

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Mark Christie presided over his final monthly open meeting on Thursday, after President Donald Trump nominated Vinson & Elkins LLP energy regulatory counsel Laura Swett to fill the Republican commissioner's seat.

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Toxic Waste Site Owner Can't Sue After Guilty Plea, Court Told

By Chart Riggall

The estates of two former owners of a Georgia chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste at a disused plant asked a federal judge this week to throw out a suit from the current property owner, arguing its hands are far from clean in the site's contamination after its principal's 2022 guilty plea for illegal dumping.

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Conn. Water Cos. Want Judge To Toss Customer PFAS Cases

By Aaron Keller

The Connecticut Water Co. and Aquarion Water Co. on Thursday asked a Connecticut Superior Court judge to dismiss two consumer proposed class actions seeking cash damages for tap water allegedly contaminated with PFAS "forever chemicals," arguing the case should have been first considered by a state regulatory agency.

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Equitrans Charged Over 2-Week Gas Leak In Pennsylvania

By P.J. D'Annunzio

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday on Thursday charged energy company Equitrans LP with failing to properly maintain a facility where natural gas leaked for 14 days into the air, ground and water, contaminating the nearby area and several neighboring states.

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Navy Takes Ariz. Border Land For Immigration Enforcement

By Nate Beck

The U.S. Department of the Interior said it turned over about 285 acres of land along the border with Mexico to the U.S. Navy for three years so the military can set up an enforcement area as part of the Trump administration's efforts to prevent illegal immigration.

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Insurer Asks 4th Circ. To Nix $1.1M Roof Damage Verdict

By Ganesh Setty

An insurer specializing in covering religious organizations asked the Fourth Circuit to set aside a $1.1 million jury verdict it faces over roof damage that a North Carolina church said was caused by snow, arguing the lower court's jury instructions adopted the wrong causation standard.

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Waste Management Unit Sues PE Fund Over Eviction Threat

By Isaac Monterose

A Waste Management Inc. subsidiary accused its private equity fund landlord in Colorado state court of wrongfully threatening the company with eviction from its local large waste recycling facility in north Denver.

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Deals Rumor Mill

CapVest Seeks $11.7B Stake In Stada, Plus More Rumors

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

British private equity firm CapVest Partners is looking to take a major stake in German drugmaker Stada Arzneimittel in a roughly $11.7 billion deal, Comedy Central's "South Park" creators have nabbed a $1.5 billion five-year streaming rights deal with Paramount, and ExxonMobil wants to explore deepwater blocks in Trinidad and Tobago for oil and gas. Here, Law360 breaks down these and other deal rumors from the past week.

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Trump Air Emissions Carveouts Cloud The Regulatory Picture

President Donald Trump's new proclamations temporarily exempting key U.S. industries from air toxics standards, issued under a narrow, rarely-used provision of the Clean Air Act, will likely lead to legal challenges and tighter standards in some states, contributing to further regulatory uncertainty, say attorneys at GableGotwals.

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How Property Insurers Serve As Climate Change Harbingers

Thomas Dawson at McDermott discusses the role that U.S. property insurers may play in identifying and assessing climate risk, as well as in financing climate change adaptation projects, in light of global warming and shifting geopolitical realities.

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Series

Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

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Courts 'Turning Up The Heat' On AI Fake Citation Sanctions

By Emily Sawicki

As the volume of sanctions orders resulting from attorneys' use of faulty citations blamed on artificial intelligence continues to rise, federal judges are beginning to pivot from financial sanctions to more creative means of disciplining lawyers, including targeting their professional reputations in ways that could really hurt.

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Trump Admin Making Another EO Appeal, Targeting WilmerHale

By Jack Karp

The Trump administration is appealing a D.C. federal judge's ruling that President Donald Trump's executive order targeting WilmerHale amounts to a "staggering" assault on the First Amendment, according to a notice filed Friday.

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Will Tom Girardi's Wardrobe Mishap Help His Appeal?

By Craig Clough

When legendary attorney Tom Girardi's pants fell down as he finished testifying in his defense, the judge had to decide: Was this a desperate bid to feign incompetence and avoid prison for stealing client funds, or just an accident by an 86-year-old man with dementia? And if it really was an accident, does it now give Girardi a shot at winning his appeal and overturning his sentence?

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Former Jan. 6 Prosecutor, 2 Other Ex-DOJ Employees File Suit

By Rose Krebs

A former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has filed a federal lawsuit along with two other ex-Department of Justice employees alleging they were unlawfully fired.

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Epic Defends Apple Antitrust Injunction After Birthright Ruling

By Dorothy Atkins

Epic Games has told the Ninth Circuit the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in litigation challenging President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order should not affect a nationwide injunction and civil contempt order issued in its antitrust case over Apple's App Store policies, arguing Apple misread the high court's precedent.

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Judge Keeps Nationwide Block On Birthright Citizenship EO

By Rae Ann Varona

A Massachusetts federal judge Friday refused to narrow a nationwide injunction blocking President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship, saying any narrower alternative would not be enough to protect a group of states from their asserted harms.

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Trump Admin Loses Sanctuary Fight With Ill., For Now

By Hailey Konnath

An Illinois federal judge Friday threw out the Trump administration's first suit challenging local sanctuary policies, ruling that it's within Illinois', Cook County's and Chicago's rights to opt out of helping the federal government with immigration enforcement efforts.

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11th Circ. Calls Dismissal Of Ga. Bar Bias Suit 'Indefensible'

By Chart Riggall

An Eleventh Circuit panel appeared all but certain Friday that it would revive a Georgia attorney's race bias suit against the state's bar association, calling a federal district court's dismissal of her claims that the bar has a two-tiered disciplinary system "indefensible."

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Podcaster At Fees Hearing Blames His Atty For Sanctions

By Zach Dupont

A podcaster accused of spreading lies that a former Dominion Voting Systems Inc. executive rigged the 2020 election blamed his lawyer Friday for his noncompliance with the Colorado federal court, accusing the attorney of "malpractice" and "negligence."

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Dentons Stalling Discovery In Terraform Ch. 11, Court Told

By Alex Wittenberg

The bankruptcy plan administrator for failed cryptocurrency platform Terraform Labs has accused Dentons US LLP of blocking his discovery requests in an attempt to secure final approval of some $25 million in fees, saying the law firm is seeking to "run out the clock" to dodge an investigation into its role in Terraform's collapse.

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Veteran CFPB Enforcement Atty Heads For The Exit

By Jon Hill

A longtime Consumer Financial Protection Bureau litigator told a Virginia federal court on Friday that she is leaving after more than a decade at the agency, becoming the latest departure at the regulator as its future under the Trump administration remains in limbo.

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Legal Org Urges DC Circ. To Reject Trump's Tariff Powers

By Anna Scott Farrell

The D.C. Circuit should affirm a ruling that sided with toy makers and blocked President Donald Trump from using an international economic law to impose emergency tariffs because the law does not give the president the authority he claims, a legal organization argued.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen the owner of a £6 million ($8 million) mansion once rented by Adele sue real estate consultants Strutt & Parker, Romanian-Australian mining investor Vasile Frank Timis bring a claim against reputation and privacy firm Schillings, and a Chinese businessman bring a legal action against his former lawyer over an alleged £12.5 million mortgage fraud.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Glass Lewis brought a lawsuit against Texas over a measure it claims requires the proxy advisory firm to "publicly condemn itself" when its advice for clients reflects certain viewpoints the government disfavors. Meanwhile, a new proposed class action alleges Boeing employees on long-term disability leave missed out on a $12,000 bonus distributed after workers ratified a union contract. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Jones Day and DLA Piper lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Federal Circuit overturned a more than $125 million judgment against Medtronic's CoreValve unit for infringing a Colibri Heart Valve LLC patent.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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