Chiquita Paid Militants To Save Lives, Ex-Ops Chief Testifies

By David Minsky

Chiquita's former head of Colombia operations testified in Florida federal court Thursday on payments he approved to militant groups in the country during a period of intense warfare in the 1990s, saying his company was left with little choice but to make the payments because workers' "lives were at stake."

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Kind Keeps Win At 2nd Circ. In MDL Over 'All Natural' Labeling

By Mike Curley

The Second Circuit on Thursday affirmed a summary judgment for Kind LLC against a group of buyers who said the company misled consumers by labeling products as "all natural," saying the plaintiffs failed to establish through evidence how a reasonable buyer would understand the term.

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Patent Board Rulings Send $3.3M Judgment Up In Flames

By Andrew Karpan

The Federal Circuit on Thursday affirmed Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions invalidating three networking patents that NetScout had been found to infringe, and then held that the holding wipes out a $3.3 million judgment against the company, because it was not yet final.

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US Wants To Forfeit $1.55M Landing Gear Bound For Russia

By Carolina Bolado

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a forfeiture action against a $1.55 million set of aircraft landing gear for a Boeing 737-800 that the government confiscated in Miami and says was purchased for a Kyrgyz Republic-based company servicing the Russian government in violation of U.S. economic sanctions.

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11th Circ. 'Emphatically' Upholds JCPenney's Sanctions Win

By Emily Sawicki

The Eleventh Circuit has affirmed a $63,000 sanction against an Alabama shopping mall amid its lease dispute with JCPenney, finding that the mall acted in bad faith by not notifying the court of a lack of diversity jurisdiction, eventually sinking the case — only after JCPenney won partial summary judgment and a later mediation failed.

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11th Circ. Rules Tribal Co. Is Not Immune In Trade Secrets Suit

By Carolina Bolado

The Eleventh Circuit has revived a tribal-owned defense contractor's suit against another tribal-owned competitor and a former employee for allegedly stealing trade secrets, finding the competitor agreed to federal court jurisdiction when it participated in the bidding process for work on a missile detection system.

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11th Circ. Urged To Clear Final Hurdle To Interstate Water Deal

By Chart Riggall

As the finish line comes into view in Georgia and Alabama's decadeslong fight over water rights, the Peach State, the federal government and a host of local water providers are urging the Eleventh Circuit to reject a bid by environmental groups to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' management proposal for the Apalachicola watershed.

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11th Circ. Lets Georgia Island Dock Lawsuit Proceed

By Peter McGuire

A Georgia conservation group can resume its challenge to federal approval of a private pier on Cumberland Island after a divided Eleventh Circuit panel said regulators could conduct a more rigorous environmental review even though the dock was already built.

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Cisco Counterfeiting Scheme Earns Fla. Man 6½ Years

By Elliot Weld

A Florida resident was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after pleading guilty to running what New Jersey federal prosecutors said was an "enormous" scheme to sell over $1 billion worth of counterfeit and broken Cisco networking devices.

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Sysco Unit To Provide Back Pay To End DOL Hiring Bias Probe

By Patrick Hoff

A subsidiary of restaurant food distributor Sysco Corp. will pay over $133,000 in back pay to resolve the U.S. Department of Labor's allegations that it discriminated against women by failing to hire qualified female applicants to fill open warehouse positions in Palmetto, Florida, the agency said Thursday.

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Sugar Price-Fixing Suits Combined In NY

By Jared Foretek

A New York federal judge consolidated six proposed price-fixing class actions against domestic sugar producers, siding with plaintiffs who wanted to try the cases as part of a multidistrict litigation.

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Holland & Knight Taps M&A Pro As Jacksonville, Fla. Leader

By Jake Maher

Holland & Knight LLP announced a leadership change in Florida this week with a mergers and acquisitions partner of more than 11 years and expert in venture capital law taking charge in Jacksonville.

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Navigating Harassment Complaints From Trans Employees

The Eleventh Circuit's recent decision in Copeland v. Georgia Department of Corrections, concerning the harassment of a transgender employee, should serve as a cautionary tale for employers, but there are steps that companies can take to create a more inclusive workplace and mitigate the risks of claims from transgender and nonbinary employees, say Patricia Konopka and Ann Thomas at Stinson.

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Don't Use The Same Template For Every Client Alert

As the old marketing adage goes, consistency is key, but law firm style guides need consistency that contemplates variety when it comes to client alert formats, allowing attorneys to tailor alerts to best fit the audience and subject matter, says Jessica Kaplan at Legally Penned.

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Legal Industry Gains Jobs In April Following Downward Trend

By Tracey Read

The U.S. legal sector eased back into a positive trajectory in April, with a gain of 3,200 jobs compared with the previous month, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Boies Schiller's Sigrid McCawley

By Hannah Albarazi

Sigrid McCawley was barely back from parental leave with her fourth child in February 2015 when she flew to New York City to take on a case that would turn her life upside down, and change the world.

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Q&A

NJ Judge Kugler Reflects On 32 Years Spent As Federal Jurist

By George Woolston

With the fates of his colleagues who didn't get the chance to enjoy retirement weighing on his mind, Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler decided this year it was time to call it a career on the bench in Camden, New Jersey, after three decades of service.

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Graham Blasts Mass. Judge Nom For 'Radical' Policing Letter

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted a Massachusetts judicial nominee on Friday for failing to disclose prior to his nomination hearing that his name appears on the letterhead of a 2020 public statement issued in the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd by police.

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Judge In Trump's Georgia Case Raises $320K For Election Bid

By Chart Riggall

In his bid for election to his first full term on the bench, the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case is enjoying support from a broad swath of the Atlanta legal community, raising over $127,000 in the last three months.

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Robbins Geller Attys To Take Stand In $8M Sanctions Dispute

By Bryan Koenig

A petroleum refiner will put current and former Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP attorneys on the stand May 7 in an extraordinary evidentiary hearing testing what the plaintiffs' lawyers knew about an analyst's now-discredited findings as they pursued since-nixed price-fixing claims.

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California Judge Ousted For 'Willful,' 'Prejudicial' Misconduct

By Jake Maher

A California state judge has been removed from the bench after an investigation found that he conducted a campaign of retaliation against court employees he suspected of being "moles" in a probe against him and lied about his actions to investigators afterward.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Clement & Murphy PLLC and Yetter Coleman LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Fifth Circuit reversed a Texas federal court's $1.6 billion ruling against IBM in an operating agreement dispute with Houston-based software company BMC.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

A former general counsel testified Thursday in the criminal fraud trial of former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch that the company's chief operating officer didn't want a whistleblower's claims to get into court, and a South Carolina man and his companies must pay the SEC nearly $24.9 million to settle claims that he misappropriated investors' money to make Ponzi payments. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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

By Laura Stewart Liberty

The past week in London has seen rapper Ivorian Doll hit with a copyright claim, private members club Aspinalls file a claim against a Saudi sheikh, and Motorola Solutions file a claim against the British government on the heels of its dispute over losing a £400 million ($502 million) government contract. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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