Makary Out As FDA Commissioner, Trump Says

By Mark Payne

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary is departing the agency, President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday, bringing to an end a tumultuous, one-year run as one of the nation's top health officials.

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Pa. Panel Struggles With Oversight Of $2.2B Opioid Fund

By Matthew Santoni

A Pennsylvania appellate court on Tuesday questioned the system for distributing opioid companies' settlement money, after three counties and the city of Philadelphia said a review board unfairly disapproved their projects after the money was spent.

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DOJ Playing 'Dirty Pool' With Hospital In Trans Care Subpoena

By Mark Payne

A Rhode Island federal judge indicated Tuesday she's likely to quash a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice seeking to obtain gender-affirming care medical records from Rhode Island Hospital, saying the DOJ was playing "dirty pool" by filing a motion to enforce the subpoena in another jurisdiction.

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How They Won It

Attys For Tufts Profs Didn't Blink In A Tenure Standoff

By Julie Manganis

When Jennifer Henricks and Kevin Peters first learned what was happening to tenured professors at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston a few years ago, they knew that what was at stake involved more than just a dispute over the terms of a contract.

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Commerce Details Path To Discount For 100% Pharma Tariff

By Jack McLoone

The U.S. Department of Commerce released guidance for pharmaceutical companies looking to show they have made sufficient onshoring commitments to qualify for a discount on the 100% tariff on certain imported drugs coming this summer.

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Texas AG Targets CVS DEI Program, Threatens Fraud Probe

By Danielle Ferguson

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday warned CVS Health its diversity, equity and inclusion program for suppliers may violate state and federal antidiscrimination laws and gave the company 14 days to respond or risk a Medicaid fraud investigation.

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Mass. Appeals Court Tosses Convictions For Assault On Police

By Elizabeth Daley

A Massachusetts man who was convicted of assaulting police officers was not criminally responsible because the state hadn't shown he wasn't insane, an appeals court majority said Tuesday.

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6th Circ. Says Jailers Entitled To Immunity In Detainee Death

By Parker Quinlan

The Sixth Circuit has ruled that a group of jail officials in Michigan should be given qualified immunity from a lawsuit alleging they ignored the medical needs of a man who was incarcerated in their facility and later died from cardiac arrest.

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Nurse's Family Fights Workers' Comp Loss Over COVID Death

By Hayley Fowler

The family of a North Carolina nurse who died from COVID-19 is challenging the denial of their workers' compensation claim, saying the state incorrectly determined she most likely contracted the virus in the community despite federal standards indicating healthcare workers faced an increased risk of exposure at work.

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Drone Co. Skirts Unfair Biz Practices Claim In Ex-VP's Pay Suit

By Hayley Fowler

North Carolina's Business Court pared down a dispute between a company that makes emergency response drones and its former vice president of sales, finding his claim that the company misled him about its intent to pay him a bonus doesn't rise to the level of an unfair or deceptive business practice.

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​​​​​​​Amazon Beats Sanctions Bid Over Supplement Product Pages

By Ben Adlin

A Washington federal judge declined to sanction Amazon for allegedly failing to preserve product pages for dietary supplements that shoppers claim were improperly labeled, ruling that the retail giant fulfilled its duty to retain the information despite storing it as lines of code instead of viewable documents.

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Cigna Says HIPAA Doesn't Save Website Privacy Suit

By Matthew Santoni

A proposed group of Cigna health plan participants can't cite HIPAA to keep up their claims that the insurer improperly tracked their private information through its websites, since the privacy law doesn't cover the kind of information the company collected, the insurer told a Pennsylvania federal court.

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AliveCor Wants Apple Health Monitor Patent Claims Tossed

By Adam Lidgett

A medical software company has told a California federal court that claims in a pair of health monitoring patents Apple has accused it of infringing are actually invalid, saying they only cover abstract ideas without a technological innovation to save them.

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White & Case Seeks Contempt In Modivcare Ch. 11 Fee Spat

By Clara Geoghegan

White & Case said Modivcare Inc. should be held in contempt for not moving $1.6 million to a Texas bankruptcy court escrow, intensifying a fight over fees the law firm racked up representing unsecured creditors in the reorganized healthcare services group's Chapter 11.

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Fox Rothschild Adds Trial Partner From Nelson Mullins In Fla.

By Madison Arnold

Fox Rothschild LLP has expanded its litigation department in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a new partner from Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP.

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Mass. Draft Regs Signal Nationwide Scrutiny Of Junk Fees

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell's new draft regulations for assisted living facilities is only her latest move in the war on junk fees — and part of a national reordering of consumer protection enforcement in which states are aggressively and creatively asserting authority, says Steve Provazza at Arnall Golden.

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4 Emerging Approaches To AI Protective Order Language

Over the last year, at least five federal district courts have issued or analyzed specific protective order provisions restricting the use of generative artificial intelligence platforms with protected materials, establishing that proactive AI-specific provisions are now standard practice and demonstrating that no single model works for every case, says Joel Bush at Kilpatrick.

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Murdaugh Murder Conviction Overturned By SC High Court

By Parker Quinlan

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a double murder conviction and ordered a new trial for disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh, finding the jury in his first trial was biased by a clerk of court who allegedly sought a guilty verdict in a ploy to juice sales of her book about the trial.

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Texas Atty Must Pay $5M For Groping Opposing Counsel

By Lynn LaRowe

A Texas state appellate court on Wednesday refused to disturb a $5 million jury verdict against a San Antonio lawyer for grabbing the buttocks of opposing counsel at the courthouse where they were arguing a family law proceeding in 2019.

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DOJ Goes After DC Bar, Courts For Discipline Of Ex-DOJ Atty

By Hailey Konnath

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday sued the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, D.C. Court of Appeals and the District of Columbia, claiming that they were "punishing" a former Trump administration DOJ official and trying to "control the executive branch."

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DOJ Fraud Division Set To Shake Up White-Collar Enforcement

By Phillip Bantz

President Donald Trump's administration created the U.S. Department of Justice's National Fraud Enforcement Division with a narrow focus on combating government program fraud, but a move to retain federal prosecutors focused on other types of fraud could signal a wider scope with potential ripple effects across white-collar enforcement.

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Arbitrators See Global Stakes In Trump BigLaw EO Fight

By Caroline Simson

Ahead of a D.C. Circuit hearing on Thursday in the Trump administration's effort to revive executive orders imposed against four BigLaw firms, an official at the College of Commercial Arbitrators told Law360 this week there are several things arbitrators are going to be watching for.

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Apple Targets Hagens Berman 'Gamesmanship' In ICloud Suit

By Bryan Koenig

Apple has lashed out at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP for trying to withdraw a named plaintiff from an iCloud antitrust case in California federal court without discovery into any directions she received to preserve now-deleted emails, raising concerns that the withdrawal is meant to "paper over lost evidence."

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Michigan Federal Judge Gets Probation For Drunken Driving

By Susan Smiley

Michigan federal Judge Thomas L. Ludington was sentenced by a state judge Wednesday to six months probation and fined $1,175 in after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor drunken-driving charge last month in Emmet County.

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6th Circ. Says Kentucky Judicial Hopefuls May Tout Ideology

By Emily Sawicki

Kentucky judicial hopefuls are cleared to discuss their political leanings on the campaign trail, according to a precedential ruling by the Sixth Circuit, which permanently enjoined the state's Judicial Conduct Commission from pursuing an enforcement action against two candidates who described themselves as "conservatives" and "Republicans" amid the 2022 election season.

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Judge Says LegalForce Must Pay $93K After Losing TM Suit

By Elliot Weld

A California federal judge on Wednesday ordered LegalForce RAPC Worldwide PC to pay nearly $93,000 in fees and costs to the company that operates LawFirms.com, finding the case to be exceptional because LegalForce alleged facts it knew were false and took steps to obscure other facts that showed its case was meritless.

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CORRECTED: Senate Advances 13 US Attorneys In En Bloc Vote

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 46-45, along party lines, to advance the nomination of 13 U.S. attorneys on Monday as part of a larger nominations package. Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the status of the nominees in the Senate.

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