Plaintiff To Share 'Horrific' Story In First Zantac Cancer Trial

By Celeste Bott

The first trial in sprawling state and federal litigation over whether a chemical in Zantac heartburn medication and its generic counterparts causes cancer began Thursday in a packed Chicago courtroom, with counsel for an 89-year-old Illinois woman telling jurors her colorectal cancer diagnosis and the suffering it's caused can be attributed to her 20-year use of the drug.

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Camp Lejeune Litigants Ask Court Who Can Represent Family

By Emily Field

Family members of former residents of Camp Lejeune who died, allegedly after being exposed to contaminated drinking water, asked the North Carolina federal court overseeing the litigation on Wednesday to clarify who can qualify to act as a legal representative for out-of-state decedents.

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Ship Captain Gets 4 Years Over Boat Fire That Killed 34

By Gina Kim

A California federal judge on Thursday sentenced a ship captain to four years in prison over his conviction stemming from a deadly boat fire that killed 34 people, citing the captain's remorse and lack of ill intent as he declined to impose the government's and some victims' family members' request for the statutory maximum of 10 years.

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'Inflammatory' Words Spark Sanctions Bid In Child Death Suit

By Ryan Harroff

Catholic Charities Corp. and the estate of a 5-year-old boy who an Ohio jury said died in part because of the nonprofit's negligence sparred over whether it violates a "golden rule" of litigation for the jury to picture the boy's suffering, with the nonprofit seeking sanctions over what it considered to be "inflammatory" statements by the estate's attorney.

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Calif. Justices To Review Gilead's HIV Drug Negligence Fight

By Dorothy Atkins

The California Supreme Court has granted Gilead Sciences Inc.'s request to review an appellate court's holding that the drugmaker must face claims it held back a safer HIV drug to maximize profits on an older medication.

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4th Circ. Revives Workers' Suit Over SC Plant Explosion

By Mike Curley

The Fourth Circuit on Thursday revived claims from three workers burned in an explosion at a plastic recycling plant, saying the South Carolina Workers' Compensation Law can't deprive the federal courts of diversity jurisdiction in a case where they would otherwise have it.

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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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Schumer Reups Call For His Judge Shopping Bill

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that a suit filed in a controversial Texas court challenging a new firearms policy from the Biden administration underscores the need for his bill to restrict so-called "judge shopping."

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Biden Announces $3B To Fund Lead Pipe Replacement

By Jonathan Capriel

The Biden administration is distributing $3 billion to states so they can replace lead water pipes that pose a health risk to those who rely on them for drinking water, as part of the larger goal to remove all lead service lines nationwide.

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Endo Judge Hopes Criminal Sentence Warns Opioid Makers

By Danielle Ferguson

A Michigan federal judge said Thursday she hoped Endo's criminal sentence for falsely advertising a pain medication as "abuse deterrent" would itself be a deterrent for other opioid makers, as she accepted the company's recent $200 million settlement deal with federal prosecutors. 

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Law Professor Gets $361K Illegal Recording Verdict Axed

By Carla Baranauckas

A New Jersey federal judge has agreed to vacate a $361,000 verdict against a law professor who a jury determined illegally wiretapped her former son-in-law and invaded his privacy.

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Abu Ghraib Contractor Torture Liability Case Ends In Mistrial

By Daniel Wilson

A Virginia federal judge on Thursday declared a mistrial in a suit accusing military contractor CACI International of aiding and abetting torture at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq, after the jury deadlocked following extensive deliberations.

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Colo. Panel Says COVID Can Trigger Workers' Compensation

By Thy Vo

A Colorado appellate court panel on Thursday ruled for the first time that COVID-19 can be considered an "occupational disease" under the state's workers' compensation law and affirmed the award of benefits to a woman whose husband died of the novel coronavirus while working at a skilled nursing facility.

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Biden Admin Must Reopen Gun Show Loophole, Texas Says

By Spencer Brewer

Texas and several other Republican-led states sued the Biden administration to reopen the so-called gun show loophole, asking the courts to stop the ATF from enforcing a new rule that makes many more firearm sellers register federally and perform background checks when selling a gun.

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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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