Analysis

Experts See Immunity Defense Reset After NJ Transit Ruling

By Carla Baranauckas

The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous ruling Wednesday that New Jersey Transit isn't an arm of the state clarified a key limit on sovereign immunity, with experts telling Law360 that the court's emphasis on corporate form and formal liability could change how states structure and defend their state-created, quasi‑governmental entities.

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NJ Talc Suit Will Proceed Amid Beasley Allen DQ Appeal

By Emily Sawicki

The New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to stay multicounty litigation over Johnson & Johnson's talc-based baby powder brought by hundreds of women who allege their ovarian cancer was linked to the product, while Beasley Allen appeals its removal as plaintiff's counsel over a firm partner's collaboration with the pharmaceutical giant's former outside counsel.

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Atty Should've Checked Docket, Says Philips CPAP Judge

By Jonathan Capriel

An attorney and his client have no one but themselves to blame for the permanent end to a product liability lawsuit over a recalled Philips sleep breathing machine, a Pennsylvania federal judge said on Friday, saying it was on them to monitor the docket.

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ExThera Exec Hid Patient Deaths To Keep $10M Deal, DOJ Says

By Jonathan Capriel

Medical device company ExThera concealed the deaths of two U.S. patients treated with its unapproved blood filtration device at a clinic in Antigua, according to federal prosecutors, with the company agreeing to forfeit nearly $5.7 million and one executive facing up to three years in prison.

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Mass. Judge Told Vax Committee Must Be Fairly Balanced

By Gianna Ferrarin

A key federal vaccine committee remains subject to statutory requirements that its membership be fairly balanced, a Massachusetts federal judge heard from both U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and medical organizations challenging his overhaul of the group.

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Tobacco Co. Nasco Argues Hestia Suit Lacks Specifics

By Mike Curley

A tobacco product manufacturer is asking a North Carolina federal court to throw out some claims in a contract dispute with the owners of Hestia Tobacco, saying the complaint hasn't identified contracts that it allegedly interfered with, or any fraud.

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Meta, Google Begin Defense As Mental Harm Plaintiff Rests

By Craig Clough

Attorneys for the plaintiff in a landmark bellwether California trial in a suit accusing Instagram and YouTube of harming children's mental health rested their case Friday, opting not to call the plaintiff's mother to testify live despite the defense portraying her as the potential cause of the plaintiff's mental health struggles.

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Meta Witness Says Spotty Audits Show Commitment To Safety

By Cara Salvatore

A trust and safety expert witness for Meta defended the company Friday over shortcomings laid out in internal audits, telling a jury that the audits' existence refutes the New Mexico attorney general's claims that Meta did not take user safety seriously.

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Leveraging MDLs And State Courts In Mass Tort Strategy

Multidistrict litigation's quiet drift from a pretrial coordination device to a de facto national court for mass torts poses a strategic question for plaintiffs counsel — whether an MDL will yield timely trials, meaningful accountability and fair value for clients, or whether a state court strategy will be more effective, say attorneys at DiCello Levitt.

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Character.AI Case Highlights Agentic AI Liability Questions

The recently settled litigation against Character Technologies Inc. provides an early case study for exploring salient legal issues related to agentic artificial intelligence, such as tort liability, strict liability, statutory liability and contractual liability, says Samuel Mitchells at Smith Gambrell.

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DOJ Forges Ahead With Law Firm EO Appeals At DC Circ.

By Lauren Berg

The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday moved ahead with filing appeals at the D.C. Circuit to defend executive orders issued by President Donald Trump targeting four law firms, just three days after the agency backtracked on its decision to drop the fight.

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Legal Jobs Up 19th Straight Month In 'Goldilocks' Economy

By Tracey Read

The legal sector continued its lengthy upward streak in February, with 2,600 more people employed in lawyer, paralegal and other law-related professional roles last month than in January, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Ex-Girardi Keese Atty Pleads Guilty For Role In Client Scandal

By Dorothy Atkins

Former Girardi Keese attorney Keith Griffin pled guilty to criminal contempt in Illinois federal court on Thursday for his role in the firm's failure to pay millions ​in client settlement funds to relatives of victims killed in the crash of Lion Air Flight 610.

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Louisiana Atty Sanctioned Over AI Hallucinations In Filing

By Matt Perez

A Louisiana attorney was fined $1,000 Thursday for his use of artificial intelligence in drafting an error-riddled brief, while three co-counsel were spared penalty.

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Investors Accuse Alston & Bird Of Aiding $328M Crypto Fraud

By David Minsky

Several investors have brought a Florida federal proposed class action alleging legal malpractice against Alston & Bird LLP, accusing the law firm of drafting joint venture agreements that were used to aid a $328 million cryptocurrency scam. 

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Constantine Cannon Defends Handling Of Sutter $75M Fee

By Dorothy Atkins

Constantine Cannon LLP pushed back against Schneider Wallace Cottrell Kim LLP's allegations it unfairly reduced Schneider Wallace's share of a $75.4 million fee award in Sutter Health's $228.5 million antitrust deal, arguing in California federal court that the firm "sat on the sidelines" for most of the decadelong fight and isn't entitled to a bigger cut.

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Florida Bar Rescinds Claim Agency Is Investigating Halligan

By Jack Karp

The Florida Bar said Friday that it is not investigating controversial former interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, walking back a previous assertion it had made in a letter to a nonprofit that it was probing Halligan's actions.

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Courts Aren't Ignoring Justices' TPS Orders, Ex-Judges Say

By Ganesh Setty

Over 175 former federal and state judges have slammed the Trump administration's claim that lower courts "flouted" interim orders from the U.S. Supreme Court in litigation involving the administration's revocation of foreign nationals' temporary protected status, saying they weren't binding.

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Dems Again Push For Independent Immigration Courts

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats have again introduced a bill that would shift the immigration courts from the executive branch to an independent judiciary, following concerns that the Trump administration has "weaponized" the system.

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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 British American Tobacco sued by more than 100 investors, the government bring a claim against a COVID-19 supplier of personal protective equipment, Annington Funding sue its new corporate trustees on the Financial List, and Piers Morgan hit with a defamation claim from a pro-Israel barrister he interviewed on his YouTube channel. 

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, says it will take the Pentagon to court over being designated a national security risk because it wants to impose ethical guardrails on Claude's use. And the Mideast war is making in-house legal teams across the country work long hours to protect employees trapped by the violence and to keep businesses running despite broken supply chains. 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

Winston & Strawn LLP, Sullivan Papain Block McManus Coffinas & Cannavo PC, Stanford's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and attorney Olivia Gabriel lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey cannot shield its public transit system from personal injury lawsuits by out-of-state plaintiffs under sovereign immunity.

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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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