DuPont, Spinoffs Ink Historic $590M PFAS Deal In NC

By Hayley Fowler

DuPont and its spinoffs will pay $590 million to resolve claims they contaminated North Carolina's environment with forever chemicals, marking the largest total environmental damages recovery in the state's history, Attorney General Jeff Jackson and The Chemours Co. announced Thursday.

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6th Circ. Says GE Asbestos Suit Belongs In Kentucky Court

By Mike Curley

The Sixth Circuit sent a woman's suit against General Electric Co. over her husband's asbestos-related mesothelioma back to Kentucky state court, rejecting the company's argument that the man's military service warranted removal to federal court.

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Zuckerberg Testifies List Of Kid-Glove Users Not A Problem

By Cara Salvatore

Mark Zuckerberg strenuously disputed in testimony seen Thursday by a New Mexico jury that Facebook's internal list of parties whose content receives special treatment undercuts the company's public declarations that policy-violating content must be taken down without exception.

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Calif. Enacts Laws To Curb Addictive Feeds, AI Risks For Kids

By Dorothy Atkins

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed more than a dozen kids online safety bills into law Thursday, expanding student data privacy laws while barring social media companies from offering teens personalized accounts with addictive features and requiring artificial intelligence companies to implement guardrails to prevent teen suicide and self-harm.

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Fla. AG Pushes Liability For Chatbots' Role In Crimes

By Carolina Bolado

Florida's attorney general — who has accused OpenAI of facilitating a deadly mass shooting at Florida State University — is now pushing for legislation that would impose heavy fines, payments to victims and monitorship on tech companies whose artificial intelligence chatbots participate in criminal activity.

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Hess Corp. Says Insurers Must Cover Cancer Suits

By Danielle Ferguson

Hess Corp. has told a New Jersey federal court that insurers must defend and indemnify it against personal injury suits brought by employees of a transportation company who allege their exposure to benzene in Hess gasoline contributed to their cancer diagnoses.

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9th Circ. Clears Boeing Of Liability In Police Helicopter Crash

By Dorothy Atkins

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a ruling Wednesday tossing product liability litigation over a 2022 Huntington Beach Police Department helicopter crash that killed an officer and injured another, finding the victims' claims against Boeing and other aircraft-makers are time-barred under the General Aviation Revitalization Act's 18-year statute of repose.

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RJ Reynolds Wants In On Suit Over FDA Vape Review Rule

By Jonathan Capriel

Vape and nicotine pouch subsidiaries owned by Altria and R.J. Reynolds are looking to upend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's premarket authorization rule, claiming the agency is breaking the law by dragging out product reviews well past the statutory deadline, which delays their goods by years while illegal Chinese products flood the market.

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Unharmed Class Members Don't Sink US Steel Pollution Suit

By Matthew Santoni

A Pennsylvania state judge denied U.S. Steel's bid to undo a class of residents surrounding the company's Clairton Coke Works on Wednesday, after the steelmaker argued that some class members attested they were not harmed by an increase in sulfur pollution after a 2018 fire.

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Fla. Panel Orders New Trial In $604K PGA Resort Fall Suit

By Mike Curley

A Florida appeals panel has ordered a new trial and vacated a $604,000 jury verdict in a woman's trip-and-fall suit against PGA National Resort and Spa, saying the trial court wrongly treated an out-of-date administrative rule as binding law.

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State AI Safety Laws Raise New Liabilities For Healthcare Cos.

Healthcare and life science companies using third-party artificial intelligence tools should pay particular attention to the changing state-level legal landscape, where the rollout of multiple AI safety laws is introducing both new compliance obligations and potential consumer protection liabilities, say attorneys at McDermott.

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Series

Juggling And Unicycling Make Me A Better Lawyer

Because I juggle (sometimes with fire) and ride the unicycle, friends and family used to joke that I should join the circus, but I pursued the practice of law instead and learned that my hobbies benefit my profession in several important ways, says Morgan Eddy at Smith Currie.

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Senior Lawyers Survey: Tell Us About Your Career

How are senior lawyers adapting to evolving career paths and emerging technologies? Share your perspective in this five-minute survey.

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Engineering Co. Calls Atty-Ouster Bid Retaliatory In Wage Suit

By Benjamin Morse

An engineering company urged a Pennsylvania federal judge to reject a bid to remove its lawyer from a wage case, arguing the worker is retaliating because the company tried to disqualify one of his attorneys from a separate case.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Elias Law Group LLP and Stinson LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Missouri cannot use a newly drawn congressional map that favors Republicans in the midterms.

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In-House Atty Org. Says Rival Ripped Off Data For AI Tool

By Andrea Keckley

The Association of Corporate Counsel alleges in Delaware federal court that its competitor used the nonprofit's proprietary materials to train its artificial intelligence tool Lloyd and "brazenly promoted its Lloyd product by showing the public that ACC materials could be accessed via Lloyd."

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Greenberg Traurig, Eckert Seamans Hit By Data Breaches

By Ryan Boysen

Greenberg Traurig LLP and Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC have publicly revealed that they've been hit by data breaches, adding to the dozens of cybersecurity incidents U.S. law firms have suffered this year.

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Legal Ops Duo Sees AI Driving Department Redesign

By Anna Scott Farrell

Connie Brenton and Jeff Franke consider themselves, and others in the field of legal operations, to be, fundamentally, entrepreneurs. Here, the pair sat down with Law360 Pulse to talk about the state of their field, why legal ops is still misunderstood, and their annual conference, Running Legal Like a Business, which took place this week in Las Vegas.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

AI is driving a significant gap between in-house legal departments' budgets and the cost of their workloads, according to a new study. Speaking of gaps, a new Law360 Pulse report on women in law found that men still make up 71% of law firm equity partners and 63% of nonequity partners. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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Analysis

Midterm Wins Could Help Dems Probe Trump's BigLaw Deals

By Courtney Bublé

If the Democrats take back one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, a big item on their oversight agenda will be to step up ongoing investigations of the deals that nine major law firms cut with the Trump administration last year.

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Personal Injury Firm Beats Atty's Bid For 'Birth Justice' TM

By Adam Lidgett

A former associate at a personal injury and medical malpractice law firm can't register in her own name a trademark for birth-injury legal services that she helped develop before and during her employment with the firm, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has ruled.

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Trial Errors 'Crippled Goldstein's Defense,' 4th Circ. Hears

By Jeff Overley

Appellate luminary Tom Goldstein unveiled a sweeping and forceful critique aimed at erasing his felony fraud convictions, telling the Fourth Circuit that prosecutors were hell-bent on convicting him "no matter the facts or law," disregarded a star witness's "incompetence" and benefited from a trial judge's "inexplicable" rulings.

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Interview

ABA Cyber Task Force Co-Chair Eyes AI Education Boost

By Allison Grande

With the legal industry presenting a more and more enticing target for cyberattacks, it's becoming increasingly important for practitioners to know how to best protect clients' data and most effectively use emerging artificial intelligence tools — a task that the American Bar Association's Cybersecurity Legal Task Force is well positioned to assist with, its incoming co-chair recently told Law360.

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Afghan Woman Deported in 1st 'Alien Terrorist' Case

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

The Trump administration deported an Afghan woman accused of plotting an ISIS-inspired mass shooting in the first case before the previously dormant Alien Terrorist Removal Court.

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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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Attys Must Arbitrate $8 Oil To Fight $625K Sanction: 9th Circ.

By Jeff Overley

Class action lawyers slapped with six-figure sanctions for suing Walmart Inc. based on erroneous purchase information can't yet challenge the discipline, the Ninth Circuit ruled, suggesting they may first need to arbitrate grievances over an $8 bottle of avocado oil.

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Ex-Wash. Bench Officer Censured Over Explicit Texts, Emails

By Ben Adlin

The Washington State Commission on Judicial Conduct censured a former Okanogan County Superior Court commissioner Friday, finding that Robert Colbert violated the Code of Judicial Conduct by engaging in what a stipulated agreement describes as "unprofessional, inappropriate communications" with a court employee that involved "sexually explicit language."

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Brief

Colo. Governor Appoints Atty To Denver Court

By Rachel Konieczny

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed Friday an attorney to the Denver District Court, filling the vacancy that will be created by a retirement on the bench.

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