Robins Kaplan File Flub Bad Look For Both Sides, Panel Says

By Rachel Scharf

A Manhattan appeals panel expressed concern Wednesday that Robins Kaplan LLP had poked through an opposing party's Dropbox database that was accidentally shared in investor litigation, while also criticizing the other side for failing to catch the error.

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Icahn, Xerox Investors Settle Nixed HP Merger Suit For $2.2M

By Elliot Weld

Carl Icahn will pay $2.2 million to Xerox under an agreement reached with a pair of the company's stockholders, who accused the billionaire investor in a consolidated shareholder derivative lawsuit of trading on non-public information regarding Xerox's now-doomed bid to acquire HP Inc. for $33 billion.

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SEC Doubles Down On $2B Ripple Labs Sanction Bid

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is standing by its call for crypto platform Ripple Labs to pay $2 billion as punishment for selling unregistered securities, telling a New York federal judge that a lower penalty would send the wrong message to the industry at large.

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Truth Social Backer's Insider Trading Alibi In Jury's Hands

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal jury weighed charges Wednesday against a Florida investor accused of fueling a $23 million insider trading scheme that exploited confidential plans to take Truth Social public, after the defense argued it was someone else who tipped speculators.

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Opioid Maker Beats Investor Suit Over FDA Warning For Good

By Sydney Price

A California federal judge has permanently dismissed a lawsuit from investors of acute pain drug company AcelRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. accusing it of engaging in misbranding violations that put it at greater risk for regulatory scrutiny.

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Sens. Call For Revamp Of SEC's Nixed Stock Buyback Rules

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should "promptly" reissue disclosure rules vacated by the Fifth Circuit last year so that companies are required to publicly disclose more information on their share repurchase plans, a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators told the agency's leader on Monday.

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Bill To Undo SEC Crypto Accounting Bulletin Passes House

By Aislinn Keely

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to overturn the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's controversial cryptocurrency accounting guidance despite protests from Democrats to take a more targeted approach to amend the directive and a White House pledge to veto the bill.

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SEC Says Startup Founder Siphoned $10.8M In Investor Funds

By Emilie Ruscoe

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against the CEO of a chemical coatings startup, alleging that over roughly four years, the executive "siphoned off" $10.8 million, or roughly a third of the $32.5 million his company raised from investors and spent it on extravagances including a private jet.

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SEC Fines Real Estate Developer Over Unregistered Offering

By Sydney Price

A real estate development company and its owner will pay $250,000 to settle the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's claims they sold investors $1.4 million in promissory notes in an unregistered offering.

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Prison Officer Gets 2 Years For Bribes Linked To Rajaratnam

By Brian Dowling

A former federal corrections officer in Massachusetts who accepted bribes and a loan from a billionaire inmate, reportedly the convicted insider trader Raj Rajaratnam, was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison for engaging in what a Boston federal judge called "corruption of the most dangerous sort."  

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Quinn Emanuel Atty Says Asset Freeze Hurt Outcome Defense

By Lauraann Wood

The U.S. government's overreach in restraining millions more than it could reasonably trace back to a $1 billion fraud by Outcome Health prevented the company's former CEO from hiring Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP attorneys to defend the charges like he originally wanted, an Illinois federal judge heard Wednesday.

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Tesla Slams Class Bid For Musk Shares Lockdown In Del.

By Jeff Montgomery

Attorneys for Elon Musk and Tesla Inc. and its board have blasted class attorney motions to sequester billions worth of the automotive company's shares as an improper attempt to shield a nonfinal court ruling on Musk's 10-year compensation plan and as potential interference in a Tesla bid to reincorporate in Texas.

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AMC Objector Says Chancery Settlement Lacked Due Process

By Leslie A. Pappas

An AMC Entertainment Inc. stockholder who opposed a class settlement that the company reached with other shareholders to end Chancery Court litigation over a controversial share conversion told Delaware's Supreme Court Wednesday that the deal should be unwound for lack of due process.

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FTX Says Full Recovery Coming Based On 2022 Crypto Price

By Yun Park

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading Ltd. has claimed its proposed Chapter 11 plan would be able to pay creditors in full with a $13 billion distribution that exceeds the estimated allowable $11.2 billion in claims, but the payout is based on the value of cryptocurrency in November 2022, when the exchange filed for bankruptcy protection. 

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Digitex Founder Pleads Guilty To Bank Secrecy Act Violation

By Donald Morrison

The founder of Digitex Futures Exchange has pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by refusing to implement policies designed to prevent money laundering on his cryptocurrency futures platform.

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Labaton, Boston Pension Win Bid to Lead NYCB Investor Suit

By Katryna Perera

A New York magistrate judge appointed Boston's municipal pension plan and its attorneys from Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP to lead a proposed securities class action against New York Community Bancorp Inc. after the pension plan successfully showed that the plaintiff with the greatest losses bought their shares too late.

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Hawaii Utility Seeks Exit From Shareholder Suit Over Maui Fire

By Katryna Perera

Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. has asked a California federal judge to toss an investor suit over a downturn in the company's stock price after a deadly fire broke out on Maui, saying it did not mislead investors about efforts to mitigate fire risk or completely outrule the risk of fire.

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ESOP Trustee Can't Ax Suit Claiming $60M Inflated Stock Deal

By Grace Elletson

A Michigan federal judge left most of a suit intact Wednesday alleging the trustee of a steel company's employee stock ownership plan allowed it to buy $60 million in company stock at an inflated price, ruling that the worker behind the suit backed his claims with enough detail.

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Scooter Co.'s Mismanagement Cost ESOP Millions, Suit Says

By Emmy Freedman

A scooter company violated federal benefits law by putting too much of workers' retirement funds into investments that produced meager returns and causing its employee stock ownership plan to lose out on about $3.3 million since 2018, a proposed class action filed in Pennsylvania federal court said.

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Shockwave Medical Investor Challenges $13B Deal With J&J

By Sydney Price

A shareholder of cardiovascular treatment company Shockwave Medical Inc. is attempting to halt the company's "unfair" $13 billion proposed transaction with Johnson & Johnson by filing a securities suit, saying the transaction will only benefit company insiders and damage public shareholders.

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Credit Suisse Urges Mich. Panel To Reverse Biz Loss Denial

By Paul Williams

A Credit Suisse attorney pressed the Michigan Court of Appeals on Wednesday to clarify how the state's tax laws account for losses from real estate mortgage investment conduits, saying a lower court incorrectly denied its attempt to carry forward $21.3 million in losses.

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Skadden Taps SoFi Bank, Shearman Attys For Co-Lead Roles

By Jack Rodgers

Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP has hired two new co-leaders of its financial institutions regulatory group to advise banks, financial institutions and other market participants on regulatory and legislative developments, the firm announced Wednesday.

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Gibson Dunn Adds Ex-Wachtell, Paul Weiss Attys As Partners

By Kevin Penton

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP has added a former Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz corporate attorney and a former Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP lawyer who specializes in liability management as partners in New York, the firm has announced.

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A Foley Hoag Co-Chair Joins Litigation Firm As Name Partner

By Andrea Keckley

Litigation and dispute resolution firm Elliott Kwok Levine & Jaroslaw LLP will operate under a new name after welcoming as its newest name partner a former federal prosecutor who most recently co-chaired Foley Hoag LLP's white-collar crime and government investigations practice.

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What's Extraordinary About Challenges To SEC Climate Rule

A set of ideologically diverse legal challenges to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure rule have been consolidated in the Eighth Circuit via a seldom-used lottery system, and the unpredictability of this process may drive agencies toward a more cautious future approach to rulemaking, say attorneys at Thompson Coburn.

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5 Climate Change Regulatory Issues Insurers Should Follow

The climate change landscape for insurers has changed dramatically recently — and not just because of the controversy over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate-related risk disclosure rules, says Thomas Dawson at McDermott.

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Series

Swimming Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Years of participation in swimming events, especially in the open water, have proven to be ideal preparation for appellate arguments in court — just as you must put your trust in the ocean when competing in a swim event, you must do the same with the judicial process, says John Kulewicz at Vorys.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Keller Rohrback's Derek Loeser

By Joyce Hanson

Derek Loeser's path to becoming one of the country's sharpest litigators, winning major cases against large corporations including Facebook and Wells Fargo, may very well have started at his family's dinner table when he was young.

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