Fed Ends Crédit Agricole, Goldman Enforcement Orders

By Jon Hill

The Federal Reserve said Thursday that it has closed out another batch of longstanding enforcement actions against big banks, freeing Crédit Agricole, Goldman Sachs and Taiwan's Mega Bank from orders that date to at least 2018.

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SEC Accuses VC Fund Of Management Fee Fraud

By Sarah Jarvis

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday sued Backswing Ventures GP LLC and its principal in a Florida federal court, alleging the venture capital firm paid itself seven times as much money in management fees than it told investors it would.

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Citron Founder Loses Bid To Trim DOJ Fraud Case

By Craig Clough

A California federal judge has rejected Citron Research founder Andrew Left's bid to trim the federal government's criminal securities fraud case, saying the indictment's first count is not "duplicitous" because it alleges a single market-manipulation scheme involving multiple misleading statements and does not need to be split into multiple counts.

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Binance Can't Push Investor Suit Into Arbitration

By Katryna Perera

Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao cannot force into arbitration a proposed class action alleging that the crypto trading platform knowingly violated U.S. regulatory requirements by failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program and offering and selling unregistered securities, a Florida federal judge ruled Thursday.

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KikOff Co-Founder Seeks Records, Alleges CEO Self-Dealing

By Jarek Rutz

The co-founder of a fintech company aimed at building people's credit has asked the Delaware Chancery Court to force the fintech company to turn over internal records, accusing its CEO of consolidating power and engineering transactions that harmed minority stockholders.

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SEC Says FTX Auditor Didn't Understand Crypto Markets

By Emilie Ruscoe

A Prager Metis equity partner who led the firm's audits of defunct crypto asset trading platform FTX has been barred, for now, from appearing or practicing before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the regulator's claims he mishandled the FTX financial reviews and improperly blessed its financial statements.

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FINRA Fines Firm For Letting Execs Supervise Themselves

By Emilie Ruscoe

A small broker-dealer will pay the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority $125,000 to end claims including that it allowed certain principals to handle supervisory reviews of their own electronic communications, running afoul of its record review obligations for about seven years.

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Crypto CEO Fights Extradition On Human Rights Grounds

By Ronan Barnard

The former chief executive of a crypto-asset company fought against extradition to the U.S. on fraud charges on Thursday, telling a London court that it would violate his human rights as he would be at an increased risk of suicide.

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Driven Brands Hit With Investor Suit Over Financial Controls

By Sydney Price

Auto services holding company Driven Brands is facing a proposed class action from a shareholder accusing it of misleading the public about the firm's internal controls over financial reporting, leading to a 30% single-day share price drop when investors learned that results of several quarters were inaccurately reported.

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Stellantis Faces Investor Suit Over EV-Linked Biz Slump

By Sydney Price

Auto distributor Stellantis NV is facing a proposed shareholder class action alleging it concealed the €22.2 billion ($26 billion) financial burden of shifting focus away from battery-powered electric vehicles after experiencing weaker-than-expected demand.

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Software Co. Investor Claim Sounds 'Like Fraud,' Judge Says

By Chart Riggall

A Georgia federal judge signaled Thursday that supply chain software firm Manhattan Associates Inc. may have to face a shareholder class action from investors who say they were misled about the company's revenues, remarking that their claim, at least as alleged, "sounds to me like fraud."

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Deals Rumor Mill

SpaceX Plans Record Retail Slice In IPO, And Other Rumors

By Al Barbarino

As SpaceX prepares what could be the largest initial public offering ever, executives reportedly told the company's bankers that it plans to allocate a record portion of shares to retail investors, drawing comparisons to the so-called meme stock frenzy of 2021. 

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How 2nd Circ. Gave Loper Bright Real Force In SEC Cases

The Second Circuit's recent decision in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Amah offers one of the first clear indications of how courts will operationalize Loper Bright, signaling that long-standing SEC enforcement theories resting on ambiguous definitional provisions are now subject to more rigorous judicial scrutiny, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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Series

Alpine Skiing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Skiing has shaped habits I rely on daily as an attorney — focus, resilience and the ability to remain steady when circumstances shift rapidly — and influences the way I approach legal strategy, client counseling and teamwork, says Isaku Begert at Marshall Gerstein.

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DLA Piper Partner Rejects Pregnant Atty's Account Of Firing

By Pete Brush

The DLA Piper partner who fired a pregnant associate said she did so lawfully, telling a Manhattan federal jury her former employee was "in over her head" and disputing that the associate raised pregnancy bias concerns on a termination call.

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6th Circ. Won't Revisit EFAA Ruling Against Adams & Reese

By Patrick Hoff

The Sixth Circuit said it won't reconsider its ruling that a law barring mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment cases kept a former Adams & Reese LLP paralegal's sex harassment and disability bias suit in court, concluding that the firm's objections were already considered.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

The past week in London has seen the owner of an oil tanker stuck in the Strait of Hormuz sued by an energy company and an insurer, law firm Boodle Hatfield LLP and two Serle Court barristers sued by a group of Winston Churchill's great-grandchildren, and Welsh Water hit with a fresh class action suit over polluted rivers.

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Calif. Atty Avoids Sanctions For Filing Bogus Citations With AI

By Matt Perez

A California attorney has avoided sanctions over his use of artificial intelligence for a filing in a civil rights case, which resulted in false citations.

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Another Gov't Atty From Vt. Joins Stris & Maher's Team

By Jack Rodgers

A former civil chief of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Vermont has joined Stris & Maher LLP's practice as a partner, the firm announced Friday.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

Other states might follow the lead of California and break with President Donald Trump's policies in implementing guardrails for state agencies to contract with AI companies. And after three individual indictments last month for selling banned tech to China, Supermicro has hired Munger Tolles & Olson LLP to conduct an independent investigation, assigned its general counsel to lead an internal compliance review, and shaken up its compliance leadership.

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NJ Justices Won't Review Beasley Allen's DQ From Talc Cases

By George Woolston

The New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to review a lower court's order booting the Beasley Allen Law Firm from multicounty litigation in the Garden State over Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder, according to an order made public Friday.

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Conn. Justices Block Agency's Bias Probe Into Atty Licensing

By Brian Steele

Because citizens blocked the legislature from reviewing court decisions when ratifying the state's 1818 constitution, a Connecticut human rights agency has no power to investigate alleged bias in attorney licensing decisions, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Friday in a unanimous opinion.

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Airline Worker Asks To Expand Sanctions Row In Bias Case

By Emily Brill

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant who was fired after sending her union's president pictures of aborted fetuses is pushing for additional remedies in a sanctions dispute stemming from her long-running religious discrimination lawsuit against the airline, from which she received $800,000 after winning a jury trial in 2022.

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Trump Taps Personal Atty For 2nd Circ.

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced on Friday evening he's tapping Matthew Schwartz, his attorney in the New York hush money case, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

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