NASCAR Inks Midtrial Antitrust Deal With Teams

By Hayley Fowler

NASCAR has agreed to give its race teams permanent contracts as part of an otherwise confidential settlement that cut short a high-profile antitrust trial in which two teams — including one owned by retired NBA star Michael Jordan — accused it of illegally maintaining a monopoly on premier stock car racing.

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NJ Judge Won't Lift Bid Deadline On Tunnel Rail Project

By Emily Brill

A New Jersey federal judge said Thursday she won't lift a deadline to bid on a railway-construction project associated with building a new tunnel to New York City, saying a New Jersey construction company isn't likely to win its challenge to a project labor agreement tied to the venture.

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CSX Seeks Rehearing In Conductor's Retaliation Suit

By Mike Curley

CSX Transportation Inc. is asking the Second Circuit to reconsider its recent decision reviving a former conductor's suit alleging he was fired in retaliation for reporting a hostile work environment, saying the panel wrongly overturned the circuit's own precedent.

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NextNav Gears Up Geolocation System Test In Bay Area

By Christopher Cole

Navigation technology developer NextNav said Thursday it would conduct a test run in San Jose, California, of its proposed network to backstop the Global Positioning System.

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Solaris Energy Top Brass Sued Over Turbine Co. Acquisition

By Katryna Perera

The top brass of Solaris Energy Infrastructure have been hit with an investor derivative suit in Texas federal court alleging they failed to disclose that a turbine leasing company Solaris acquired lacked the "track record" that it was touted to have, had only one client, and that its owner had a history of "turbine-related fraud," among other things.

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Alaska Natives Say Arctic Oil Project Ignores Enviro Risks

By Juan-Carlos Rodriguez

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management failed to properly evaluate the environmental impacts of ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc.'s seismic and exploration drilling program in the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaskan natives and green groups said Thursday in a new lawsuit.

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Willkie Hires 2nd Jones Day Partner In 2 Weeks In DC

By Jack Rodgers

Another member of the Jones Day litigation team who represented Boeing in its contract suit over production issues for fighter jet parts has joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP's Washington, D.C., office as a partner, making him the second in as many weeks to make the move.

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New Russia Energy Sanctions Add Compliance Complexity

Recent U.S. and U.K. designations of Russian oil companies and related entities, as well as a new sanctions package from EU, mark a significant escalation in restrictions on the Russian energy industry and add a new layer of regulatory complications for companies operating in the global energy sector, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

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Series

Knitting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Stretching my skills as a knitter makes me a better antitrust attorney by challenging me to recalibrate after wrong turns, not rush outcomes, and trust that I can teach myself the skills to tackle new and difficult projects — even when I don’t have a pattern to work from, says Kara Kuritz at V&E.

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Wash. Justices Retroactively Lower Bar Exam's Passing Score

By Ben Adlin

As Washington state is preparing to transition to a new bar exam, its Supreme Court has ordered a retroactive adjustment to the current exam's minimum passing score, making an estimated hundred-plus law school graduates who narrowly failed in recent years newly eligible for admission to practice law.

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Dems Demand Release Of 2nd Jack Smith Report

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday demanding she release the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office the first time.

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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 Shell hit with a climate change claim from 100 survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines, London Stock Exchange-listed Oxford Nanopore bring legal action against its co-founder, and the editors of Pink News sue the BBC for defamation following its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the news site.

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Higgs Fletcher Forms White Collar, Regs Enforcement Team

By Andrea Keckley

San Diego-based law firm Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP has launched a white collar crime and regulatory enforcement defense practice group, citing heightened regulatory scrutiny in the financial and healthcare sectors and rising enforcement risks for licensed professionals and institutions.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to review the influence that proxy adviser firms have, and law firms saw a 9.8% increase in compensation expenses along with a similar increase in billable rates. ​These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Watchdog Sues White House For Records On Law Firm Deals

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington-based nonprofit watchdog has sued the Trump administration, seeking records related to deals BigLaw firms struck to provide an estimated nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to further the administration's priorities, following the president's executive orders to withhold security clearances and investigate the firms.

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Ex-NJ Municipal Court Admin Says COVID Got Her Fired

By George Woolston

The former municipal court administrator for West Windsor Township, New Jersey, has alleged that the town failed to accommodate her disability when it fired her instead of giving her a short medical leave of absence after she contracted COVID-19.

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US Atty Nominee For Wyo. Was Outside Capitol On Jan. 6

By Courtney Bublé

One of President Donald Trump's U.S. attorney nominees, who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently told senators he still thinks "there were imperfections" in the 2020 election process, has been advanced toward Senate confirmation.

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Del. US Atty Resigns Citing 'Politics,' Successor Appointed

By Rose Krebs

The acting U.S. Attorney for Delaware said Friday that she is resigning, citing "a highly politicized, flawed blue-slip tradition" for nominees and saying she "fully" supports her first assistant, who has been appointed by a federal judge to succeed her.

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Bonus Spotlight

Axinn Veltrop's Bonuses Reach Up To $240K

By Andrea Keckley

Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP is giving out bonuses of up to $240,000 for its associates, according to an in-house memo seen by Law360 Pulse.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Ninth Circuit handed Epic Games Inc. a partial win by mostly affirming an injunction blocking Apple Inc. from charging developers "prohibitive" commissions on iPhone app purchases made outside its systems.

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