Ship Managers Indicted Over Baltimore Bridge Disaster

By Linda Chiem

Federal prosecutors accused the management company and a supervisor of the container ship that slammed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 of recklessly operating the ship, forging inspection documents and misleading safety investigators, according to a Maryland federal grand jury's criminal indictment unsealed Tuesday.

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GAO Denies Protest Over $803M TSA Security Task Order

By Ganesh Setty

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has rejected an incumbent contractor's protest over the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's selection of an $803 million proposal to provide security screening at San Francisco International Airport, finding no issue with its price analysis.

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NJ Justices Revive Expert Testimony In Vehicular Death Case

By Elizabeth Daley

The New Jersey Supreme Court held Tuesday that a man accused of killing a 94-year-old woman in a crash may present expert testimony challenging whether her death was caused by his alleged recklessness, finding in a reversal that a pretrial evidentiary hearing wasn't needed.

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Alaska Airlines Strikes Deal In Military Pilots' Leave Suit

By Grace Elletson

Alaska Airlines has agreed to settle a pilot's class action claiming the company didn't let employees on military leave accrue the same amount of sick and vacation time benefits civilian employees collected on other types of leave, according to a Washington federal court filing.

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Ex-FCA Exec Must Answer GM Discovery In UAW Bribery Suit

By Melanie Dorsey

Former Fiat Chrysler labor executive Alphons Iacobelli, who was convicted for his role in a union bribery scheme, must answer hundreds of deposition questions in General Motors' sprawling civil suit, a Michigan appellate panel ruled.

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7th Circ. Judges Question NLRB's Union Reinstatement Bid

By Lauraann Wood

Seventh Circuit judges weighing the National Labor Relations Board's bid for an injunction requiring a truck seller to recognize a union it has twice rebuked seemed skeptical Tuesday that the company's employees face irreparable harm without it.

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White & Case Seeks Contempt In Modivcare Ch. 11 Fee Spat

By Clara Geoghegan

White & Case said Modivcare Inc. should be held in contempt for not moving $1.6 million to a Texas bankruptcy court escrow, intensifying a fight over fees the law firm racked up representing unsecured creditors in the reorganized healthcare services group's Chapter 11.

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Royal Caribbean Says Judge Misread Arb. Law In Voyeur Suit

By Mike Curley

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is urging a Florida federal court to reject a magistrate judge's report recommending that a proposed class action over a former crew member's hidden camera voyeurism not go to arbitration, saying the magistrate judge misread maritime law.

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Bus Idling Settlement Includes $5.6M Penalty, Engine Monitors

By Carolyn Muyskens

Private bus operator Academy Express has agreed to pay $5.6 million and install tracking technology on its buses to settle allegations of unnecessary idling, according to a Massachusetts federal court filing.

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NYC China Police Station Case Is Overblown, Jury Hears

By Stewart Bishop

Counsel for a Chinese American man accused of running a secret police station in New York City for China's government told a Brooklyn federal jury Tuesday that his client is being railroaded for helping out his community.

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Insurer Says No Coverage Above $1M For Injured Biker Row

By Danielle Ferguson

The insurer for an auto repossession company and one of its drivers told a Georgia federal court that it does not owe more than its $1 million limit in a case involving the driver hitting a child on a bike, saying the settlement demand from the child's family did not obligate the insurer to resolve the dispute.

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Feds Tell 9th Circ. They Have Last Word On Pipeline Restart

By Tom Lotshaw

A federal pipeline regulator told the Ninth Circuit on Monday it reasonably asserted jurisdiction over an oil pipeline system near Santa Barbara, California, and approved a Texas company's restart plan, saying challenges brought by California and environmental groups are unfounded.

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Legal Risks Rise As Construction-Site Drone Use Soars

Construction companies using drones face mounting legal risks as Federal Aviation Administration compliance requirements tighten, remote identification capabilities expand and proposed rules move toward organizational accountability, making it crucial to update contracts, schedules, safety protocols and data-governance practices now to avoid future liability, say attorneys at Cozen.

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Assessing Material Adverse Event Clauses Amid Iran Conflict

As deals signed before the current Middle East conflict come under pressure, determinations over material adverse effect clauses are arising in real time, and whether an MAE has been wrongfully invoked may be as consequential as whether it was validly established in the first place, say Amran Nawaz and Ralph Stobwasser at Secretariat.

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Md. Justices' State Climate Tort Ban May Shape National Path

The Maryland Supreme Court’s recent ruling that federal law preempted state-level deceptive marketing tort claims brought by several municipalities could offer the U.S. Supreme Court a road map to use in the pending Suncor Energy v. Boulder County case to exclude states from the business of regulating global emissions, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

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Mass. Draft Regs Signal Nationwide Scrutiny Of Junk Fees

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell's new draft regulations for assisted living facilities is only her latest move in the war on junk fees — and part of a national reordering of consumer protection enforcement in which states are aggressively and creatively asserting authority, says Steve Provazza at Arnall Golden.

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4 Emerging Approaches To AI Protective Order Language

Over the last year, at least five federal district courts have issued or analyzed specific protective order provisions restricting the use of generative artificial intelligence platforms with protected materials, establishing that proactive AI-specific provisions are now standard practice and demonstrating that no single model works for every case, says Joel Bush at Kilpatrick.

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Murdaugh Murder Conviction Overturned By SC High Court

By Parker Quinlan

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a double murder conviction and ordered a new trial for disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh, finding the jury in his first trial was biased by a clerk of court who allegedly sought a guilty verdict in a ploy to juice sales of her book about the trial.

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Texas Atty Must Pay $5M For Groping Opposing Counsel

By Lynn LaRowe

A Texas state appellate court on Wednesday refused to disturb a $5 million jury verdict against a San Antonio lawyer for grabbing the buttocks of opposing counsel at the courthouse where they were arguing a family law proceeding in 2019.

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DOJ Goes After DC Bar, Courts For Discipline Of Ex-DOJ Atty

By Hailey Konnath

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday sued the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, D.C. Court of Appeals and the District of Columbia, claiming that they were "punishing" a former Trump administration DOJ official and trying to "control the executive branch."

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DOJ Fraud Division Set To Shake Up White-Collar Enforcement

By Phillip Bantz

President Donald Trump's administration created the U.S. Department of Justice's National Fraud Enforcement Division with a narrow focus on combating government program fraud, but a move to retain federal prosecutors focused on other types of fraud could signal a wider scope with potential ripple effects across white-collar enforcement.

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Arbitrators See Global Stakes In Trump BigLaw EO Fight

By Caroline Simson

Ahead of a D.C. Circuit hearing on Thursday in the Trump administration's effort to revive executive orders imposed against four BigLaw firms, an official at the College of Commercial Arbitrators told Law360 this week there are several things arbitrators are going to be watching for.

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Apple Targets Hagens Berman 'Gamesmanship' In ICloud Suit

By Bryan Koenig

Apple has lashed out at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP for trying to withdraw a named plaintiff from an iCloud antitrust case in California federal court without discovery into any directions she received to preserve now-deleted emails, raising concerns that the withdrawal is meant to "paper over lost evidence."

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Michigan Federal Judge Gets Probation For Drunken Driving

By Susan Smiley

Michigan federal Judge Thomas L. Ludington was sentenced by a state judge Wednesday to six months probation and fined $1,175 in after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor drunken-driving charge last month in Emmet County.

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6th Circ. Says Kentucky Judicial Hopefuls May Tout Ideology

By Emily Sawicki

Kentucky judicial hopefuls are cleared to discuss their political leanings on the campaign trail, according to a precedential ruling by the Sixth Circuit, which permanently enjoined the state's Judicial Conduct Commission from pursuing an enforcement action against two candidates who described themselves as "conservatives" and "Republicans" amid the 2022 election season.

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Judge Says LegalForce Must Pay $93K After Losing TM Suit

By Elliot Weld

A California federal judge on Wednesday ordered LegalForce RAPC Worldwide PC to pay nearly $93,000 in fees and costs to the company that operates LawFirms.com, finding the case to be exceptional because LegalForce alleged facts it knew were false and took steps to obscure other facts that showed its case was meritless.

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CORRECTED: Senate Advances 13 US Attorneys In En Bloc Vote

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 46-45, along party lines, to advance the nomination of 13 U.S. attorneys on Monday as part of a larger nominations package. Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the status of the nominees in the Senate.

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