Ga. Panel Lets Lyft Escape Liability In Driver Assault Suit

By Y. Peter Kang

A Georgia appellate court ruled Tuesday that Lyft was properly dismissed from a suit by a passenger who was badly beaten by his driver, ruling that reports of unsafe driving and suspected drug or alcohol use did not make the driver's violent assault reasonably foreseeable.

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Carmaker FCA Inks $5M Deal To Settle Jeep Hybrid Defect Suit

By Dorothy Atkins

FCA US LLC has agreed to pay up to $5 million to resolve proposed class claims alleging it sold Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid vehicles with a defect that renders electric driving unavailable, while class counsel plans to seek an additional $2 million in fees, costs, expenses and incentive awards.

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5th Circ. Revives Ex-Union Pacific Conductor's ADA Case

By Grace Elletson

The Fifth Circuit reinstated a suit from an ex-conductor who said Union Pacific wouldn't let him return to his job after passing a color vision test, rejecting the company's claim that he had waited too long to lodge his claims after being excluded from a similar class action.

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Analysis

Permit Bill Speeds Up Project Fights With Appeals Court Push

By Keith Goldberg

U.S. Senate permitting legislation could reduce courtroom time for energy project developers by funneling more lawsuits challenging federal agency decisions directly to appeals courts, though attorneys caution that it isn't necessarily a silver bullet for faster litigation results.

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Brief

Commerce Orders Major Duties On Chinese Van-Type Trailers

By Jack McLoone

Van-type trailers and their subassemblies imported to the U.S. from China are subject to triple-digit countervailing and antidumping duties, the U.S. Department of Commerce ordered Tuesday.

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Opinion

Justices' Climate Ruling Should Preserve State Tort Claims

As recent oral arguments in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County demonstrated, the case hinges on long-standing principles of federalism that allow state and local governments to protect their resources and citizens — and if the justices rule based on precedent, Suncor should lose, says William Buzbee at Georgetown University Law Center.

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Judge Hellerstein, Gruff Moderator Of Major Cases, Dies At 92

By Pete Brush

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, a former litigator and sometimes impatient Manhattan federal jurist who presided over decades of high-profile cases that often came under close appellate scrutiny, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

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Texan Claims Austin Firm Hasn't Alerted Him To Data Breach

By Andrea Keckley

Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson LLP, an Austin, Texas-based law firm focused on collecting debts and taxes for public-sector clients, failed to protect its clients' personal information from a data breach, the plaintiff in a proposed class action claimed in Texas federal court Tuesday.

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BakerHostetler Malpractice Case To Expand With RICO Claim

By Emily Johnson

A Georgia federal judge has allowed a trustee who has accused BakerHostetler and an Atlanta-based attorney of legal malpractice to file an amended complaint after the trustee asked to add claims of Georgia RICO Act violations.

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Weil To Wind Down As Top Attorneys Abandon Firm

By Daniel Moritz-Rabson, Alex Wittenberg and Aebra Coe

Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, the restructuring powerhouse that led Lehman Brothers, Enron and General Motors through bankruptcy, told Law360 Pulse Wednesday that the firm is preparing to wind down operations.

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NJ Atty Mishandled Property Damage Dispute, Court Told

By Hope Patti

A man told a New Jersey federal court that he was forced to pay excessive and avoidable fees to an attorney hired to represent him in a property damage dispute after the attorney mishandled the case by failing to advise him to tender the claim to his homeowners insurer.

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BigLaw Tip Middleman To Admit Role In $3.5M Trading Scheme

By Chris Villani

An alleged middleman in a sweeping scheme to trade off of deal information stolen from major law firms has agreed to plead guilty and potentially faces a prison term of nearly a decade, according to a plea agreement filed Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court.

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Mich. Judge Weighs Toshiba Legal Bills Discovery Fight

By Melanie Dorsey

A Michigan federal judge on Wednesday questioned whether she needs to review specific objections to DTE Electric Co. and Consumers Energy Co.'s multimillion-dollar attorney fee request before deciding whether Toshiba Corp. must disclose its own legal bills and litigation expenses following a nearly $394.4 million jury verdict over a botched power plant overhaul.

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Proskauer, Reddit Attys Called To Testify In Data-Scraping Suit

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge on Wednesday called for live testimony from two Proskauer Rose LLP attorneys and Reddit's deputy general counsel as he weighs the law firm's bid to represent Perplexity AI in a lawsuit from Reddit, the firm's former client, over alleged data scraping.

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SC Gov.'s Counsel Still In The Running For Federal Judgeship

By Courtney Bublé

The chief legal counsel for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is "being actively considered" for a federal judgeship, according to the White House, but it's not a done deal yet.

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