Ex-Astros CEO Says He Fully Trusted Owner During 2011 Sale

By Catherine Marfin

A former Houston Astros CEO testified Thursday in state court that the baseball team fully trusted owner Drayton McLane Jr. during his 2011 sale of the team when he said Comcast Corp. could deliver on a plan estimated to be worth $700 million over eight years.

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Analysis

Will 9th Circ. Take 'Rare' Step Of Nixing Kat Von D's IP Win?

By Craig Clough

A Ninth Circuit panel openly struggled this month with a jury's verdict clearing tattoo artist Kat Von D of infringing a photographer's copyrighted photo of Miles Davis, and is now facing the rare proposition of nullifying the verdict based on its own interpretation of the images.

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Q&A

'Tiger King' Atty Talks Building A Firm Through Social Media

By Parker Quinlan

Hours after a federal jury in Manhattan returned a mixed verdict in a sex trafficking case against Sean "Diddy" Combs, Molly Parmer, a Georgia defense attorney and TikTok content creator with more than 94,200 followers, posted a video outlining what he could expect in terms of sentencing. Law360 spoke with Parmer about her practice and how she turned her solo firm, Parmer Law, into a space for online court observers.

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'May The Flow Be With You': Meta Team Made Menstrual Jokes

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Meta legal vice president defending the company in a California federal trial over allegations it illegally gathers users' data from menstrual-tracking app Flo acknowledged Thursday that members of Meta's communications team made "inappropriate" menstruation-related jokes while discussing the issue, with one employee telling another: "May the flow be with you."

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Genentech Seeks Win After $122M Biogen Royalties Mistrial

By Cara Salvatore

Genentech Inc. urged a California federal court Wednesday to rule that Biogen MA Inc. owes $122 million in patent royalties and interest under the "only coherent construction" of their licensing deal, in a rare post-mistrial arrangement that will see the judge step in to deliver the verdict.

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Victim Takes Stand, Tells Of Girlfriend Killed In Tesla Crash

By Carolina Bolado

A woman killed in a 2019 Florida Keys crash was "just a light" who brought joy to everyone she met, her boyfriend told jurors Thursday in a trial over whether Tesla's autopilot system is to blame for the crash.

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DOJ Sentence Ask In Breonna Taylor Case Shows Policy Shift

By Parker Quinlan

Although the request by top U.S. Department of Justice officials seeking a one-day sentence for a former Louisville police officer who participated in the raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death wasn't heeded, former federal prosecutors and defense attorneys say a government request to downgrade a sentence is unusual, but likely to recur in politically relevant matters.

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Trump Admin Asks Justices To Stay Block On NIH Grant Cuts

By Rae Ann Varona

The Trump administration on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a district court's preliminary injunction so that the National Institutes of Health can resume terminating $783 million in grants, saying the lower court, under a recent high court ruling, lacked jurisdiction to make the government pay the grants.

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PTAB Erases Claims In Patent From $279M Samsung Verdict

By Adam Lidgett

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has invalidated claims in one of two Headwater Research wireless communications patents that a jury had found Samsung owed nearly $279 million for infringing, finding that the claims were obvious.

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5th Circ. Tells School District To Rehire Fired Worker

By Grace Elletson

The Fifth Circuit said an ex-maintenance worker who won his wrongful termination suit against a school district should be reinstated, faulting the lower court for finding that he couldn't be given a job because his previous position had been filled.

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NC Fire Chief Never Finalized Race Bias Deal, Judge Rules

By Hayley Fowler

A fire chief's race bias suit against the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, will go to trial more than three years after he believed the case to have settled, after a federal judge found the deal was never finalized and thus could not be enforced.

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Bets On Atty's Lien Biz Lost Millions, Investor Tells Jury

By Pete Brush

A seasoned investor told a Manhattan federal jury Thursday that he heavily backed a tax-lien fund controlled by a lawyer now accused of fraud, ultimately losing $2.9 million in supposedly low-risk bets where such losses were "not supposed to be possible."

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Feds Rest Crypto Laundering Case Against Tornado Founder

By Stewart Bishop

Manhattan federal prosecutors on Thursday rested their case against Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm, who's accused of scheming to launder more than $1 billion in proceeds from criminal activity through the cryptocurrency tumbler and conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions on North Korea.

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5th Circ. Loath To Say Guilty Plea Implicated Brother In Fraud

By Spencer Brewer

A Fifth Circuit panel seemed skeptical of a convicted Dallas fraudster's argument that the jury's learning of his brother's guilty plea in a conspiracy indictment tainted his own case, asking during oral arguments on Thursday how the guilty plea directly implicated him.

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NJ High Court Orders Questioning Of Murder Trial Juror

By Elizabeth Daley

New Jersey's highest court cast doubt on three murder convictions on Thursday and ordered a judge to make up for inadequately questioning a juror after receiving a tip that she was Googling and discussing the case against three men who allegedly killed a schoolteacher, reportedly telling colleagues she would find them guilty and 'burn their asses.'

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Pa. Court Backs Use Of DNA From Trash In 1995 Rape Case

By Elizabeth Daley

The Pennsylvania Superior Court on Thursday upheld the use of a John Doe warrant and decades-delayed DNA testing to identify and convict a man in 2024 for the violent rape of a Penn State student in 1995, saying in the precedent-setting opinion that police were allowed to collect DNA evidence from the man's trash years later.

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CME Facility Prioritizes Profit Over Promises, Traders Argue

By Lauraann Wood

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade prioritized profits over its contractual promises when it opened a facility to accommodate high-speed and algorithmic trading without keeping its access exclusive to longtime floor traders, the traders' counsel argued Thursday, asking an Illinois jury for more than $2 billion in damages. 

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Bellwether Plaintiffs Want Redo Of GE Pollution Trial

By Mike Curley

The plaintiffs in a bellwether pollution suit against General Electric Co. and a former subsidiary are asking for a new trial, arguing the jury should not have been able to find in the subsidiary's favor after it had admitted to responsibility in prior court filings.

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FTC May Join Intuitive Surgical Antitrust Appeal

By MJ Koo

The Federal Trade Commission has asked the Ninth Circuit for extra time to decide if it will weigh in on a $140 million antitrust appeal involving Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci robot.

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Insurer Asks 4th Circ. To Nix $1.1M Roof Damage Verdict

By Ganesh Setty

An insurer specializing in covering religious organizations asked the Fourth Circuit to set aside a $1.1 million jury verdict it faces over roof damage that a North Carolina church said was caused by snow, arguing the lower court's jury instructions adopted the wrong causation standard.

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Jury Awards $45M To Conn. Man Paralyzed In Cycle Crash

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut towing company is on the hook for most of a $45 million verdict favoring a 26-year-old motorcycle rider left permanently paralyzed after striking a company customer's SUV as the driver tried to leave from behind an illegally parked tow truck, the biker's law firm announced Thursday.

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Dish Network Can't Get Redo In $3.5M Auto Crash Suit

By Mike Curley

A New Jersey appeals panel won't let Dish Network Service LLC get a retrial following a $3.5 million verdict in favor of a woman grievously injured in a collision involving one of its drivers, rejecting its argument that the evidence didn't support the verdict.

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Series

Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

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Courts 'Turning Up The Heat' On AI Fake Citation Sanctions

By Emily Sawicki

As the volume of sanctions orders resulting from attorneys' use of faulty citations blamed on artificial intelligence continues to rise, federal judges are beginning to pivot from financial sanctions to more creative means of disciplining lawyers, including targeting their professional reputations in ways that could really hurt.

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Trump Admin Making Another EO Appeal, Targeting WilmerHale

By Jack Karp

The Trump administration is appealing a D.C. federal judge's ruling that President Donald Trump's executive order targeting WilmerHale amounts to a "staggering" assault on the First Amendment, according to a notice filed Friday.

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Will Tom Girardi's Wardrobe Mishap Help His Appeal?

By Craig Clough

When legendary attorney Tom Girardi's pants fell down as he finished testifying in his defense, the judge had to decide: Was this a desperate bid to feign incompetence and avoid prison for stealing client funds, or just an accident by an 86-year-old man with dementia? And if it really was an accident, does it now give Girardi a shot at winning his appeal and overturning his sentence?

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Former Jan. 6 Prosecutor, 2 Other Ex-DOJ Employees File Suit

By Rose Krebs

A former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has filed a federal lawsuit along with two other ex-Department of Justice employees alleging they were unlawfully fired.

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Epic Defends Apple Antitrust Injunction After Birthright Ruling

By Dorothy Atkins

Epic Games has told the Ninth Circuit the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in litigation challenging President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order should not affect a nationwide injunction and civil contempt order issued in its antitrust case over Apple's App Store policies, arguing Apple misread the high court's precedent.

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Judge Keeps Nationwide Block On Birthright Citizenship EO

By Rae Ann Varona

A Massachusetts federal judge Friday refused to narrow a nationwide injunction blocking President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship, saying any narrower alternative would not be enough to protect a group of states from their asserted harms.

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Trump Admin Loses Sanctuary Fight With Ill., For Now

By Hailey Konnath

An Illinois federal judge Friday threw out the Trump administration's first suit challenging local sanctuary policies, ruling that it's within Illinois', Cook County's and Chicago's rights to opt out of helping the federal government with immigration enforcement efforts.

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11th Circ. Calls Dismissal Of Ga. Bar Bias Suit 'Indefensible'

By Chart Riggall

An Eleventh Circuit panel appeared all but certain Friday that it would revive a Georgia attorney's race bias suit against the state's bar association, calling a federal district court's dismissal of her claims that the bar has a two-tiered disciplinary system "indefensible."

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Podcaster At Fees Hearing Blames His Atty For Sanctions

By Zach Dupont

A podcaster accused of spreading lies that a former Dominion Voting Systems Inc. executive rigged the 2020 election blamed his lawyer Friday for his noncompliance with the Colorado federal court, accusing the attorney of "malpractice" and "negligence."

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Dentons Stalling Discovery In Terraform Ch. 11, Court Told

By Alex Wittenberg

The bankruptcy plan administrator for failed cryptocurrency platform Terraform Labs has accused Dentons US LLP of blocking his discovery requests in an attempt to secure final approval of some $25 million in fees, saying the law firm is seeking to "run out the clock" to dodge an investigation into its role in Terraform's collapse.

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Veteran CFPB Enforcement Atty Heads For The Exit

By Jon Hill

A longtime Consumer Financial Protection Bureau litigator told a Virginia federal court on Friday that she is leaving after more than a decade at the agency, becoming the latest departure at the regulator as its future under the Trump administration remains in limbo.

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Legal Org Urges DC Circ. To Reject Trump's Tariff Powers

By Anna Scott Farrell

The D.C. Circuit should affirm a ruling that sided with toy makers and blocked President Donald Trump from using an international economic law to impose emergency tariffs because the law does not give the president the authority he claims, a legal organization argued.

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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 the owner of a £6 million ($8 million) mansion once rented by Adele sue real estate consultants Strutt & Parker, Romanian-Australian mining investor Vasile Frank Timis bring a claim against reputation and privacy firm Schillings, and a Chinese businessman bring a legal action against his former lawyer over an alleged £12.5 million mortgage fraud.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Glass Lewis brought a lawsuit against Texas over a measure it claims requires the proxy advisory firm to "publicly condemn itself" when its advice for clients reflects certain viewpoints the government disfavors. Meanwhile, a new proposed class action alleges Boeing employees on long-term disability leave missed out on a $12,000 bonus distributed after workers ratified a union contract. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Jones Day and DLA Piper lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Federal Circuit overturned a more than $125 million judgment against Medtronic's CoreValve unit for infringing a Colibri Heart Valve LLC patent.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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