A New York federal judge awarded millions of dollars in attorney fees Friday to the NAACP after a Hudson Valley school district was found to be blocking minority voters' preferred candidates from the school board, while criticizing how much the school district paid its counsel at Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's top two members introduced a bill Thursday to bar judges from considering acquitted conduct in sentencing, a practice that Justice Clarence Thomas and late Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia wanted to review as far back as 2014.
A New York man pled guilty on Friday to hoarding personal protective equipment at the start of the coronavirus pandemic and then selling it — sometimes at a 500% markup — online and at his pizzeria, attempting to profit off the global crisis in violation of the Defense Production Act of 1950.
A luxury Manhattan hotel sued its insurer Friday in New York state court, arguing it was wrongfully denied coverage for pandemic-related losses and quoting former President Donald Trump, who implied insurers should pay virus claims if pandemics aren't specifically excluded from policies.
The former finance director of a Manhattan-based economic development organization on Friday avoided any prison time for her role in a scheme to facilitate bribe payments to the president of the United Nations General Assembly.
A New York judge had to order Venezuela's national oil company to repay about $40 million it owed to a Portuguese pipeline company on a defaulted bond, saying the oil giant failed to prove that it was impossible to repay the debt due to U.S. sanctions.
Food services company Compass Group USA Inc. has told a federal judge that a prospective hire who was denied employment over a positive drug test cannot claim disability discrimination under New York City's Administrative Code because the city does not recognize being a patient as a disability.
A western New York county has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Second Circuit decision that the Cayuga Indian Nation is shielded from paying county property taxes, saying the high court should address questions around tribal sovereign immunity that weren't resolved in its previous decisions.
KeyBank has made a $150 million commitment to assisting low- and middle-income homebuyers after the New York attorney general found that a check-cashing program for nonaccount holders was often unavailable to Western New York consumers when they tried to make use of the program.
The Estate Cos. is reportedly hoping to convert a Florida resort into apartment units, Innovo Property Group has reportedly landed $155 million in financing for a New York industrial project and Morgan Properties is said to have purchased a Florida apartment complex for $31.3 million.
The son of a businessman convicted in the Panama Papers tax evasion scandal has pled guilty to three counts and sentenced to time served, according to a judgment filed in federal court.
A Second Circuit panel asked Friday why a Texas-incorporated group with tenuous ties to the New York University Law Review would sue over the publication's effort to promote diversity, with two judges expressing doubt over the viability of its allegations of harm to white men.
Bitfury Group subsidiary Cipher Mining said Friday that it's aiming to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company to forge a $2 billion Bitcoin mining company, in a deal guided by Latham & Watkins, Schiff Hardin and Mayer Brown.
Private equity firm InterPrivate launched three blank-check companies into the public markets Friday after the companies raised a combined $700 million in White & Case LLP-guided initial public offerings.
The seller of a wind farm project says the buyer, Innogy, is unjustly trying to keep $70 million worth of tax credits by taking advantage of deadline leniency under the COVID-19 pandemic and manipulating the construction schedule to miss contractual deadlines.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against AT&T and three of its investor relations executives Friday for allegedly making selective disclosures of nonpublic information to research analysts.
New York City is primed to offer a new clean energy financing option for developers, and real estate leaders at Duval & Stachenfeld hope this will be part of a broader move to loosen regulations and encourage more development. This is the second in a five-part series of Q&A's with female real estate leaders during Women's History Month, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.
A federal judge said Friday he had no power to freeze Pollock Cohen LLP's assets for a lawsuit filed by a former attorney seeking a slice of settlements reached by the firm in his cases after he was let go.
The city of New York is set to go to trial to face accusations from city Department of Homeless Services officers that it failed to pay overtime for pre- and post-shift work, after a New York federal judge denied an early win for either side.
Bankrupt car parts maker Garrett Motion Inc. told a New York bankruptcy judge Friday that it has reached a deal with shareholders to increase their share of the reorganized company in exchange for their support for the Chapter 11 plan.
Second Circuit Judge Peter W. Hall took senior status on Thursday, giving President Joe Biden a third opening on the New York-based appeals court and his first opportunity to "flip" a circuit to a majority of Democratic appointees.
Industrial-focused private equity firm KPS said Friday it's buying the aluminum rolling business of aluminum and energy multinational Norsk Hydro ASA for €1.38 billion (about $1.64 billion) in a deal guided by three law firms.
Antivirus software innovator John McAfee and his bodyguard have been indicted on fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges for fraudulently touting various cryptocurrencies on Twitter to further two separate schemes, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday.
A major trial against opioid makers by New York's attorney general and local governments will not start at the end of March as planned, a judge ruled Friday, citing ongoing pandemic safety concerns.
A New York federal judge on Thursday threw out a consolidated shareholder lawsuit against Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and two former Merrill Lynch traders over alleged spoofing in the precious metals futures market, ruling that the shareholders waited too long to bring their claims.
Considering the Trump administration's aggressive drug reference pricing rules, and more price control measures potentially on the horizon, drug and biotech companies should prepare a comprehensive readiness strategy tailored to country-specific considerations, says Meenakshi Datta at Sidley.
A New York federal court's recent ruling that Citibank could not claw back funds it mistakenly wired to Revlon lenders contains several legal issues an appellate court will likely review without deference to the lower court — and could lead to the lenders being ordered to return the payments, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.
Attorneys working remotely from jurisdictions in which they are not admitted should take precautionary steps to avoid engaging in unauthorized practice of law, say John Schmidt and Michael Seaman at Phillips Lytle.
In a welcome development for defendants, a New York state court's back-to-back rejections of Securities Act class claims in Sundial Growers and Lyu v. Ruhnn Holdings signal a growing judicial backlash against the flood of similar litigation following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Cyan, say Israel Dahan and Alexander Noble at King & Spalding.
Parenting during the pandemic has introduced a series of competing personal and professional obligations for attorneys and professional staff, and even organizations that are supportive of their parent employees can take steps to do better, says Meredith Kahan at Saul Ewing.
In light of of the U.S. Department of Justice's increasing antitrust scrutiny of labor markets and President Joe Biden's vow to eliminate most noncompetes, companies should customize their compliance plans and review employee agreements to mitigate risk, say Eric Grannon and Adam Acosta at White & Case.
A New York federal court's ruling in JN Contemporary Art v. Phillips Auctioneers, deeming COVID-19 to be a natural disaster that triggers a force majeure clause, appears to loosen previously strict contours of contractual interpretation and could create a legal quandary for obligees, say Kimberly Daily and Matthew Rawlinson at Eversheds Sutherland.
The Second Circuit's recent decision to grant a U.S. Department of Justice motion to dismiss a False Claims Act suit, without weighing in on the standard for assessing the agency’s decision, illustrates a significant trend, given an increase in agency dismissals and the expected uptick in FCA cases amid the pandemic, say attorneys at Baker Botts.
During recent presidential administrations, state attorneys general have challenged federal regulations and obtained nationwide injunctions against executive orders — and there is every reason to believe that Republican attorneys general will continue this trend, resisting Biden administration efforts on climate change, health care, immigration and more, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.
The three degrees of state marijuana legalization regimes throughout the U.S. show that cannabis is only fully illegal in three U.S. states and one territory — not 14 states as some counts indicate — and even in those places, there are stirrings of change, says Julie Werner-Simon at Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law.
The prospect of joining a law firm during the pandemic can cause added pressure, but with a few good practices — and a little help from their firms and supervising attorneys — lawyer trainees can get ahead of the curve while working remotely, say William Morris and Ted Landray at King & Spalding.
Multinational companies should take a pragmatic approach to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance by being aware of key risk areas — such as inappropriate gift-giving, liability for third-party actions, and countries with recurring corruption issues — and implementing custom-designed procedures that evolve with their operations, says Howard Weissman at Miller Canfield.
Recent noteworthy bail decisions, including a New York federal court's denial of Ghislaine Maxwell's $28.5 million bail package offer, reveal that high-net-worth defendants should demonstrate significant ties to the U.S. and provide comprehensive financial disclosures to mitigate flight-risk objections, say Sean Buckley and Amanda Tuminelli at Kobre & Kim.
Attorneys at Nossaman look at how President Joe Biden’s ethics pledge goes beyond those of his predecessors by imposing post-employment shadow lobbying and golden parachute restrictions on his administration’s appointees — and how a House bill proposing expansion of federal ethics law could affect enforcement.
Opinion
Law graduates across the states are sitting for the grueling two-day bar exam this week despite menstruation-related barriers, such as inadequate menstrual product and bathroom access, which could be eradicated with simple policy tweaks, say law professors Elizabeth Cooper, Margaret Johnson and Marcy Karin.