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July 31, 2024
Ackman's New Investment Fund Calls Off Planned $2B IPO
Bill Ackman's new investment fund Pershing Square USA on Wednesday called off its initial public offering just a day after setting a $2 billion fundraising target, which was down significantly from earlier estimates.
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July 31, 2024
HSBC Says HUD Has Closed Fair Lending Probe
HSBC's U.S. banking arm said it is no longer facing a multicity fair lending investigation from federal housing authorities after an outside complaint that prompted the probe was withdrawn.
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July 31, 2024
Apple, Google Dropped From IP Suit Over PUBG Knockoffs
A California federal judge has agreed to dismiss video game publisher Krafton's copyright suit accusing Google and Apple of distributing infringing versions of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on their respective platforms, while Krafton and YouTube said they're close to resolving claims over an infringing film containing game footage.
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July 31, 2024
Justices Urged To Review Airline Price-Fixing Deal Payout
Two class members in a long-running airline price-fixing suit are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a secondary distribution of over $5 million in settlement money, saying unclaimed funds should have been sent to state treasuries, not class counsel.
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July 31, 2024
Wells Fargo Hit With Suit Over Cash Sweep Program
Wells Fargo was hit with a proposed class action by a customer claiming the bank's cash sweep investment program only allows users to sweep their cash into Wells Fargo-selected accounts, a practice the suit says has drawn regulatory scrutiny because it disproportionately benefits the bank.
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July 31, 2024
Authors' Suit Against OpenAI Trimmed To Copyright Act Claim
A California federal judge on Wednesday cut an unfair competition claim from a proposed class action filed by a group of notable authors alleging that ChatGPT creator OpenAI Inc. is wrongly copying their protected works, a decision that leaves only the lawsuit's claim for direct copyright infringement.
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July 31, 2024
SEC Settles Reg BI Case Against Calif. Broker-Dealer
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday it has agreed to settle allegations that Western International Securities Inc. sold more than $13 million in high-risk debt securities to those with lower risk profiles, marking the potential end of a first-of-its kind enforcement action claiming violations of Regulation Best Interest.
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July 31, 2024
Mortgage Co.'s $300K Wage Deal Gets Initial OK
A California federal judge has given an initial stamp of approval to a $300,000 settlement between a mortgage company and a class of its employees, ending claims that the company failed to pay hourly wages or provide meal and rest breaks.
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July 31, 2024
Cities, States Weigh Homeless Policies Post-Grants Pass
In the weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Oregon city's camping ban doesn't amount to cruel and unusual punishment of its unhoused residents, municipal and state governments are rethinking their approach to homeless encampments and weighing newfound authority.
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July 31, 2024
NBCUniversal Worker Says HIV Status Got Him Fired
NBCUniversal reprimanded an HIV+ employee for missing work due to illness and then fired him two days after he submitted paperwork for intermittent leave, a former animation technician said in a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court.
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July 31, 2024
Golden Gate U. Beats Students' Suit Over JD Program Closure
A California state judge threw out a lawsuit from Golden Gate University School of Law students over the school's plans to stop offering juris doctor degrees, ruling that the students did not adequately make their case.
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July 31, 2024
TaxAct Customers' Attys Want $5.8M Fee For $23M Deal
The attorneys for TaxAct Inc. customers who secured a $23 million deal to resolve claims that the company was secretly sharing confidential taxpayer information with Meta and Google asked a federal judge to award them more than $5.8 million in fees for their work.
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July 31, 2024
5 Trials To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2024
Upcoming high-profile trials over star lawyer Tom Girardi's alleged fraud, Hunter Biden's taxes and Washington state's "patent troll" law are among the cases to watch in the latter half of the year.
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July 31, 2024
UPDATE: Paramount Global Bid Called Into Question After Announcement Pulled
The validity of a purported $43 billion takeover offer for Paramount Global from Apex Capital is being called into question, after the press release service that published the announcement removed it.
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July 31, 2024
AIG Units Off Hook In Defending McKesson Opioid Suits
Two AIG insurers have no duty to defend McKesson Corp. over claims it intentionally over-distributed opioids, a California federal court ruled, saying the three underlying suits do not allege a potentially covered occurrence under policies issued between 1999 and 2004.
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July 31, 2024
Equal Rights Advocates Adds DOJ Atty As Litigation Head
Equal Rights Advocates, a gender justice/women's rights nonprofit, announced Tuesday it is bringing in a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights attorney as head of its litigation team.
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July 30, 2024
Ameriprise Says LPL Uses Recruits To Harvest Rivals' Secrets
LPL Financial should be barred from using any trade secrets and confidential client information it has harvested from Ameriprise Financial through the recruitment of its competitors' financial advisers, Ameriprise told a California federal judge Tuesday in alleging LPL has violated legal, regulatory and industry rules.
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July 30, 2024
Guess, Macy's Settle IP Suit Over Artists' Graffiti Work
Guess Inc. and Macy's have settled a copyright action lodged by three prominent graffiti artists who accused the companies of exploiting their names and donning their work across T-shirts without permission, the parties told a California federal judge Tuesday.
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July 30, 2024
Tribe Says Sovereignty 'Sea Change' At Stake In Tobacco Row
A California tribe has opposed the U.S. government's bid to toss its suit fighting placement on a "non-compliant list" under a law that targets tobacco trafficking, telling a federal judge that forcing it to stop sales would cause a "sea change" in tribal sovereignty.
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July 30, 2024
Split 9th Circ. Denies Removal Relief To Cartel Member's Son
A split Ninth Circuit on Tuesday refused to revive a longtime green card holder's bid for deportation relief, saying evidence that his cartel-member father abused him in the U.S. had no bearing on whether he would be harmed again in Mexico.
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July 30, 2024
FTC Seeks Temporary Kroger-Albertsons Block In Oregon
The Federal Trade Commission is formally seeking a temporary block against Kroger's proposed purchase of Albertsons, arguing in an Oregon federal court brief unsealed Tuesday that the planned divestiture of 579 stores to a "failed" supermarket boss won't adequately protect consumers or union labor facing dramatically increased concentration.
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July 30, 2024
Ex-HFZ Capital Chief Can't Reduce Bail In $86M Fraud Case
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday denied, for now, a request by the former head of troubled real estate firm HFZ Capital Group to lower a hefty bail requirement so he can get out of Rikers Island while fighting $86 million theft and tax fraud charges.
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July 30, 2024
OnlyFans Dupes Users With Chatty Impersonators, Suit Says
OnlyFans knowingly allows professional "chatters" to impersonate content creators on the subscription platform, duping users into thinking they're having a direct conversation with an individual they paid to connect with and resulting in personal information being shared with that stranger, according to a proposed class action filed in California federal court.
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July 30, 2024
Netflix Wants $170M 'Baby Reindeer' Defamation Suit Axed
Netflix urged a California federal judge Monday to toss a Scottish lawyer's $170 million lawsuit alleging the streaming giant's popular stalker miniseries "Baby Reindeer" defamed her, with the show's creator stating in a declaration it is an "emotionally true" fictionalized work he wrote after being stalked by the lawyer for years.
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July 30, 2024
Calif. Broker-Dealer To Pay FINRA $1.5M For Excessive Trades
Broker-dealer Western International Securities Inc. has agreed to pay more than $1.5 million to settle allegations from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that the firm failed to properly monitor potentially excessive trading in about 100 accounts, and it was hit with a separate cease-and-desist order from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday over Regulation Best Interest violations.
Expert Analysis
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New Concerns, Same Tune At This Year's SIFMA Conference
At this year's Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference on legal developments affecting the financial services industry, government regulators’ emphasis on whistleblowing and AI washing represented a new refrain in an increasingly familiar chorus calling for prompt and thorough corporate cooperation, say attorneys at Fried Frank.
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Calif. High Court Ruling Has Lessons For Waiving Jury Trials
The California Supreme Court’s recent decision in TriCoast Builders v. Fonnegra, denying relief to a contractor that had waived its right to a jury trial, shows that litigants should always post jury fees as soon as possible, and seek writ review if the court denies relief from a waiver, say Steven Fleischman and Nicolas Sonnenburg at Horvitz & Levy.
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SC Ruling Reinforces All Sums Coverage Trend
A South Carolina state court's recent ruling in Covil v. Pennsylvania National is the latest in a series of decisions, dating back to the 2016 New York Court of Appeals ruling in Viking Pump, that reject insurers' pro rata allocation argument, further supporting that all sums coverage is required whenever a loss could be covered under a policy in any other year, say Raymond Mascia and Thomas Dupont at Anderson Kill.
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What Rescheduling Could Mean For Cannabis Bankruptcies
Bankruptcy courts have historically been closed for cannabis-related businesses, but recent case law coupled with a possible reclassification of cannabis provides cautious optimism, say attorneys at Duane Morris.
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Opinion
DOJ Press Office Is Not Fulfilling Its Stated Mission
The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs’ apparent practice of issuing press releases when someone is indicted or convicted, but not when a defendant prevails, undermines its stated mission to disseminate “current, complete and accurate” information, and has negative real-world ramifications, says Sara Kropf at Kropf Moseley.
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Opinion
Expanded Detention Will Not Solve Immigration Challenges
The recently defeated bipartisan border package included provisions that would increase funding for detention, a costly distraction from reforms like improved adjudication and legal representation that could address legitimate economic and public safety concerns at much lower cost, say Alexandra Dufresne and Kyle Wolf at Cornell University.
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Opinion
Neb. Justices Should Weigh IRC Terms In Dividend Tax Case
Nebraska’s highest court, which will hear oral arguments in Precision CastParts v. Department of Revenue on April 1, should recognize that the Internal Revenue Code provides key clues to defining “dividends received or deemed to be received,” and therefore limits Nebraska’s tax on foreign-sourced corporate income, says Joseph Schmidt at Ryan.
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What New Waste Management Laws Signal For The Future
Several states have enacted extended producer responsibility and recycling labeling laws that will take effect in the next few years and force manufacturers to take responsibility for the end of life of their products, so companies should closely follow compliance timelines and push to innovate in the area, say attorneys at Perkins Coie.
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Series
Spray Painting Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My experiences as an abstract spray paint artist have made me a better litigator, demonstrating — in more ways than one — how fluidity and flexibility are necessary parts of a successful legal practice, says Erick Sandlin at Bracewell.
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Examining The Arbitration Clause Landscape Amid Risks
Amid a new wave of mass arbitrations, recent developments in the courts and from the American Arbitration Association suggest that companies should improve arbitration clause drafting to protect themselves against big-ticket settlements and avoid major potential liability, say attorneys at Benesch.
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How Activision Ruling Favors M&A Formalities Over Practice
The Delaware Chancery Court’s recent nod to a proposed class action, alleging shareholder notice violations in Activision Blizzard’s sale to Microsoft, puts practitioners on notice that customary merger and acquisition market practices do not offer protection from potential liability, say John Stigi and Eugene Choi at Sheppard Mullin.
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Past CCPA Enforcement Sets Path For Compliance Efforts
The California Privacy Protection Agency and the California Attorney General's Office haven't skipped a beat in investigating potential noncompliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act, and six broad issues will continue to dominate the enforcement landscape and inform compliance strategy, say attorneys at Reed Smith.
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Where 9th Circ. Lowe's Ruling Leaves PAGA Jurisprudence
Leah Kennedy and Carolyn Wheeler at Katz Banks discuss the legal landscape and controlling precedent around the Private Attorneys General Act that led to the Ninth Circuit's Johnson v. Lowe's decision last month on individual PAGA wage claims, and explore the open questions that it leaves.
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Meta Data Scraping Case Has Lessons For Platforms, AI Cos.
The California federal court ruling that artificial intelligence company Bright Data's scraping of public data from Meta social media sites does not constitute a breach of contract signals that platforms should review their terms of service and AI companies could face broad implications for their training of algorithms, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.
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Opinion
Judicial Independence Is Imperative This Election Year
As the next election nears, the judges involved in the upcoming trials against former President Donald Trump increasingly face political pressures and threats of violence — revealing the urgent need to safeguard judicial independence and uphold the rule of law, says Benes Aldana at the National Judicial College.