Jones Day, Married Ex-Associates End Suit Over Family Leave

By Jack Karp

Jones Day and two former associates have settled their acrimonious and long-running legal battle over the firm's allegedly sexist family leave policy, they told a Washington, D.C., federal court Tuesday.

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6th Circ. Upholds County Employee's Pension Retaliation Win

By Patrick Hoff

The Sixth Circuit upheld on Tuesday a $180,000 jury victory in favor of a former Michigan county employee who alleged his pension payments were cut off because he publicly criticized the retirement system, backing a lower court's conclusion that his comments were protected by the First Amendment.

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Ill. Pension Administrator Sued Over Breach Affecting 71K

By Lauraann Wood

An Illinois pension benefits administrator was hit twice Tuesday in federal court with proposed class actions looking to hold the company liable for allegedly failing to protect thousands of individuals' private information from a data breach it waited a year to inform anyone about. 

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San Francisco Must Face Airline Group's Suit Over Health Law

By Emily Brill

San Francisco lost its bid to escape an airline industry group's challenge to a healthcare ordinance Tuesday, with a California federal judge ruling that the city and county must face claims that the Healthy Airport Ordinance is preempted by three federal statutes.

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Trump Says Transgender Order Shields Kids From Danger

By Greg Lamm

President Donald Trump's administration said Tuesday that Washington, Colorado and two other states can't block his executive orders targeting transgender people and federal funding for gender-affirming care, because the president has the power to protect children from "potentially dangerous, ineffective" treatments.

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VA Fires Another 1,400 Employees Amid Dems' Pushback

By Elliot Weld

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Tuesday it is dismissing another 1,400 probationary employees from "non-mission critical" positions amid criticism from Democrats over a round of cuts announced earlier this month.

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Ex-Allianz Exec Avoids Prison As Massive Fraud Case Wraps

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday allowed a former fund executive from New Jersey to avoid prison for lying to clients of Allianz's U.S. unit, citing his cooperation as the government investigated a fraud that cost the German finance giant $6 billion.

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Masimo Aims To DQ Hueston Hennigan As Ex-CEO's Counsel

By Rose Krebs

Masimo Corp. is urging the Delaware Chancery Court to disqualify Hueston Hennigan LLP from representing its founder and former CEO in a lawsuit over his quest for a $450 million payout from the medical technology company, arguing the firm has a conflict of interest.

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Ex-NJ Judge Says Judiciary Still Retaliating In Pension Fight

By George Woolston

A former New Jersey Superior Court judge has asked a state court to amend her suit challenging the denial of her disability pension application a second time, alleging that the state judiciary has further retaliated against her by requiring her to spend over $200,000 to qualify for a deferred early retirement pension.

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Attys Seek $1.7M Fees For Union 401(k) Plan Case Settlement

By Emily Brill

Lawyers for two elevator company employees who settled a proposed class action against their union's retirement plan for $5 million asked a Pennsylvania federal judge to approve about $1.7 million in attorney fees, saying it represents the standard one-third fee dispensed in these cases.

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Payments Weren't Admission Philly Cop Got COVID At Work

By Matthew Santoni

A Philadelphia police officer's "excused time," or E-Time, payments when he contracted COVID-19 were not a substitute for workers' compensation or an acknowledgment that he caught the disease on the job, so a state appellate court said Tuesday that he could not reinstate those payments under the workers' comp law.

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Pa. Health System Strikes Deal To Exit Workers' OT Suit

By Emmy Freedman

A Pennsylvania health system reached a deal Tuesday to resolve a proposed class action accusing it of stiffing unionized hospital workers on overtime wages, according to a report filed in federal court announcing a successful mediation.

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Rethinking 'No Comment' For Clients Facing Public Crises

“No comment” is no longer a cost-free or even a viable public communications strategy for companies in crisis, and counsel must tailor their guidance based on a variety of competing factors to help clients emerge successfully, says Robert Bowers at Moore & Van Allen.

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Trump Targets Covington Attys For Repping Special Counsel

By Lauren Berg

President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered the immediate suspension of security clearances held by Covington & Burling LLP attorneys who represent former special counsel Jack Smith, with the president citing the attorneys' supposed roles in the "weaponization of the judicial process."

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How To Track Trump's Legal Battles

By Katie Buehler

President Donald Trump has issued a historic number of executive orders and other actions during his first five weeks back in the White House, eliciting more than 80 legal challenges and setting the stage for major courtroom battles over birthright citizenship, presidential power, the federal government's structure and more. Law360 has created a database to keep track of them all.

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King & Spalding Beats Bias Suit Over Summer Program

By Matt Perez

King & Spalding LLP won't have to face a discrimination suit filed by a straight white woman who says she was dissuaded from applying to a summer associate program open only to "diverse" applicants, a Maryland federal court has ruled, saying she has not sufficiently demonstrated a real intent to apply to the position and therefore lacks standing.

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3 Attys Reprimanded, 2 DQ'd In Ala. Judge Shopping Probe

By Mark Payne

An Alabama federal judge on Tuesday publicly reprimanded three attorneys for judge shopping during their legal efforts against a state law criminalizing gender-affirming care, saying that the trio practiced in bad faith and dropping two of them from litigating the case.

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Apple Litigation Chief Threatened With Sanctions At Hearing

By Dorothy Atkins

A California federal judge presiding over a high-stakes evidentiary hearing into whether Apple has complied with her 2021 antitrust injunction threatened to sanction Apple's commercial litigation director Tuesday, telling counsel she has "significant concerns" about Apple's over-designation of attorney-client privilege, saying, "Your client is not entitled to have you engage in unethical conduct."

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Judge Who Shot Wife Admits Hundreds Of Gun Law Violations

By Craig Clough

A California judge accused of killing his wife admitted on the witness stand Tuesday to breaking the law at least hundreds of times by drinking alcohol while carrying a concealed weapon, but insisted her shooting was an accident and denied shedding crocodile tears to gain the jury's sympathy.

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Drinks Co. Ex-CEO Files $732M Sanctions Motion Against Firm

By David Minsky

The former CEO of an energy drinks company on Tuesday urged a Florida state court to impose $732 million in sanctions against a law firm in a legal fees dispute, saying its attorneys' litigation misconduct caused serious financial harm while representing him in a separate federal bankruptcy case.

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Justices Limit 'Prevailing Party' Status For Atty Fees

By Ryan Boysen

Litigants will no longer be considered the "prevailing party" — and thus won't be eligible for attorney fees — if they achieve courtroom victories via preliminary injunction instead of a final judgment, the U.S. Supreme Court has found, in a ruling that's expected to be a blow to legal advocacy groups.

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Jay-Z's Claims Against Buzbee May Get Trimmed, Judge Says

By Rachel Scharf

A California state judge said Tuesday that he's inclined to toss Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter's extortion claims against personal injury lawyer Tony Buzbee and some, but not all, of the rapper's defamation allegations stemming from a now-abandoned rape lawsuit.

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Calif. Bar Touts Reduction In Racial Disparity In Atty Discipline

By Emily Sawicki

The State Bar of California has reported what it calls "significant" shifts toward equity in attorney discipline in the five years since a watershed study showed a decades-long trend of disparity, including that Black male attorneys were more than three times as likely to be placed on probation or disbarred compared to their white counterparts.

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Law Firm Leasing Reaches Highest Level Since Before COVID

By James Boyle

Law firms in the United States have broken through years of pandemic-related uncertainty about market conditions and the need for office space to record the highest volume of lease activity in more than five years, according to newly released data.

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Federal Judiciary Repeats Request For More Judges

By Courtney Bublé

A federal circuit judge, speaking on behalf of the federal judiciary, repeated on Tuesday the need for more federal judges to alleviate the overwhelmed courts after President Joe Biden vetoed legislation late last year that would have added seats to the bench.

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Former Banner Witcoff Name Partner Dies At 99

By Emma Cueto

A retired name partner of intellectual property boutique Banner Witcoff has died at the age of 99, the firm announced Monday, saying he will be remembered as a pioneering IP attorney and a thoughtful colleague and mentor.

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