Disney Strikes $43M Deal To End Calif. Pay Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

The Walt Disney Co. agreed to pay $43.25 million to settle a class action claiming the entertainment giant paid thousands of women in middle management less than their male colleagues, according to a filing in California court.

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California's Top Bank, Fintech Regulator To Exit At Year's End

By Jon Hill

The top banking and fintech regulator for California is departing from the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation in a little more than a month, an agency spokesperson told Law360 on Tuesday.

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Netflix Ditches Investor Suit Over Account Sharing For Good

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a proposed class action accusing Netflix and its executives of misleading investors about growth challenges tied to account sharing, concluding "further leave to amend would be futile," since the investor plaintiffs were already given a chance to show that statements made were misleading.

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Apple, Shyamalan Can't Dodge IP Suit Over 'Servant' Series

By Lauren Berg

A California federal judge refused to toss an indie director's claims that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan copied her movie to make a TV show for Apple TV+, agreeing with the Ninth Circuit that the issue of whether the two works are substantially similar will need to be resolved by a jury.

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MLBPA, FanDuel Ink Licensing Deal After Settling Legal Spat

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

The Major League Baseball Players Association, FanDuel and OneTeam Partners on Tuesday announced that they are teaming up on a product and marketing licensing agreement, a move that comes just weeks after FanDuel was dropped from an MLBPA lawsuit over the alleged use of players' photos to promote sports gambling.

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Judge Heads Off Misleading Solicitation In NCAA NIL Deal

By Elaine Briseño

The California federal judge overseeing the NCAA name, image and likeness class action that is nearing closure issued guidelines Tuesday for third-party servicing companies offering to help student athletes secure their portion of a preliminarily approved $2.78 billion settlement.

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Paul Hastings Seeks GenapSys CEO Depo In Malpractice Suit

By James Mills

Paul Hastings LLP has called on a California court to compel the founder and former CEO of GenapSys to sit for a deposition in a legal malpractice suit alleging that the firm improperly drafted board documents that invited an expensive lawsuit and led to the genetic sequencing company's "demise and liquidation."

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Tort Report: Fla. Jury Delivers $141.5M Trucking Crash Verdict

By Y. Peter Kang

A pending Pennsylvania Supreme Court case over Uber's so-called click-through arbitration agreements and a $141.5 million trucking crash verdict out of Florida lead Law360's Tort Report, which compiles recent personal injury and medical malpractice news that may have flown under the radar.

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Truepill's $7.5M Patent Data Theft Settlement Gets Initial OK

By Hailey Konnath

A California federal judge Tuesday preliminarily backed a $7.5 million deal resolving a proposed class action alleging that online pharmacy PostMeds Inc., which does business as Truepill, failed to protect the sensitive information of millions of patients from a data breach.

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X Partially Revives Lawsuit Against Israeli Data Scraping Firm

By Craig Clough

X Corp. partially revived its lawsuit Tuesday against Israeli data scraping firm Bright Data after a California federal judge allowed the social media company to amend some of its claims and add new ones, finding X now plausibly alleges the defendant's "sophisticated efforts" to access the platform caused harm.

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Oracle Says Crypto Co. Is Flouting 2020 Settlement Of TM Suit

By Gina Kim

Oracle Corp. claimed in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed in California federal court that cryptocurrency consulting company Crypto Oracle has resumed using the "Crypto Oracle" name four years after it agreed to stop using the "Oracle" marks in an earlier suit from Oracle Corp.

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Meta Wipes Out Some Claims In WDTX Patent Case

By Andrew Karpan

Meta has scored a ruling from Waco's U.S. District Judge Alan Albright finding that some of the language in patents connected to a failed mobile fitness brand, asserted against Meta's virtual reality headsets, fails to hold up in court.

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Fed. Circ. Won't Review Rejection Of Dish's $3.9M Fees Award

By Theresa Schliep

The full Federal Circuit declined Tuesday to reconsider a panel's ruling that vacated a $3.9 million attorney fees award to Dish Network for its successful defense against a Realtime Adaptive Streaming patent suit.

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Pac-12 Agreed To 'Poaching' Clause, Mountain West Insists

By David Steele

The Pac-12 Conference "unconditionally" agreed to all of last year's scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference, including a multimillion-dollar "poaching penalty,'' Mountain West claimed in California federal court, pushing back at the Pac-12's argument that the fee for luring away five teams is illegal.

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10th Circ. Spikes Bid To Block Trans Athlete From Tourney

By Daniel Ducassi

A pair of Tenth Circuit judges on Tuesday denied an emergency motion by female volleyball players to block a San Jose State University transgender athlete from competing in a tournament that begins Wednesday, agreeing with a Colorado federal judge's conclusion that the lawsuit's tardiness undermines the request for such quick relief.

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9th Circ. Reopens Teachers' Retirement Savings Interest Suit

By Patrick Hoff

The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday revived a class action accusing the Washington state pension agency of unlawfully skimming interest earned by thousands of teachers on their retirement accounts, ruling the trial court went too far when it ruled the educators' suit was untimely.

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Gilead Gets $31.8M In Calif. Case Over Counterfeit HIV Drugs

By Adam Lidgett

Gilead Sciences Inc. has won nearly $32 million in a case involving a scheme to wrongfully repackage HIV treatments and sell them off as counterfeit Gilead products, a California federal judge has ruled.

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Man Admits Conspiring To Ship To Blacklisted Chinese Co.

By Gina Kim

The founder of a California-based logistics and freight forwarding company pled guilty in Texas federal court to a conspiracy-related charge linked to a scheme to illegally ship goods to a blacklisted Chinese company, which changed its name after being added to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Entity List, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

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Autodesk Wants Out Of Investor Suit Over Internal Controls

By Katryna Perera

Autodesk Inc. asked a California federal judge on Tuesday to toss a proposed class action alleging the software company's stock price dropped after investors learned it lacked proper internal controls due to issues with its free cash flow and operating margin practices, saying its business plan statements at issue were "forward-looking" and accompanied by "cautionary" language.

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9th Circ. Pauses Ruling For VA To Build Vets' Housing

By Elliot Weld

The Ninth Circuit paused a federal judge's order for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing for veterans on a Los Angeles campus, allowing time for several constituents to weigh in on the matter.

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Bankrupt Canadian Bus Co. Seeks US Recognition For Sale

By Rick Archer

A Canadian charter bus company that provides buses for Los Angeles airports is asking a California bankruptcy judge to grant U.S. recognition to its efforts to sell the company in a Canadian insolvency proceeding.

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Calif. Judge Says Flores Reporting Requirements Still In Effect

By Elliot Weld

A California federal judge said the government must resume reporting data on migrant children being held in heightened supervision facilities to human rights groups under the 1997 Flores settlement, saying the Office of Refugee Resettlement should not have ceased doing so.

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9th Circ.'s High Bar May Limit Keyword Confusion TM Claims

A recent Ninth Circuit ruling that a law firm did not infringe upon a competitor’s trademarks by paying Google to promote its website when users searched for the rival’s name signals that plaintiffs likely can no longer win infringement suits by claiming competitive keyword advertising confuses internet-savvy consumers, say attorneys at Mitchell Silberberg.

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Series

Flying Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Achieving my childhood dream of flying airplanes made me a better lawyer — and a better person — because it taught me I can conquer difficult goals when I leave my comfort zone, focus on the demands of the moment and commit to honing my skills, says Ivy Cadle at Baker Donelson.

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Bonus Spotlight

Bonus Season Heats Up As More Firms Match Milbank's Scale

By Xiumei Dong

The 2024 associate bonus season is heating up, with more law firms matching Milbank LLP's year-end and special bonuses and U.K. firms extending the same offering to their U.S.-based attorneys, according to firm memos shared with Law360 Pulse and media reports.

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King & Spalding Partner Selected As Trump's Trade Rep

By Hailey Konnath

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that King & Spalding LLP international trade partner Jamieson L. Greer was his pick for U.S. trade representative, noting that Greer played a "key role" in imposing tariffs on China during Trump's first term.

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Texas Atty Sanctioned For Citing Bogus Cases After Using AI

By Lynn LaRowe

A Texas lawyer pursuing a wrongful termination lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has been sanctioned for submitting a brief that included citations to nonexistent cases generated by an artificial intelligence tool, a Texas federal judge ordered this week.

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Google Search Judge Says AI Will Affect Remedy Phase

By Matthew Perlman

The judge overseeing the government's search monopolization case against Google suggested Tuesday in D.C. federal court that artificial intelligence is shifting the market and will likely play a role in the remedies the court imposes on Google for allegedly violating antitrust law.

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Affinity Bar Groups Decry Colo. No-Poach Restrictions

By Thy Vo

Several attorney groups told Colorado's justices that barring lawyers from recruiting colleagues before officially leaving a firm would take away professional autonomy and harm lawyers from underrepresented backgrounds the most, filing briefs in support of a lawyer's challenge to her contract with a personal injury firm. 

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Fulton County DA Seeks To Reinstate Trump Election Charges

By Emily Johnson

The Fulton County District Attorney's Office told the Georgia Court of Appeals on Monday that six criminal charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others should be reinstated as they have an "abundance" of information to prepare their defense against allegations of trying to subvert the results of the November 2020 election.

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Giuliani's New Atty Faults Previous Counsel As NY Trial Nears

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge declined Tuesday to delay a January trial over whether Rudy Giuliani must turn over his Florida condo and World Series rings to fund a $148 million defamation judgment, after the former New York City mayor's new lawyer criticized outgoing counsel.

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Ex-Faegre Drinker Atty Files Disability Bias Suit

By Andrea Keckley

Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP was hit with a disability discrimination lawsuit on Monday by a Denver attorney who says she was pushed out after seeking accommodations for hip problems.

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NJ Equal Pay Law Date Will Guide Atty's Discrimination Suit

By Irene Spezzamonte

Discovery and damages in a former Reed Smith LLP labor and employment attorney's suit claiming gender discrimination will be limited to the effective date of New Jersey equal pay law, a state judge ruled, saying the law doesn't apply retroactively.

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Fla. Bar Alleges Atty Delayed Trial Over His Broken Tooth

By Dorothy Atkins

The Florida Bar has launched a complaint against a criminal attorney in the Florida Supreme Court, accusing him of violating state bar rules by refusing to proceed with a jury trial because he had a broken tooth.

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