GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

Google and its chief legal officer have now lost two major antitrust cases to DOJ prosecutors after a federal judge ruled Thursday the search engine monopolized markets and servers related to display advertising. Meanwhile, a new study shows companies are disclosing their business risks, and how they are trying to mitigate those risks, amid changing tariffs and the uncertainty of the U.S.-China trade war. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Trump Ousts New IRS Acting Chief Days After Appointment

By Kat Lucero

The White House said Friday that President Donald Trump will appoint the U.S. Treasury Department's deputy secretary to be the acting IRS commissioner to replace a former special agent who was appointed to the role days before.

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Analysis

High Court's Cornell Ruling Eases Path For ERISA Suits

By Kellie Mejdrich

The U.S. Supreme Court's revival of Cornell University workers' class action alleging excessive retirement plan fees will likely spur a rise in lawsuits zeroing in on employers' arrangements with recordkeepers and other service providers, and could make those cases tougher to knock out of court, attorneys say.

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Analysis

Google May See Some Light In The Ad Tech Ruling

By Matthew Perlman

The ruling this week in the U.S. Department of Justice's ad tech monopolization case against Google was a major victory but not a total win for the government, and it raises questions about what the fix should be, especially with a trial looming over remedies in a separate case over search.

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Roundup

Employment Authority: Questions To Ask About AI Tools

Law360 Employment Authority covers the biggest employment cases and trends. Catch up this week with coverage on questions employers should consider before purchasing artificial intelligence tools, a look at how to avoid common overtime claims and the status of the Trump administration's vetting of National Labor Relations Board nominees.

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Analysis

Student Visa Crackdown Sparks Fears Of Talent Shortage

By Britain Eakin

The Trump administration's aggressive push to revoke student visas and terminate their records in a government database that tracks international students is rattling employers that rely on a pipeline of foreign students to fill key high-skilled labor needs.

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Sunoco Accused Of Age Bias By Ex-Chief Counsel

By Gina Kim

A former chief counsel for Sunoco LP sued her ex-employer in Texas state court Wednesday, alleging she was denied promotional opportunities and later terminated due to her age, while also accusing the company of replacing attorneys older than 50 with significantly younger attorneys with less experience.

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Feds Seek Up To 6 Years For Ex-Bank GC's $7.4M Theft

By Aaron Keller

A former general counsel for a Webster Bank predecessor should serve between 51 and 71 months behind bars and pay full restitution after admitting he spent eight years embezzling $7.4 million, federal prosecutors argue.

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Analysis

WTO's Position In New Trump Administration Remains Unclear

By Caroline Simson

The Trump administration's aggressive imposition of tariffs has laid the groundwork for an onslaught of likely toothless claims brought against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization, even as the U.S.' stance with the international body remains guarded at best.

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Del. House Bill Would Exempt Overtime Pay From Income Tax

By Zak Kostro

Delaware would exempt eligible workers' overtime pay from state income tax under a bill introduced in the state House of Representatives.

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Capital One's Discover Deal Gets Bank Regulators' Approval

By Jon Hill

Capital One on Friday received the last regulatory sign-offs needed for its $35 billion purchase of Discover, putting the megadeal on track to close for the former while also clearing the decks of a more than $1 billion enforcement matter for the latter.

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FDIC Eases Big Banks' 'Living Will' Requirements

By Jon Hill

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. moved Friday to spare large banks from certain requirements for what should go into the next version of their so-called living wills, saying it wants to put more emphasis on planning for quicker, potentially weekend sales of failing banks.

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CFTC Details Violation Materiality After Cooperation Guidance

By Sarah Jarvis

Divisions of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission have offered details on their materiality standards for assessing supervision and noncompliance issues, following February guidance on how much money regulated entities can expect to save for cooperating with agency investigations.

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Analysis

5 Takeaways From Texas Stock Exchange's SEC Filing

By Tom Zanki

The newly formed Texas Stock Exchange LLC is proposing rules that largely resemble those of the New York heavyweights it seeks to challenge, along with some notable differences, leaving questions on how the exchange will distinguish itself. Here are five takeaways from TXSE's securities filing.

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Walgreens To Pay DOJ $300M Over Invalid Prescriptions

By Lauren Berg

Walgreens revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday that it will pay upward of $300 million to resolve U.S. Department of Justice allegations that it knowingly filed millions of prescriptions for opioids and other drugs that didn't have a legitimate medical purpose or weren't valid.

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Whole Foods Strikes Deal In Sweeping 401(k) Fee Suit

By Patrick Hoff

Whole Foods reached an agreement to end a class action alleging its failure to keep its 401(k) plan's administrative fees in check cost a class of roughly 97,000 workers millions of dollars in retirement savings, the Amazon-owned grocer told a Texas federal court.

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5th Circ. Says FCC Can't Fine AT&T $57M Without Trial

By Nadia Dreid

The Fifth Circuit has wiped out the $57 million fine that the Federal Communications Commission slapped AT&T with after it and the other major mobile carriers were found to have been selling off people's location data, saying such a penalty without a jury trial was unconstitutional.

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Gamestop CEO Can't Stop Bed Bath & Beyond Trading Suit

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Manhattan federal judge trimmed a $47 million lawsuit from the bankrupt retailer once known as Bed Bath & Beyond accusing GameStop's CEO of insider trading before the housewares giant went belly-up, but says "ample" public information would have told the businessman he had enough stock to be a corporate insider.

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How They Won It

How Manatt Beat A Crypto Trader's 'Code As Law' Defense

By Aislinn Keely

After a crypto user exploited a software bug to create millions of dollars' worth of new tokens from a blockchain network, a Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP team defeated his claim to the tokens — and won an award worth millions — by showing that faulty code can't stand in for rule of law.

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Buchanan Ingersoll Faces DQ Bid Over Former GC's Role

By Lynn LaRowe

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC attorneys defending Amerilife should be disqualified for allegedly running "roughshod" over ethical rules by using a former general counsel of a retirement planning agency to gain an upper hand in a dispute in a Florida federal court, according to a bid to boot the firm from the case.

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Tesla Settles Black Production Worker's Race Bias Suit

By Grace Elletson

Tesla has agreed to settle a Black former production worker's suit claiming she was called racist slurs on the job and retaliated against for complaining that the facility fostered a culture of discrimination, according to a California federal court filing.

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Celsius Founder Asks For A Year And A Day For Crypto Fraud

By Dorothy Atkins

Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky urged a New York federal judge to reject the probation office's recommended 15-year prison sentence for lying that the fallen $25 billion crypto-lender's tokens were safe, arguing he's always had "genuinely good intentions" and should serve at most one year plus a day behind bars.

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FTC's Southern Glazer's Pricing Case Preserved

By Bryan Koenig

A California federal judge refused to toss the Federal Trade Commission's price discrimination lawsuit against Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits LLC, concluding the alcohol distribution giant moves liquor around enough to trigger interstate commerce and that the FTC has adequately alleged unfair treatment of mom-and-pop stores relative to big box retailers.

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Block Execs Failed To Prevent 'Illicit Activities,' Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

A Block Inc. shareholder claims in a new suit that the fintech company's top brass, which includes former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, failed to prevent illicit activities like money laundering, child sexual abuse and terrorism financing on its platform, causing damage to the company's reputation and investors as a result.

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Qualcomm Judge Bemoans 'Inefficiency' In Patent Fights

By Adam Lidgett

A Florida federal judge has scheduled a third hearing on claim construction in a ParkerVision Inc. lawsuit against Qualcomm Inc. over wireless communications patents, while commenting about "the inefficiency of patent litigation."

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Charter Communications Ends Trade Secrets Suit With Ex-VP

By Ivan Moreno

Charter Communications Inc. has settled a trade secrets lawsuit it brought in Connecticut federal court against a former executive it accused of taking confidential information with him when he left for a job with Metronet, one of its competitors, according to a joint stipulation for dismissal.

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Ex-CFO Says He's 'Extremely Remorseful' Of $44M Fraud

By Danielle Ferguson

The former chief financial officer of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy said he is "extremely remorseful" and "ashamed" of his decade-long scheme of defrauding the nonprofit of more than $44 million, asking the court to consider other factors beyond "sensationalism" when sentencing him this month.

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Traversing The Shifting Sands Of ESG Reporting Compliance

Multinational corporations have increasingly found themselves between a rock and a hard place attempting to comply with EU and California ESG requirements while not running afoul of expanding U.S. anti-ESG regimes, but focusing on what is material to shareholder value and establishing strong governance can help, say attorneys at MoFo.

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5 Key Issues For Multinational Cos. Mulling Return To Office

As companies increasingly revisit return-to-office mandates, multinational employers may face challenges in enforcing uniform RTO practices globally, but several key considerations and practical solutions can help avoid roadblocks, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.

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Reviving A Dormant Criminal Statute In Antitrust Prosecution

The U.S. Department of Justice is poised to revive a dormant misdemeanor statute to resolve bid-rigging charges against a foreign national, providing important context to a recent effort to entice foreign defendants to take responsibility for pending charges or face the risk of extradition, say attorneys at Axinn.

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An Unrestrained, Bright-Eyed View Of Legal AI's Future

Todd Itami at Covington offers a bright-eyed, laughing-all-the-way, skydive look at what the legal industry could look like after an artificial intelligence revolution, which he believes may happen much sooner and more dramatically than we expect.

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WilmerHale, Feds Dispute Reach Of Trump Order Against Firm

By Jack Karp

WilmerHale and the U.S. Department of Justice traded salvos in the BigLaw firm's challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order targeting it, with the firm and the government offering "starkly different" versions of what's at stake in the dispute.

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Ex-Katten Partner Hits Firm With $67M Age Bias Suit

By Lauren Berg

A former Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP partner launched a $67 million discrimination lawsuit against his one-time firm in New York federal court, alleging he was pushed out of the aircraft-finance practice group, pressured to resign and then fired because of the firm CEO's "stereotyped views of lawyers in their 60s."

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Joel Katz, Music Law's Longtime Power Broker, Dies At 80

By Chart Riggall

Joel Katz, the powerful music industry lawyer who co-founded Greenberg Traurig LLP's media and entertainment practice and helped bring the firm to the Atlanta market, has died at the age of 80, Law360 confirmed Friday.

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Justices Temporarily Block Removals Under Wartime Law

By Britain Eakin

The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to halt removals of alleged Venezuelan gang members detained in Texas under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, pending further input from the court.

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High Court's Pause Of Removals Was 'Premature,' Alito Says

By Katie Buehler

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision early Saturday morning to prohibit the Trump administration from using a 1798 wartime law to remove alleged Venezuelan gang members detained in northern Texas to an El Salvadoran prison was hasty and premature, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

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Ex-DOJ Atty Convicted In 1MDB Case Ordered Disbarred In NY

By Craig Clough

A New York appellate court ordered Wednesday that a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney be disbarred due to his felony conviction as part of a sprawling, billion-dollar fraud scandal connected to 1Malaysia Development Berhad and Fugees founder Pras Michél.

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Judge Nixes Feds' DQ Bid In Migrant Kids Legal Funding Case

By Ryan Boysen

A California federal judge has denied the Trump administration's bid to remove her from a lawsuit challenging funding cuts that prevent attorneys from representing child migrants, ruling her employment at one of the plaintiffs nearly seven years ago doesn't undermine her impartiality.

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PTAB Judge Heads To Boutique, Citing Return-To-Office Order

By Andrew Karpan

An outgoing Patent Trial and Appeal Board judge based in Austin, Texas, tells Law360 that President Donald Trump's return-to-office order was a "significant factor" in her decision to return to private practice, joining boutique patent firm Smith Baluch LLP as a partner.

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Judiciary Faces Security Risks Amid Spending Freeze

By Courtney Bublé

The federal judiciary is warning congressional appropriators that funding shortfalls could threaten courthouse security.

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Wis. Sens. Renew Bipartisan Judicial Nomination Commission

By Courtney Bublé

The Republican and Democratic senators from Wisconsin announced Friday they are renewing their bipartisan commission to recommend U.S. attorney and judicial nominees to the president.

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Up Next At High Court: Preventive HealthCare & LGBTQ Books

By Katie Buehler

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in five cases this week, including disputes over the constitutionality of a task force that sets preventive healthcare coverage requirements, a school district's introduction of LGBTQ-themed storybooks and whether parties can establish standing based on harms affecting third parties. 

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Schlichter Bogard LLC and the University of Virginia School of Law Supreme Court Litigation Clinic lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court revived a class action from Cornell University workers who said their retirement plans were saddled with excessive fees.

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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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