Fla. Jury Hits Expedia With $30M Helms-Burton Verdict

By Carolina Bolado

A Miami jury on Friday said Expedia and three related entities owe $29.85 million after finding the online booking companies liable for violating the Helms-Burton Act's anti-trafficking provision by offering reservations for resorts on a barrier island seized by Fidel Castro's government.

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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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Analysis

Tariff Suits Could Benefit From Eroding Executive Deference

By Dylan Moroses

Lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's emergency tariff actions taken under a law never before used for such purposes could benefit from court rulings that have eroded judicial deference for the executive branch, but it remains unclear if injunctive relief is within reach.

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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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Fla. Law Seeks To 'Demonize' Trans Workers, Suit Says

By Grace Elletson

A transgender teacher was forced to quit after a Florida school district required him to use pronouns that didn't align with his gender identity under a state law that aims to "stigmatize and demonize" transgender workers, he told a federal court in a discrimination suit.

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Fla.'s Take On Order Over Migrant Law 'Astounded' Judge

By Carolina Bolado

A Florida federal judge was incredulous Friday at the state's argument that her temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of a law criminalizing the entry of unauthorized migrants did not extend to law enforcement officers because they were not parties to the lawsuit challenging the statute.

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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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11th Circ. Rejects Disbarred Ga. Atty's Reinstatement Bid

By Jake Maher

A disbarred Georgia attorney lost her bid Friday to have the Eleventh Circuit revive her lawsuit alleging the Georgia Office of Bar Admissions violated her due process rights by refusing to reinstate her.

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11th Circ. Revives Fla. Lodge's Bad Faith Claim Over Shooting

By David Minsky

The Eleventh Circuit on Friday reversed a $3.3 million judgment against a Florida lodge over a shooting that resulted in a woman's death, finding in a split ruling a jury should decide the bad faith issue of whether its insurer should've offered to settle based on the premises' liability.

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11th Circ. Won't Revive ADA Suit Over Remote Work Firing

By Kelcey Caulder

The Eleventh Circuit on Friday refused to revive a former call center director's Americans with Disabilities Act suit against a financial services company, holding that the company had legitimate reasons to fire her and reasonably accommodated her request to work from home due to her Crohn's disease during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Nitrous Companies Decline Liability For Misused Products

By Jonathan Capriel

The companies behind nitrous oxide brand Galaxy Gas urged a Florida federal court to end a proposed class action filed by the family of a woman who died while inhaling their product, arguing that they can't be held liable for "reckless and illegal misuse" of their canisters.

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Insurer Says Smoke Shop Not Covered In Nitrous Oxide Suit

By Ganesh Setty

An insurer for a smoke shop told a Florida federal court it owes no coverage for a proposed class action accusing various shops of selling nitrous oxide products for recreational drug use, pointing to an exclusion barring coverage for injury arising out of "psychotropic substances."

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Brief

Factory Worker Drops Injury Suit Over Cessna Crash

By Ryan Harroff

A factory worker has dropped his personal injury suit against aircraft company Textron Aviation Inc. over a Cessna Citation 560XLS+ plane that crashed into his workplace, according to a filing in Connecticut state court.

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Roundup

Real Estate Recap: Q1 Dealmakers, Tariff Tension

By Real Estate Authority Staff

Catch up on this past week's key developments by state from Law360 Real Estate Authority — including the law firms that guided the 10 largest real estate deals of the first quarter, and how dealmakers and companies have been navigating uncertainty in the market.

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Insurance Exec Pleads Guilty In $134M ACA Plan Scheme

By Carolina Bolado

A Florida insurance executive pled guilty Friday for his part in a $134 million scheme to submit fraudulent applications to enroll customers in fully subsidized Affordable Care Act health insurance plans.

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Reed Smith Grows In Miami With Cozen O'Connor Vegas Head

By Emily Johnson

Reed Smith LLP has expanded its Miami office and strengthened its global commercial disputes practice by bringing on the former Las Vegas office managing partner for Cozen O'Connor.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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