Analysis

What To Watch As The FTC Targets Drug Patent Listings

By Ryan Davis

The Federal Trade Commission has been scrutinizing patents listed by drugmakers on a key federal database, warning several companies that their listings are improper and drive up drug prices. Here's a look at what the agency and others could do next.

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CFPB To Probe 'Junk Fees' In Mortgage Closing Costs

By Jon Hill

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday that it will scrutinize how "junk fees" may be making it more expensive to purchase a home, kicking off a broad inquiry that could presage a crackdown on rising mortgage closing costs.

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Divided FTC Won't Delay Kroger-Albertsons In-House Case

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission's three Democrats refused Wednesday to delay the agency in-house challenge to Kroger's $24.6 billion purchase of Albertsons, blaming the grocery giants for their scheduling challenges and drawing a sharp dissent from the FTC's two Republicans.

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High Court Calls For 2nd Circ. Redo In BofA Preemption Fight

By Jon Hill

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Second Circuit decision that freed Bank of America NA from class action litigation brought over a New York escrow interest law, ruling that the circuit court wasn't "nuanced" enough in finding the law preempted for national banks.

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Musk Won't Appeal Deposition Order In SEC's Twitter Case

By Hailey Konnath

Elon Musk has agreed to waive his right to appeal a California federal judge's order forcing him to testify again in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's suit over his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, according to a stipulation filed Thursday.

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DOJ's Kanter Says AI Cos. Could Exploit Creators

By Matthew Perlman

The head of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Jonathan Kanter, said Thursday that a lack of competition between artificial intelligence companies could allow them to exploit writers, artists and other content creators.

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Regulator Says Attys Hit For AI Use Have Themselves To Blame

By Thy Vo

An attorney for Colorado's ethics watchdog said Thursday that recent disciplinary action against lawyers for filing briefs with fake case citations generated by ChatGPT indicates a "lawyer problem" rather than issues with the technology.

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The 'Not-Postings' Of A Delaware Chancery Court Judge

By Leslie A. Pappas

Close observers of Delaware's Court of Chancery have recently gotten a new window into the First State's preeminent court of equity: Delaware Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, one of seven judges on the court's bench, has recently rejoined LinkedIn.

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Black Business Owners Sue Over Impact Of Transparency Act

By Julie Manganis

The Corporate Transparency Act creates unique burdens on businesses owned by people of color, immigrants and other marginalized groups, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts and several company owners said in the latest legal challenge to the anti-money laundering law.

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Autonomy VP Declines To Take Stand As Fraud Trial Nears End

By Bonnie Eslinger

Testimony wrapped Thursday in a California federal criminal trial over claims that former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch and finance vice president Stephen Chamberlain duped HP into overpaying billions for the British tech company, as Chamberlain opted not to testify in his own defense after Lynch stepped off the witness stand.

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Exec Found Liable For 'Shadow Trading' Seeks New Trial

By Sarah Jarvis

A former executive of biopharmaceutical company Medivation Inc. whom a jury found liable for using inside information from his company when he purchased stock in a rival pharmaceutical maker has moved for a new trial in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's novel "shadow trading" case.

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Morgan Stanley Helped Musk's Stealth Twitter Buys, Suit Says​​​​​​​

By Hailey Konnath

Elon Musk and his wealth manager tapped Morgan Stanley to help the Tesla CEO quietly acquire billions of dollars in Twitter securities without tipping off the market before he announced plans to take over the social media company, according to an amended complaint filed in New York federal court.

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Kalshi Says Elections Aren't Games In Voting Wager Hearing

By Jared Foretek

A D.C. federal judge on Thursday tried to weigh whether gambling on elections can be considered "gaming" in predictions market Kalshi's challenge to a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission order blocking it from offering election-based futures contracts.

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SF Fed Lacked Good Reason To Deny Account, 9th Circ. Told

By Rae Ann Varona

An Idaho trade fintech urged the Ninth Circuit to revive its bid for a master account, saying the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco denied its application despite foreign banks potentially accessible to terrorists having access to the U.S. financial system.

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NY Expects Crypto Cos. To Meet Customer Service Standards

By Aislinn Keely

The New York State Department of Financial Services on Thursday told the crypto firms under its purview that it expects them to resolve customer service issues promptly and fairly, according to newly issued guidance.

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Ex-FTX Auditor Must Face SEC's Independence Rules Suit

By Sydney Price

The former auditor of Sam Bankman-Fried's defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX must face the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's claims it violated auditor independence rules while collecting $3 million in fees from clients, a Florida federal judge has ruled, finding the agency's allegations establish severe recklessness.

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Ex-Deutsche Bank Trader Gets 3½ Years For Crypto Scheme

By Emilie Ruscoe

A former Deutsche Bank associate has been sentenced to three years and five months in prison after pleading guilty in September to wire fraud and access device fraud in connection with a $1.5 million cryptocurrency investment scheme, Brooklyn federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

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Ex-BigLaw Atty Fights 10-Year Sentence In OneCoin Case

By Andrea Keckley

A former Locke Lord LLP partner urged the Second Circuit Wednesday to ax his 10-year prison sentence and conviction for laundering around $400 million in proceeds from the global OneCoin cryptocurrency scam, saying the case was contaminated by perjury and errors at the trial court level.

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DOL Says Hyundai Hired 13-Year-Old To Work Assembly Line

By Irene Spezzamonte

Car companies SMART and Hyundai and a staffing agency employed a 13-year-old to work up to 60-hour weeks in an assembly line, the U.S. Department of Labor told an Alabama federal court Thursday, saying the labor "shocks the conscience."

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9th Circ. Reopens Mandatory Security Check Wage Fight

By Gina Kim

The Ninth Circuit on Thursday largely revived a proposed wage class action by a subcontractor who sought to be paid for undergoing mandatory security checks and vehicle inspections at a solar project site, following the California Supreme Court's ruling that found the time to be compensable as "hours worked."

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Ex-WWE Worker Pauses Trafficking Claims For DOJ Probe

By Brian Steele

A former World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. paralegal has agreed to put her sexual assault and trafficking lawsuit against the company, founder Vince McMahon and a former executive on hold while the U.S. Department of Justice conducts a "nonpublic investigation," the plaintiff's counsel said Thursday.

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DOL Says Challenged Provision In DBA Rule Is Lawful

By Irene Spezzamonte

The U.S. Department of Labor pressed a Texas federal court not to halt its final rule regulating prevailing wages under the Davis-Bacon Act, saying that one of the provisions several construction groups are challenging is completely lawful.

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FTC, SEC Urged To Probe UnitedHealth's 'Negligent' Security

By Allison Grande

The chair of the U.S. Senate finance committee on Thursday pressed the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to hold UnitedHealth Group and its top executives liable for "numerous" cybersecurity failings that fueled a debilitating cyberattack on its Change Healthcare unit. 

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Data Co. Exec, Worker Guilty Of Fraud In Mail Scam Case

By Daniel Ducassi

A Colorado federal jury on Thursday convicted two former Epsilon Data Management employees for their roles in selling data to mail scammers who preyed on the elderly and vulnerable.

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FAA Caps 737 Max Production Amid Boeing Safety Plan Fixes

By Linda Chiem

The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday it will continue to limit Boeing's production of 737 Max jets as the company presses ahead with overhauling its safety culture under an FAA-mandated corrective action plan following January's midair blowout aboard an Alaska Airlines flight.

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Pa. Court Blocks State's Recall Over Cannabis Vape Additives

By Matthew Santoni

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has permanently blocked the state Department of Health from enforcing a 2022 recall of medical cannabis products containing certain additives, on the grounds that the department's reversal on the additives' approval was a "de facto regulation" that was enacted without the proper procedures.

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NCAA To End Transfer Rules In Deal With DOJ

By David Steele

The NCAA agreed on Thursday to stop enforcing all rules governing athletes transferring from one institution to another, as part of a proposed consent decree filed by the U.S. Department of Justice to settle an antitrust suit against the organization by 10 states and the District of Columbia.

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Analysis

3 Things To Watch In SF's High Court Water Standards Case

By Juan-Carlos Rodriguez

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted San Francisco's request that it review the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to incorporate narrative pollution standards in a Clean Water Act permit, throwing into question the use of a common permitting feature.

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NY Truckers Sue To Block Congestion Pricing In Manhattan

By Linda Chiem

New York truckers have joined the fight to block congestion pricing from taking effect next month, alleging in a new Manhattan federal lawsuit Thursday that the first-of-its-kind fee for vehicles entering the Big Apple's busiest corridor unconstitutionally penalizes the trucking industry.

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Ill. Made 'Big Concession' In 3M PFAS Suit, 7th Circ. Judge Says

By Celeste Bott

A Seventh Circuit judge observed Thursday that the state of Illinois made a "big concession" in its suit accusing 3M of polluting local waters with toxic "forever chemicals" when the state said 3M could avoid liability if Illinois can't prove contamination came exclusively from a particular facility.

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Okla. Tribes Say Bills Won't Deter Poultry Biz From Polluting

By Crystal Owens

The Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes says two bills working their way through the Oklahoma Legislature don't go far enough to deter the poultry industry from polluting and threaten to undo decades of progress toward improving water quality.

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BF Borgers Clients Should Review Compliance, Liability

After the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recently announced enforcement proceedings against audit firm BF Borgers for fabricating audit documentation for hundreds of public companies, those companies will need to follow special procedures for disclosure and reporting — and may need to prepare for litigation from the plaintiffs bar, say attorneys at Debevoise.

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New TSCA Risk Rule Gives EPA Broad Discretion On Science

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recent final amendments to its framework for evaluating the risks of chemical substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act give it vast discretion over consideration of scientific information, without objective criteria to guide that discretion, say John McGahren and Debra Carfora at Morgan Lewis.

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Perspectives

Trauma-Informed Legal Approaches For Pro Bono Attorneys

As National Trauma Awareness Month ends, pro bono attorneys should nevertheless continue to acknowledge the mental and physical effects of trauma, allowing them to better represent clients, and protect themselves from compassion fatigue and burnout, say Katherine Cronin at Stinson and Katharine Manning at Blackbird.

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Orrick Leads List Of Top Law Firms For Women, Diversity

By Aebra Coe

Talent strategies firm Seramount released its latest list of the 45 best law firms for women and diversity this week, with the 2024 cohort of winners showing strides over previous years in representation, advancement and benefits for lawyers who are women or from other underrepresented groups.

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Houston Judge's Vast Display Reflects 25 Years On Bench

By Catherine Marfin

Along the hallways leading to U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison's Houston courtroom hang hundreds of notes, photos, thank-you cards and other correspondence, serving as a kind of interactive scrapbook of Judge Ellison's 25 years on the bench.

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Analysis

In Rarity, 1 Party's Judges Gain 100% Control Of Circuit Bench

By Jeff Overley

At the First Circuit, the judges' robes are all black, but the judges are all blue. It's a new and unusual instance of one political party's judicial picks controlling each active seat on a federal appeals court, and the Democratic dominance could prove magnetic for ideologically charged litigation.

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Orrick's $8M Deal To End Data Breach Claims Nears Prelim OK

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge indicated Friday that she'll preliminarily approve Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP's $8 million deal to end putative class claims over a 2023 data breach that purportedly exposed personal information for 638,000 individuals, but said the "very broad" scope of the settlement's release "raised my eyebrows."

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Smith Gambrell Faces Slimmed Data Breach Suit

By Emily Sawicki

A California federal judge has trimmed the claims a proposed class of data breach victims brought against international law firm Smith Gambrell & Russell LLP, leaving the firm to face claims of negligence, invasion of privacy and violation of the California Unfair Competition Law.

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Analysis

Del. Chancellor Questions 'Rush' To Amend Corporation Law

By Jeff Montgomery

Weeks before the Delaware State Bar Association sent state lawmakers a draft bill explicitly allowing corporations to broadly cede some governance rights to chosen stockholders, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of Delaware Chancery Court made an unprecedented, direct appeal to think twice.

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Trump Condemns NY Trial As Verdict Echoes In DC

By Rachel Scharf

A day after his conviction on 34 felony counts, former president Donald Trump on Friday attacked the Manhattan jury's verdict in a lengthy speech that mischaracterized multiple elements of the case as the decision reverberated through Washington, D.C.

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Trump's New York Prosecutors Called To House Hearing

By Courtney Bublé

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, demanded on Friday that Manhattan prosecutors appear for a hearing on June 13 on the prosecution of former President Donald Trump, who was convicted on Thursday of 34 felonies.

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Disbarring Giuliani Would 'Protect The Public,' DC Panel Says

By Alison Knezevich

A Washington, D.C., attorney ethics panel agreed Friday that Rudy Giuliani's role in former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn Pennsylvania's presidential election in 2020 amounted to misconduct "of the utmost seriousness," and that disbarring him would "protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession."

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Texas Judge Opts Not To Recuse And Tosses Chamber Suit

By Emily Sawicki

A Texas federal judge has thrown out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's suit seeking to block the Federal Trade Commission from implementing a ban on noncompete clauses because a different plaintiff was first to file, adding he declined to recuse himself because no companies in his stock portfolio were parties in the case.

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Illinois Strengthens Atty Ethics Rules For Harassment, Bias

By Celeste Bott

The Illinois Supreme Court has announced that the state's professional conduct rules for attorneys have been amended to deem the act of engaging in harassment or discrimination as professional misconduct, and not just in the event a court or administrative agency finds that a lawyer violated a law prohibiting such actions.

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DOJ Looks To End A Legacy Of Bias In Sex Assault Cases

By Hannah Albarazi

The U.S. Department of Justice says that legal fallacies and misogynistic stereotypes often lead prosecutors to decline to charge alleged perpetrators of sexual violence, but new guidance from the department is pushing prosecutors to give more credence to victims and see that their claims are more thoroughly investigated.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Brewer Attorneys & Counselors, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and attorneys Eugene Volokh and Alan Morrison lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the National Rifle Association can proceed with certain claims in the gun rights group's lawsuit against a former New York state official.

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The Top In-House Hires Of May

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the last full month of spring included high-profile appointments at Southwest, Hormel and UnitedHealth. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from May.

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Off The Bench: NCAA Transfers Freed, Atty Plays Cards Right

By David Steele

In this week's Off the Bench, the NCAA agrees to more historic rule changes while experts examine its post-House settlement future, and a patent lawyer looks back at his transformation into a poker champion.

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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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