California

  • June 04, 2024

    Ohtani's Ex-Interpreter Cops To Stealing $17M From MLB Star

    Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter pled guilty Tuesday to bank and tax fraud charges in a packed Santa Ana, California, federal courtroom, admitting he stole nearly $17 million from the MLB superstar to help pay off massive gambling debts. 

  • June 04, 2024

    GRSM50 Gains Liability Partner In San Diego

    Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP, the firm now known as GRSM50, has hired an attorney from Murchison & Cumming LLP, who joins the firm in California to continue her general liability practice, the firm announced Monday.

  • June 04, 2024

    MLB Player Banned For Life For Betting Violations

    Major League Baseball has permanently banned San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano, and handed down a one-year ban to Oakland Athletics pitcher Michael Kelly and three minor leaguers, for betting on baseball, according to a Tuesday statement.

  • June 03, 2024

    MLB Says Padres Star May Have Breached Betting Rules

    San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano is being investigated for allegedly placing bets on baseball games last season while he was playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, a Major League Baseball spokesperson confirmed Monday.

  • June 03, 2024

    Ex-Autonomy CEO 'Had 500M Reasons' For Fraud, Jury Told

    Autonomy's ex-CEO Michael Lynch "had 500 million reasons to defraud HP," since he reaped $500 million by selling his company to the tech giant at an inflated price, a federal prosecutor argued Monday during closings for the businessman's criminal trial, while Lynch's lawyer told jurors, "HP was not a victim."

  • June 03, 2024

    Hooters Can't Yet Ditch Ex-Workers' Sex Harassment Claims

    A California appellate court has refused to undo a lower court's decision finding that Hooters of America must continue to fight former servers' allegations that they were harassed and abused at work, ruling that Hooters hasn't met its burden of showing that it was entitled to summary adjudication.

  • June 03, 2024

    California Pizza Kitchen Hack Deal Is Half Baked, 9th Circ. Told

    An attorney for objectors to a settlement between a class of current and former California Pizza Kitchen employees and the restaurant chain over a data breach told a Ninth Circuit panel on Monday that the district court did not properly scrutinize the deal or allegations of collusion between the parties.

  • June 03, 2024

    Patent Owner Says Facts Have Changed Since It Lost At ITC

    A patent licensing company accusing HP of infringing old Panasonic patents is seeking to resume its suit in Texas federal court, arguing that an invalidity ruling it lost last month at the U.S. International Trade Commission doesn't hold up in district court.

  • June 03, 2024

    Navy Federal Lets AI Co. Monitor Calls, Suit Says

    Navy Federal Credit Union has been letting an artificial intelligence software company intercept, analyze and record all its customer calls, according to a new lawsuit accusing the nation's largest credit union of putting its members' confidential, personal and financial information at risk.

  • June 03, 2024

    Some Racketeering Claims In $92M Award Suit Can Proceed

    A Monaco bank and a Luxembourg lawyer and trust administrator must face racketeering claims accusing them of helping to hide the fortune of a Russian businessman who's on the hook for a $92 million arbitral award, a California federal judge ruled on Friday.

  • June 03, 2024

    Attys Raise Safety Concerns In Feds' Bid To End Flores Deal

    Attorneys for human rights organizations in the long-running Flores litigation are opposing the Biden administration's bid to partially terminate an agreement in the case mandating safety standards for minors in immigration detention, saying it could weaken existing protections.

  • June 03, 2024

    Google Gets Amicus Boost In Fed. Circ. Battle With Sonos

    Google's efforts to prevent the reinstatement of a $32.5 million patent infringement verdict won against it by wireless speaker company Sonos have found support in the Federal Circuit from business trade groups, public interest nonprofits and a former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office official.

  • June 03, 2024

    El Pollo Loco Hit With Wage, Hostile Work Environment Claims

    El Pollo Loco did not provide a former assistant manager with meal breaks or overtime or pay him the full wages he was promised, and store managers mocked him for requesting leave to tend to his ailing mother, the ex-worker alleged in a complaint filed in state court.

  • June 03, 2024

    New Mexico AG Beats Meta's Bid To Toss Child Abuse Suit

    Social media company Meta can't escape a lawsuit claiming sexual predators were allowed to abuse children on Facebook and Instagram, after a New Mexico state judge rejected Meta's claims for immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

  • June 03, 2024

    Jeep Driver Files Proposed Class Suit Over Battery Defect

    Stellantis North America has been slapped with a proposed class action in California federal court alleging that although the carmaker's 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited 4XE suffers from a serious battery system defect, the company has refused to issue a recall or fix the vehicles.

  • June 03, 2024

    Equifax Judge OKs $1.1M Atty Fees In Debt Reporting Deal

    Attorneys will recover $1.1 million in fees for securing $500 payments for class members in litigation alleging Equifax reported unenforceable debts, a decision that comes several months after a California federal judge warned he would likely hold a portion of the fees until he learned the ultimate settlement payout.

  • June 03, 2024

    Google Must Face Online Tax Filer's Privacy Suit

    An Illinois woman who prepared her taxes online through H&R Block and then sued Google, claiming the search engine's tracking tool effectively eavesdropped on her confidential tax information, can move forward with her proposed class action, a California federal judge ruled Monday.

  • June 03, 2024

    Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

    Delaware's Court of Chancery pushed out tons of decisions last week, along with a second round of new rules and letters of concern over pending changes to the state's corporate law code. The court's docket was as busy as ever, with new cases involving Tesla CEO Elon Musk, FTX cryptocurrency claims, and more. In case you missed it, here's the latest from Delaware's Chancery Court.

  • June 03, 2024

    Chancery Suit Over $1.4B Building Co. Merger Survives Trims

    The CEO, controlling investor and board members of specialty building product maker Foundation Building Materials Inc. must face Delaware Court of Chancery breach of fiduciary duty claims filed by stockholder after a $1.4 billion company sale, a Delaware vice chancellor has ruled.

  • June 03, 2024

    Ex-SoftBank GC Joins Foley & Lardner As Partner In SF

    Foley & Lardner LLP has hired SoftBank Investment Advisers' former general counsel, who has over a decade of experience in private practice and serving as in-house counsel overseeing SoftBank's legal team, which structured and monitored more than 300 portfolio companies worth more than $130 billion.

  • June 03, 2024

    Biotech Firm, Mobile App Prepare To Enter IPO Fray

    Biotechnology firm Rapport Therapeutics Inc. and Australian-listed mobile-sharing app Life360 Inc. unveiled plans on Monday for initial public offerings that are estimated to raise about $311 million combined this week, under guidance from three law firms.

  • June 03, 2024

    Split Fed. Circ. Backs EcoFactor's $20M Trial Win Over Google

    The Federal Circuit on Monday affirmed that Google should pay EcoFactor $20 million for infringing its smart thermostat patent, but one judge took issue with allowing the damages to stand, saying her colleagues' ruling "at best muddles our precedent and at worst contradicts it."

  • June 03, 2024

    Holland & Knight Hires 3 Ex-Loeb Partners In LA

    Holland & Knight announced on Monday the hiring of three former finance partners at Loeb & Loeb, including its vice chair, for its Los Angeles office.

  • June 03, 2024

    Ropes & Gray Guides Becton On $4.2B Edwards Unit Buy

    Ropes & Gray LLP is guiding Becton Dickinson and Co. on a deal that will see the medical technology company pay $4.2 billion for Edwards Lifesciences' critical care product group, which focuses on patient monitoring using artificial intelligence, the companies said Monday.

  • June 03, 2024

    Calif. Justices Free Woman From Misdemeanor Pot Charges

    The California Supreme Court has thrown out misdemeanor cannabis-related charges against an 85-year-old woman, finding the trial court was within its discretion to consider her lack of knowledge of the unlicensed operation happening in her building.

Expert Analysis

  • A Vision For Economic Clerkships In The Legal System

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    As courts handle increasingly complex damages analyses involving vast amounts of data, an economic clerkship program — integrating early-career economists into the judicial system — could improve legal outcomes and provide essential training to clerks, say Mona Birjandi at Data for Decisions and Matt Farber at Secretariat.

  • Opinion

    Climate Change Shouldn't Be Litigated Under State Laws

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    The U.S. Supreme Court should reverse the Hawaii Supreme Court's October decision in Honolulu v. Sunoco that Hawaii could apply state law to emissions generated outside the state, because it would lead to a barrage of cases seeking to resolve a worldwide problem according to 50 different variations of state law, says Andrew Ketterer at Ketterer & Ketterer.

  • Measuring Early Impact Of Rule 702 Changes On Patent Cases

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    Since Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was amended to clarify the standards for admitting expert witness testimony five months ago, emerging trends in patent cases suggest that it may be easier to limit or exclude expert testimony, and hold key practice takeaways for attorneys, say Manuel Velez and Nan Zhang at Mayer Brown.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Recent Rulings On Text Message Data

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    Electronically stored information on cellphones, and in particular text messages, can present unique litigation challenges, and recent court decisions demonstrate that counsel must carefully balance what data should be preserved, collected, reviewed and produced, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Keeping Up With Class Actions: A New Era Of Higher Stakes

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    Corporate defendants saw unprecedented settlement numbers across all areas of class action litigation in 2022 and 2023, and this year has kept pace so far, with three settlements that stand out for the nature of the claims and for their high dollar amounts, says Gerald Maatman at Duane Morris.

  • What's Notable In JAMS' New Mass Arbitration Rules

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    The Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services’ recently released guidelines, coming on the heels of similar American Arbitration Association amendments, suggests that mass arbitrations will remain an efficient means for consumers to vindicate their rights against companies, say Jonathan Waisnor and Brandon Heitmann at Labaton Keller. 

  • 5 Climate Change Regulatory Issues Insurers Should Follow

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    The climate change landscape for insurers has changed dramatically recently — and not just because of the controversy over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate-related risk disclosure rules, says Thomas Dawson at McDermott.

  • 'Fat Leonard' Case Shows High Bar For Rescinding Guilty Plea

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    Prosecutors’ recent move in the “Fat Leonard” bribery case, supporting several defendants’ motions to withdraw their guilty pleas, is extremely unusual – and its contrast with other prosecutions demonstrates that the procedural safeguards at plea hearings are far from enough, says Sara Kropf at Kropf Moseley.

  • PE In The Crosshairs Of Public And Private Antitrust Enforcers

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    A series of decisions from a California federal court in the recently settled Packaged Seafood Products Antitrust Litigation, as well as heightened scrutiny from federal agencies, serve as a reminder that private equity firms may be exposed to liability for alleged anti-competitive conduct by their portfolio companies, say attorneys at Axinn.

  • Series

    Swimming Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Years of participation in swimming events, especially in the open water, have proven to be ideal preparation for appellate arguments in court — just as you must put your trust in the ocean when competing in a swim event, you must do the same with the judicial process, says John Kulewicz at Vorys.

  • How Courts Are Interpreting Fed. Circ. IPR Estoppel Ruling

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    In the year since the Federal Circuit’s Ironburg ruling, which clarified the scope of inter partes and post-grant review estoppel, district court decisions show that application of IPR or PGR estoppel may become a resource-intensive inquiry, say Whitney Meier Howard and Michelle Lavrichenko at Venable.

  • Patent Damages Jury Verdicts Aren't Always End Of The Story

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    Recent outcomes demonstrate that patent damages jury verdicts are often challenged and are overturned approximately one-third of the time, and successful verdict challenges typically occur at the appellate level and concern patent validity and infringement, say James Donohue and Marie Sanyal at Charles River.

  • Notable Q1 Updates In Insurance Class Actions

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    Mark Johnson and Mathew Drocton at BakerHostetler discuss notable insurance class action decisions from the first quarter of the year ranging from salvage vehicle titling to rate discrimination based on premium-setting software.

  • Manufacturers Should Pay Attention To 'Right-To-Repair' Laws

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    Oregon’s recently passed "right-to-repair" statute highlights that the R2R movement is not going away, and that manufacturers of all kinds need to be paying attention to the evolving list of R2R statutes in various states and consider participating in the process, says Courtney Sarnow at Culhane.

  • Opinion

    Viral Deepfakes Of Taylor Swift Highlight Need For Regulation

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    As the nation grapples with addressing risk from artificial intelligence use, the recent circulation of AI-generated pornographic images of Taylor Swift on the social platform X highlights the need for federal legislation to protect nonconsenting subjects of deepfake pornography, say Nicole Brenner and Susie Ruiz-Lichter at Squire Patton.

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