Commercial Contracts

  • April 16, 2024

    NJ Hospital GC Emails Doom $24M Verdict For Surgeons

    The New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday vacated a $24.3 million award to a group of neurosurgeons on their claim that a hospital didn't operate in good faith, finding the trial court's admission of emails from the hospital's general counsel and remarks made during closing arguments deprived the hospital of a fair trial.

  • April 16, 2024

    Capital One Escapes Customer Sign-Up Bonus Suit, For Now

    A California federal judge dismissed a proposed class action brought by a Capital One customer who claimed he applied for a credit card but never got a promised sign-up bonus, saying that a social media advertisement about a bonus was not enough to allege traceability.

  • April 16, 2024

    Excess Carriers Say Property Co. Not Covered In Antitrust Suit

    Two excess insurers said they don't owe coverage to a property management company for underlying litigation alleging a price-fixing conspiracy involving software company RealPage Inc., telling a Massachusetts federal court that a professional services exclusion in the primary policy bars coverage.

  • April 16, 2024

    W&T Offshore Accuses Pipeline Co. Of $3M Per Month Losses

    A Gulf of Mexico oil producer claims it is losing millions of dollars a month from regulators' forced shut-in of a pipeline network it depends on in a lawsuit filed in Texas federal court alleging the pipeline company violated their contract to follow U.S. law and keep the line operating.

  • April 15, 2024

    Resistance To Patent Licenses Drives More Suits, Execs Say

    Companies that generate revenue from patents are seeing less willingness to negotiate in recent years among businesses they approach about potential licenses, requiring more litigation in order to reach agreements, executives from IBM, InterDigital and others said Monday.

  • April 15, 2024

    SeaWorld's Sesame Park Visitors Can't Get Cert. In Bias Fight

    A Pennsylvania federal judge refused Monday to certify a class of Hispanic and Black customers who allege performers at the SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Inc.-owned theme park Sesame Place discriminated against and ignored minority children, finding that the proposed 130 children class size is based on inadmissible speculation.

  • April 15, 2024

    McDonald's, Workers Battle Over Future Of No-Poach Case

    Workers suing McDonald's over its past use of no-poach provisions in franchise agreements have told an Illinois federal court the fast food chain is trying to slow down the case after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up its appeal.

  • April 15, 2024

    Mich. High Court To Hear Siblings' Ski Share Valuation Fight

    A sibling feud between the CEO of a family-run ski resort company and his sister, a minority shareholder, will get a hearing in front of the Michigan Supreme Court after the justices agreed to look at whether the company honored an agreement for redemption of shares in the family company.

  • April 15, 2024

    Caterpillar Dealer Calls Keep Antitrust Claims Alive Amid Trial

    A Delaware federal judge doubled down Monday on his critique of arguments by Caterpillar Inc., which asked to toss antitrust and hub-and-spoke conspiracy claims from an importer that sought to disrupt the machinery industry before it went belly up.

  • April 15, 2024

    Allstate Asks Court To Order Takedown Of 'Smear' Posts

    Allstate asked a Colorado federal judge to order a former independent contractor to remove false statements on his website accusing the insurer of selling customers' personal information to criminals, arguing it has been irreparably injured and that the defendant has signaled he has no plans to stop his smear campaign.

  • April 15, 2024

    Exxon Seeks $1.8B Tax Refund As Qatar Deal Trial Opens

    Exxon Mobil Corp. argued Monday in Texas federal court that its deal with Qatar to extract natural gas from the country's coast was a partnership, rather than a lease agreement, saying at the start of a trial that it's entitled to get $1.8 billion in tax benefits back from the IRS.

  • April 15, 2024

    Boeing Says Virgin Can't Use Another Court To Avoid IP Suit

    Boeing has urged the Virginia federal judge overseeing its breach of contract and trade secrets dispute with Virgin Galactic to block Virgin from moving forward with a "copycat" lawsuit in California, saying Virgin is wrongly trying to avoid the original lawsuit.

  • April 15, 2024

    Apple Faces Two Suits Over IPhone Market Dominance

    Apple has been hit with a pair of suits alleging it has unfairly stifled competition in the smartphone market and that its practices and iPhone sales have violated federal securities and antitrust laws.

  • April 15, 2024

    Pet Food Brand Chicken Soup Says Supplier Hiked Costs

    A manufacturer that supplied the Chicken Soup for the Soul pet food brand bought ingredients from its own subsidiary, hiked prices and failed to deliver products, according to a response to the manufacturer's $3.1 million allegation that the name brand failed to pay for food already manufactured and sold to consumers.

  • April 15, 2024

    Worldpay Sues Shuttered Retailer Over Refund Refusals

    Payment processor Worldpay LLC is requesting injunctive relief in Ohio federal court to alleviate the millions of dollars in losses it says it has incurred since home appliance retailer Pirch Inc. began refusing to honor its customers' credit card refund requests after halting operations abruptly in March.

  • April 15, 2024

    Power Seller Presses 5th Circ. To Uphold $25M Contract Win

    An electricity seller on Friday told the Fifth Circuit that a lower court got it right when it awarded more than $25 million in a contract fight with a power trader over electricity price-hedging deals that sustained heavy losses during 2021's Winter Storm Uri.

  • April 15, 2024

    Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

    Last week, Delaware justices mulled whether one Chancery Court vice chancellor properly voided four company bylaws — just as another vice chancellor voided one more. Fights among Truth Social investors continued, and shareholders launched new cases involving Macy's, United Airlines, and Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC and Stone Point Capital LLC.

  • April 15, 2024

    2nd Circ. Affirms Telecom Co.'s $13M Union Pension Bill

    The Second Circuit upheld a New York federal court's determination that a telecommunications company owed $13 million in withdrawal liability to a multiemployer pension plan for electrical and contract workers, agreeing Monday with an arbitrator's finding that a construction industry exception didn't apply to the disputed work.

  • April 15, 2024

    Justices Won't Hear Brokerage's Arbitration Claim In Fees Suit

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear HomeServices of America's argument that certain class members in a lawsuit over real estate agents' commissions should have been compelled to arbitrate their antitrust claims rather than taking them to a jury.

  • April 15, 2024

    Justices Pass On Norfolk Southern Claim To Rail Line Control

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear Norfolk Southern Railway Co.'s challenge to a 2022 Surface Transportation Board ruling that the freight railroad company can't control Virginia's Belt Line, which opened it up to an antitrust suit from rival CSX Transportation Inc. over its rate-setting.

  • April 12, 2024

    Jane Street Says Millennium, Ex-Workers Stole Trade Secrets

    Trading firm Jane Street Group LLC sued rival Millennium Management LLC and two former employees in New York federal court Friday, alleging they stole a confidential trading strategy and have reaped "massive profits from this theft."

  • April 12, 2024

    Gilstrap Rejects Jury Instruction Tweaks In Samsung Retrial

    U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap on Friday largely denied jury instruction requests made by both Samsung and G+ Communications ahead of a damages retrial in Texas federal court in litigation over wireless network patents, rejecting each company's ideas for limiting what's presented to jurors.

  • April 12, 2024

    Dunn DeSantis Expands San Diego Office With 7 Attorneys

    Dunn DeSantis Walt & Kendrick LLP recently expanded its San Diego office with the addition of seven employment law attorneys, the firm said in a statement.

  • April 12, 2024

    Sports Co.'s Logistics Shutdown Suit Survives Dismissal Bid

    A Washington federal judge has partially rejected a logistics company's dismissal bid in a manufacturer's lawsuit over a cyberattack that allegedly stunted operations, criticizing the "obtuse" argument that their deal didn't explicitly require the contractor to shield the client from such breaches.  

  • April 12, 2024

    Virgin Fest Wins $2M In Del. After Calif. Music Event Bust

    A festival-promoting interest of British billionaire Richard Branson's empire secured a $2 million judgment in Delaware's Superior Court Friday against a music festival producer, previously known as Kaaboo LLC, after a court finding that Kaaboo provided an unsupported, $10 million value for a California festival before Virgin Fest purchased the business.

Expert Analysis

  • Wachtell-X Ruling Highlights Trend On Arbitrability Question

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    A growing body of case law, including a California state court's recent decision in X Corp. v. Wachtell, holds that incorporation of specific arbitral body rules in an arbitration provision may in and of itself constitute clear and unmistakable evidence of delegation of arbitrability to an arbitrator, and thus such clauses should be drafted carefully, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

  • 7 E-Discovery Predictions For 2024 And Beyond

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    The legal and technical issues of e-discovery now affect virtually every lawsuit, and in the year to come, practitioners can expect practices and policies to evolve in a number of ways, from the expanded use of relevancy redactions to mandated information security provisions in protective orders, say attorneys at Littler.

  • Trends That Tech Lawyers Should Keep An Eye On In 2024

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    Worldwide technology spending is projected to strengthen in 2024, spurred by artificial intelligence-driven solutions, and five areas of growth may affect lawyers' practice in this sector, says Sonia Baldia at Kilpatrick.

  • 5 Litigation Funding Trends To Note In 2024

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    Over the next year and beyond, litigation funding will continue to evolve in ways that affect attorneys and the larger litigation landscape, from the growth of a secondary market for funded claims, to rising interest rates restricting the availability of capital, says Jeffery Lula at GLS Capital.

  • A Look At Consumer Reporting In 2023, And What's To Come

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    The legal landscape of consumer reporting is evolving as courts, federal regulators and state legislatures continue to weigh in — and while last year may have seen a slight downtick in the overall volume of Fair Credit Reporting Act litigation, 2024 is set to be a watershed year for this area of the law, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.

  • Opinion

    Noncompete Report Misinterpreted Critique Of FTC Proposal

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    A recent report on core questions surrounding the use of employee noncompete agreements published by the Economic Innovation Group misconstrues our stated views on the issue — and we stand behind our conclusion that the Federal Trade Commission made misrepresentations when proposing a rule to ban such provisions nationwide, say Erik Weibust and Stuart Gerson at Epstein Becker.

  • Series

    Calif. Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q4

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    As 2023 came to an end, we continued to see developments in California that are certain to have an impact on the financial services industry in 2024, including the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation's request for comments on the state's new digital asset law and the state's continued enforcement actions against debt collectors, say Jennifer Olivestone and Juan Azel at Winston & Strawn.

  • 4 Legal Ethics Considerations For The New Year

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    As attorneys and clients reset for a new year, now is a good time to take a step back and review some core ethical issues that attorneys should keep front of mind in 2024, including approaching generative artificial intelligence with caution and care, and avoiding pitfalls in outside counsel guidelines, say attorneys at HWG.

  • What The Law Firm Of The Future Will Look Like

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    As the legal landscape shifts, it’s become increasingly clear that the BigLaw business model must adapt in four key ways to remain viable, from fostering workplace flexibility to embracing technology, say Kevin Henderson and Eric Pacifici at SMB Law Group.

  • Navigating Class Actions After Papa John's Settlement Denial

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    A Kentucky federal court's surprising denial of preliminary approval for a $5 million settlement in the Papa John's no-poach case may prove to be an outlier but suggests a class action settlement would only be approved when a plaintiff demonstrates that a litigation class would be certified, say attorneys at Robins Kaplan.

  • 4 PR Pointers When Your Case Is In The News

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    Media coverage of new lawsuits exploded last year, demonstrating why defense attorneys should devise a public relations plan that complements their legal strategy, incorporating several objectives to balance ethical obligations and advocacy, say Nathan Burchfiel at Pinkston and Ryan June at Castañeda + Heidelman.

  • Trouble Indemnity: IP Lawsuits In The Generative AI Boom

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    Attorneys at Ropes & Gray explore the contours of the intellectual property indemnification protections offered by providers of generative AI models — including their scope, coverage, conditions, exclusions and caps — to assess where businesses may still face liability exposure.

  • 6 AI Cases And What They Mean For Copyright Law

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    Artificial intelligence cases filed last year, some decided and others pending, demonstrate how the appellate courts that set binding precedent look at the intersection between copyright and AI, so legal frameworks must adapt and provide clarity in order to foster innovation, protect creators, and ensure fair and equitable outcomes, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • The Space Law And Policy Outlook For 2024

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    Expect significant movement in space law, regulation and policy in 2024, as Congress, the administration and independent federal agencies like the Federal Communications Commission address the increasingly congested, contested and competitive nature of space and the space industry, say Paul Stimers and Leighton Brown at Holland & Knight.

  • Charting The Course For Digital Assets In 2024

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    Although 2023 was a tough year for the digital asset industry, upcoming court decisions, legislation and regulatory action will bring clarity, allowing the industry to expand and evolve, and the government will decide what innovation it will allow without challenge, says Joshua Smeltzer at Gray Reed.

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