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April 18, 2024
Amazon Ignored Labor, IP Laws In AI 'Panic,' Ex-Worker Says
An artificial intelligence researcher suing Amazon for labor law violations says it disregarded numerous laws in a frantic attempt to catch up to its AI rivals, directing her to ignore copyright laws in developing its large language models and retaliating when her pregnancy leave coincided with a rival's product launch.
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April 18, 2024
USPTO Reveals Scaled-Back Plan For New Patent Board Rules
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office unveiled proposed Patent Trial and Appeal Board rules Thursday that would codify current policies on when multiple challenges to one patent are permitted and set a new briefing process about discretionary denials, which attorneys say should add clarity.
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April 18, 2024
Ex-Autonomy CEO Wanted Whistleblower Fired, Ex-GC Says
Former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch thought a finance department whistleblower was "trying to destroy the company" and wanted him fired, the software company's former U.S. general counsel testified Thursday in a criminal fraud trial over claims Lynch conned HP into buying the British company at an inflated price of $11.7 billion.
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April 18, 2024
Chancery OKs Case Lead For Blue Bell Creameries Suit
A Delaware vice chancellor on Thursday restored a Blue Bell Creameries Inc. stockholder's widow as lead plaintiff in a derivative suit seeking to hold directors and officers of the ice cream company accountable for deadly food-safety oversight failures in 2015.
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April 18, 2024
SEC Exams Division Flags Misleading Claims In Adviser Ads
Investment advisers are publishing various misrepresentations and omissions in marketing materials, according to a recent risk alert from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's examinations division that flagged a litany of compliance issues with the agency's marketing rule.
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April 18, 2024
AT&T, Pittsburgh Settle Dispute Over Cell Site Fees, Delays
The city of Pittsburgh has created a new fee schedule for small wireless communications facilities, which AT&T agreed will resolve the telecom firm's claims that the city effectively prevented its service expansion with its prior fee schedule, according to a joint stipulation filed in Pennsylvania federal court.
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April 18, 2024
AGs, Google Defend $700M Play Store Deal Ripped By Judge
A group of state attorneys general and Google defended the proposed $700 million settlement both sides brokered in the states' antitrust suit against the company in December, telling a San Francisco federal judge that the deal is consistent with Ninth Circuit precedent and releases only a limited set of claims against Google for a seven-year period.
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April 18, 2024
T-Mobile, Others Rip 'Hodgepodge' Forced Store Closings Suit
T-Mobile says it doesn't belong in a suit accusing it and another company of misleading store owners by promising it would open hundreds of new stores in the wake of its $26 billion merger with Sprint in 2020 only to turn around and shut the plaintiffs down.
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April 18, 2024
Pharma Ex-Exec Can't Revive $12M Underpayment Suit in US
A Manhattan federal judge has refused to rethink her decision tossing a $12 million suit accusing Altum Pharmaceuticals Inc. and its cannabis-focused parent company, BetterLife Pharma Inc., of stock dilution and underpaying a former executive chairman of the board of directors, saying the claims are better suited for Canadian courts.
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April 18, 2024
Investors In Failed Manila Casino Deal Sue For SPAC Shares
Shareholders in a blank-check company that failed to take a Philippines casino public have intervened in two Delaware Chancery Court lawsuits to recoup their failed investments, with one seeking to litigate damages from the busted $2.6 billion deal and the other pushing for the company's liquidation.
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April 18, 2024
Qdoba To Pay $3.8M To Wrap Up Wash. Pay Transparency Suit
Mexican restaurant chain Qdoba will pay $3.8 million to resolve a class action alleging it violated Washington state's pay transparency law when it failed to disclose pay information in job postings, according to a filing in state court.
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April 18, 2024
Endo Pleads Guilty To Marketing Opioids As 'Crush Proof'
Endo Health Solutions Inc. pled guilty Thursday in Michigan federal court to putting out a drug it falsely advertised as being "crush proof" and "abuse deterrent," part of its larger agreement with the government to resolve nearly $2 billion in civil and criminal claims against the company.
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April 18, 2024
$550K Fingerprint BIPA Deal Receives Ill. Judge's Initial OK
An Illinois federal judge gave his early blessing Wednesday to a nearly $550,000 settlement between global food supplier Rich Products Corp. and hundreds of current and former employees who claimed the company illegally collected and used their scanned fingerprint data.
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April 18, 2024
Sugar Co. Urges 11th Circ. To Revive Helms-Burton Suit
North American Sugar Industries Inc. asked the Eleventh Circuit Thursday to revive its suit accusing several companies that shipped wind turbines to Cuba of violating the Helms-Burton Act, saying the trial court erred in tossing its claims for lack of jurisdiction.
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April 18, 2024
Bank Wants To Exit Suit Over $100M Of Special Needs Trusts
American Momentum Bank has for the second time asked a Florida federal judge to let it get out of a lawsuit from the parents of a disabled child claiming it abetted a predatory scheme to misappropriate more than $100 million of special needs trust assets, saying the parents failed to show what role the bank played in the alleged misdeeds.
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April 18, 2024
23andMe Taps Dechert To Review CEO Buyout Proposal
A special committee of genetic testing company 23andMe has engaged Dechert LLP as its legal adviser and Wells Fargo as its financial adviser as it looks to review an anticipated buyout offer from its co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, according to a statement Thursday.
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April 18, 2024
IRS Updates Rates For Foreign Insurance Company Equations
The Internal Revenue Service published updated domestic asset/liability and yields percentages Thursday that foreign life insurance companies as well as foreign property and liability insurance companies need to compute their minimum effectively connected net investment income for tax years starting in 2023.
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April 18, 2024
Building Groups Say They Can Fight Prevailing Wage Rule
Several construction trade groups told a Texas federal judge that they don't need to point to specific members to support their argument that a U.S. Department of Labor final rule regulating prevailing wages will hurt them, urging the court to keep alive their suit challenging the rule.
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April 18, 2024
Amazon Strikes Deal, Staves Off Trial In Disability Bias Suit
Amazon reached a deal to end a suit from an ex-employee who accused the e-commerce giant of pushing him out because of a knee injury stemming from his military service, ahead of a trial slated to begin in May, according to a filing in California federal court.
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April 18, 2024
Transfer Pricing And Dancing: Recalling KPMG's Sean Foley
Sean Foley, who died suddenly in September, was a devoted husband, father, brother and friend and a brilliant colleague. He was one of the world's top experts in an area of international tax known as transfer pricing, where he became the global leader of KPMG's practice.
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April 18, 2024
Jury Of 12 Picked For Trump Hush Money Case In NY
A jury of 12 New Yorkers was selected Thursday for the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump on charges he falsified business records to keep news of an extramarital affair from damaging his 2016 electoral prospects.
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April 17, 2024
Experts Unjustly Barred In Fla. Cancer Suit, 11th Circ. Told
A group of Florida families urged the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday to overturn a jury verdict that found defense contractor Pratt & Whitney wasn't liable for a cancer cluster near the company's former rocket testing site, saying the court abused its discretion when excluding their expert witnesses.
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April 17, 2024
No Sanctions For Wordy Footnotes In Google Maps Case
A California federal judge will not sanction attorneys representing Google Maps customers in an antitrust action for their "numerous and excessively long footnotes" after the lawyers on Wednesday explained it wasn't a tactic for avoiding page limits and promised not to do it again.
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April 17, 2024
Ex-JPMorgan Analyst Liked 'Winding Up' Autonomy CEO, Jury Told
A former JPMorgan stock analyst testifying Wednesday in the criminal fraud trial of former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch said that he "took pleasure in winding up Lynch" and once even used a Hitler analogy to describe his performance, but said his critical coverage was never personal.
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April 17, 2024
Walgreens Investors' $36M Deal In Opioid Suit Gets First OK
An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday granted his initial approval of a $36 million settlement to end a stockholder's derivative suit accusing Walgreens and its leadership of failing to limit retail pharmacies from dispensing unreasonable amounts of opioids.
Expert Analysis
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Steps For Companies New To Sanctions Compliance
Businesses newly required to implement compliance programs due to the increased breadth of mandatory sanctions and export controls, including 500 additional Russia sanctions announced last Friday, should closely follow the guidance issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control and other regulators, say Jennifer Schubert and Megan Church at MoloLamken.
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A Cautionary Tale On Hospital-Physician Alignment Structures
A $345 million settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and Community Health Network highlights how quickly hospital and physician alignment relationships can violate legal restrictions on such dealings, and the onerous financial penalties that can ensue, say Robert Threlkeld and Elliott Coward at Morris Manning.
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Using Arbitration And Class Waivers As Privacy Suit Tools
Amid a surge in data breach class actions over the last few years, several federal court decisions indicate that arbitration clauses and class action waiver provisions can be possible alternatives to public court battles and potentially reduce the costs of privacy litigation, say Mark Olthoff and Courtney Klaus at Polsinelli.
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6 Pointers For Attys To Build Trust, Credibility On Social Media
In an era of information overload, attorneys can use social media strategically — from making infographics to leveraging targeted advertising — to cut through the noise and establish a reputation among current and potential clients, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.
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Cos. Must Know How NY, Federal LLC Disclosure Laws Differ
Though New York state's new LLC Transparency Act and the federal Corporate Transparency Act impose similar beneficial owner reporting obligations on limited liability companies, New York LLCs should study the important differences between the laws to ensure they are prepared to comply with both, say Abram Ellis, Olenka Burghardt and Jane Jho at Simpson Thacher.
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Opinion
Biden Admin's March-In Plan Would Hurt Medical Innovation
The Biden administration's proposal to reinterpret the Bayh-Dole Act and allow the government to claw back patents when it determines that a commercialized product's price is too high would discourage private investment in important research and development, says Ken Thorpe at the Rollins School of Public Health.
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9 Considerations For Divestitures, Carveouts And Spinouts
Amid new economic optimism, data protection, transitional services and seven other considerations can help legal practitioners untangle complex divestitures, carveouts and spinouts to unlock value for corporate sellers, say Kimberly Petillo-Décossard and Kristen Rohr at White & Case.
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Why Fla. High Court Adopting Apex Doctrine Is Monumental
The Florida Supreme Court recently solidified the apex doctrine in the Sunshine State, an important development that extends the scope of the doctrine in the state to include both corporate and government officials, and formalizes the requirements for a high-level corporate official to challenge a request for a deposition, says Laura Renstrom at Holland & Knight.
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5 Lessons For SaaS Companies After Blackbaud Data Breach
Looking at the enforcement actions that software-as-a-service provider Blackbaud resolved with state attorneys general, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission in the past year can help SaaS companies manage these increasingly common forms of data breaches, say attorneys at Orrick.
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Key Lessons After A Rare R&W Insurance Ruling
The recent New York state court decision in Novolex Holdings v. Illinois Union Insurance is noteworthy as one of the rare judicial opinions arising in the context of representations and warranties insurance, serving to remind parties entering into R&W insurance policies that they may not be immune from some doctrines unfavorable to insurers, say attorneys at Kramer Levin.
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Del. Ruling Stands Out In Thorny Noncompete Landscape
In Cantor Fitzgerald v. Ainslie, the Delaware Supreme Court last month upheld the enforceability of forfeiture-for-competition provisions in limited partnership agreements, providing a noteworthy opinion amid a time of increasing disfavor toward noncompetes and following a string of Chancery Court rulings deeming them unreasonable, say Margaret Butler and Steven Goldberg at BakerHostetler.
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Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: February Lessons
In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy discusses five notable circuit court decisions on topics from property taxes to veteran's rights — and provides key takeaways for counsel on issues including class representative intervention, wage-and-hour dispute evidence and ascertainability requirements.
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A Refresher On Witness Testimony In 3 Key Settings
The recent controversy over congressional testimony from university presidents about antisemitism on campus serves as a reminder to attorneys about what to emphasize and avoid when preparing witnesses to testify before Congress, and how this venue differs from grand jury and trial proceedings, say Jack Sharman and Tyler Yarbrough at Lightfoot Franklin.
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A Post-Mortem Analysis Of Stroock's Demise
After the dissolution of 147-year-old firm Stroock late last year shook up the legal world, a post-mortem analysis of the data reveals a long list of warning signs preceding the firm’s collapse — and provides some insight into how other firms might avoid the same disastrous fate, says Craig Savitzky at Leopard Solutions.
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Reassessing Trade Secrets Amid Proposed Noncompete Ban
The Federal Trade Commission's proposed ban on noncompete agreements as well as state bans make it prudent for businesses to reevaluate and reinvigorate approaches to trade secret protection, including knowing what information employees are providing to vendors, and making sure confidentiality agreements are put in place before information is shared, says Rob Jensen at Wolf Greenfield.