Dissident Intelligence Worker Arrested Over Leak Attempt

By Dorothy Atkins

Federal officers arrested a Defense Intelligence Agency info technology specialist who has criticized the Trump administration on criminal charges alleging he provided classified information to an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign government official in exchange for foreign citizenship, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

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Split 9th Circ. Won't Unblock Trump's Gov't Overhaul

By Lauren Berg

A split Ninth Circuit on Friday refused to lift a California federal judge's preliminary block of President Donald Trump's executive order directing layoffs at federal agencies, handing a win to a coalition of unions, nonprofits and cities that argue the order exceeded the president's authority.

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DHS Moves To Ax BigLaw Firm's Halkbank FOIA Dispute

By Gina Kim

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security urged a D.C. federal judge to end Williams & Connolly LLP's fight for records related to a businessman who cooperated with prosecutors in their pending case alleging the firm's client Halkbank laundered Iranian oil proceeds, arguing Thursday officials searched for responsive records, but nothing turned up.

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Contractor Nabs Claims Court Win In Fuel Card Award Dispute

By Tom Lotshaw

A Court of Federal Claims judge has ended Kropp Holdings Inc.'s losing streak with a win, holding that the Defense Logistics Agency committed multiple errors awarding a fuel card contract to Associated Energy Group LLC.

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GAO Notes Shortfalls In Reevaluation Of Space Command HQ

By Madeline Lyskawa

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said deficiencies continued in the U.S. Air Force's reevaluation of Huntsville, Alabama, as its preferred location for U.S. Space Command headquarters, before the Biden administration ultimately selected Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the agency's permanent location.

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NSO Wants New WhatsApp Hack Trial After Meta's $168M Win

By Cara Salvatore

Israeli spyware developer NSO Group has asked a California federal judge for a new trial to determine damages for installing spyware on 1,400 phones using Meta-owned WhatsApp, saying the punitive damages portion of a roughly $168 million award was egregious and revealed the jury's "general hostility" toward the company.

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Fed Circ. Weighs In On Veterans Court Review Standard

By Lauren Berg

The Federal Circuit on Friday issued a precedential opinion backing the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims' use of a questions of law analysis, rather than a standard requiring its own review of the facts in a disability evaluation case.

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Sikorsky Aircraft Workers Can't Back Bias Claims, Court Told

By Brian Steele

Two Black ex-employees should lose their federal racial discrimination lawsuit against Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. because one was fired for stealing time, and the other has shown "no evidence of any adverse employment action," the company said in seeking summary judgment Thursday.

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Wash. High Court Relaxes Standard For Worker Illness Suits

By Rachel Riley

Washington's highest court has lowered the bar for employees to sue over work-related illnesses, finding that in cases of latent diseases such as mesothelioma, a worker has a valid claim if they show their employer was "virtually certain" that the malady would develop.

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Radar Co. Saves Trade Secret Claims In Suit Against Ex-Exec

By Elliot Weld

A Washington federal judge has preserved a radar company's claims that a former executive stole confidential information as he left to start his own company, while dismissing other breach of contract claims against the executive and another former employee.

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Brief

CFPB Will Settle FirstCash Military Lending Suit

By Spencer Brewer

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a leading U.S. pawn store operator announced together that they had agreed to settle the agency's suit alleging that the operator ran afoul of military lending laws, filing a joint status report announcing settlement.

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Troutman Taps New Leader For Gov't Contracts Group

By Grace Dixon

Troutman Pepper Locke LLP added a government contracts pro from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, tapping him to lead the firm's government contracts practice group.

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DOJ Could Target Journalists Under Media Policy Reversion

The U.S. Department of Justice's recently announced media policy largely mirrors policies in effect from 2014 to 2020, but ambiguities in key statutory terms could allow the administration to apply it to journalists in new ways and expand investigations beyond leaks of classified information, says Julie Edelstein at Wiggin.

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SpaceX Labor Suit May Bring Cosmic Jurisdictional Shifts

The National Mediation Board's upcoming decision about whether SpaceX falls under the purview of the National Labor Relations Act or the Railway Labor Act could establish how jurisdictional boundaries are determined for employers that toe the line, with tangible consequences for decades to come, say attorneys at Davis Wright.

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Opinion

The BigLaw Settlements Are About Risk, Not Profit

The nine Am Law 100 firms that settled with the Trump administration likely did so because of the personal risk faced by equity partners in today's billion‑dollar national practices, enabled by an ethics rule primed for modernization, says Adam Forest at Scale.

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Jenner & Block Ruling 'Meant What It Said,' Judge Tells Feds

By Lauren Berg

The order striking down the Trump administration's executive order targeting Jenner & Block LLP "meant what it said," a Washington, D.C., federal judge ruled Monday, saying the government must rescind enforcement of all parts of the president's directive.

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Retired Wash. High Court Justice Charles Wiggins Dies At 77

By Rachel Riley

Retired Washington Supreme Court Justice Charles K. Wiggins, who served a decade on the state's high court, died last week from complications due to Parkinson's disease at the age of 77, according to a news release.

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Brief

Schumer Pledges To Fight GOP's Limits On Court Power

By Courtney Bublé

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has vowed to challenge a provision in House Republicans' budget reconciliation package that would curtail courts' ability to issue contempt citations.

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The Top In-House Hires Of May

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires over the past month included high-profile appointments at Adobe, Takeda Pharmaceutical and Duke Energy. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from May.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Labaton Keller's Ned Weinberger

By Katryna Perera

Ned Weinberger, a partner at Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP, said he never expected that his clients' suit challenging a $23.9 billion Dell Technologies Inc. stock swap would reach a whopping $1 billion settlement, let alone result in the largest prejudgment recovery ever achieved in a fiduciary duty action in the Delaware Chancery Court.

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Retired Judges Call Wis. Judge's Prosecution 'Dangerous'

By Ryan Boysen

The Trump administration's prosecution of a Wisconsin state judge who refused to help immigration agents arrest an undocumented immigrant is an "extraordinary and direct assault on the independence of the entire judicial system," according to a bipartisan group of 138 former state and federal judges.

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Susman Godfrey Founder, 'Preeminent' Litigator, Dies

By Jack Karp

H. Lee Godfrey, one of the founders of litigation boutique Susman Godfrey LLP, died on Monday, leaving behind a legacy as a thoughtful leader who performed exceptional work as a trial attorney, firm leaders said.

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Ropes & Gray Gets 'Innovative' New Office In Silicon Valley

By James Mills

Ropes & Gray LLP has moved its Silicon Valley office to a new location in downtown Palo Alto, California, a move to strengthen its presence in the tech region, the firm announced Monday.

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Brief

Third Round Of Fixes Sought In Botched Calif. Bar Exam

By Emily Sawicki

The California state bar's committee of bar examiners has approved two additional remedies in an effort to help applicants who failed the troubled February exam, including asking the state Supreme Court to approve a further scoring adjustment that would bring the passing rate up to about 63%.

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Brief

Jackson Walker, US Trustee Agree To Mediator In Fees Case

By Hilary Russ

Jackson Walker LLP and the federal government's bankruptcy watchdog have agreed to mediation in their fee dispute stemming from an ethics scandal in Texas, with the two sides agreeing that retired judge Joan N. Feeney should mediate.

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Report Finds Del. Court Jumbo Fees Rival Federal System

By Jeff Montgomery

Delaware's corporation law courts have overshadowed the entire federal court system for some class attorney fees based on multiples of usual rate benchmarks, according to two Stanford Law School researchers whose findings have already caught the attention of a top state lawmaker.

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4 Mass. Rulings You May Have Missed In May

By Julie Manganis

Massachusetts judges grappled with accusations of fraud in the sale of a struggling life sciences company and gave the benefit of the doubt to a vendor who allegedly sold the state gallons of ineffective hand sanitizer, among other notable rulings last month.

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CFTC Announces 2nd Enforcement Head In 3 Months

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday named a new head of enforcement for the second time in three months, appointing its longtime deputy director to head the division.

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