Feature

John Roberts Welcomes John Roberts To Supreme Court

By Jeff Overley

U.S. Supreme Court advocates have tips galore for staying calm at a debut argument, including diligent preparation, mindful breathing and treating the event as a conversation. But a Proskauer Rose LLP attorney benefited Tuesday from a distinctive development: the chief justice's introductory jest about the two of them not being related.

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Justice Jackson Slams Fee Waiver Ban For Indigent Prisoners

By Brandon Lowrey

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday rejected three pro se indigent prisoners' bids to file petitions to the court without fees and permanently barred them from seeking fee waivers from the high court, decisions that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called "foolish" in a passionate dissent.

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Supreme Court Rules Mandatory Restitution Is Punitive

By Phillip Bantz

The U.S. Supreme Court held in a unanimous opinion Tuesday that restitution is a criminal punishment subject to the Constitution's ban on increasing punishment retroactively.

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NJ Justices Sharply Limit Attorney Liability To Nonclients

By Carla Baranauckas

The New Jersey Supreme Court adopted a formal framework on Tuesday for determining when attorneys owe a duty of care to nonclients, affirming that estate lawyers generally cannot be sued for malpractice by disappointed heirs without clear proof the lawyer was engaged to benefit them directly.

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Goldstein Poker Pals Got Money From Firm, Witness Says

By Jared Foretek

A former office manager at Thomas Goldstein's law firm Tuesday told the jury in his tax fraud trial in Maryland federal court that hundreds of thousands of dollars in wire transfers sent to the U.S. Supreme Court lawyer's poker counterparts were classified as business transactions in documents used by the firm's tax accountants.

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Law360 Names Firms Of The Year

By Kevin Penton

Eight law firms have earned spots as Law360's Firms of the Year, with 48 Practice Group of the Year awards among them, achieving milestones such as high-profile litigation wins at the U.S. Supreme Court and 11-figure merger deals.

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Justices Say State Med Mal Laws Don't Apply In Federal Court

By Y. Peter Kang

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a Delaware medical malpractice statute clashes with federal rules of procedure and is therefore unenforceable in federal court, saying the state law unfairly asks for evidence early on in a case.

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Profs Urge Justices To Affirm Cuban Property Seizure Ruling

By Joyce Hanson

Professors with expertise in sovereign immunity law have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a D.C. Circuit decision that a federal act letting U.S. victims of Cuban property seizures seek damages does not automatically void the immunity of state entities targeted in such cases.

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Justices Icy To Time Limits For Union Actuarial Assumptions

By Kellie Mejdrich

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Tuesday of a push by employers to prohibit union actuaries from retroactively changing assumptions used to calculate how much employers must pay when they withdraw from multiemployer pension plans, with multiple justices questioning whether a timing rule aligned with federal benefits law.

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Analysis

Justices To Clarify What's Fair Game With 'Skinny Labels'

By Ryan Davis

A new U.S. Supreme Court patent case that will require the justices to spell out what generic-drug makers can say when marketing drugs with so-called skinny labels will shape whether and how those companies use the tactic of carving out patented uses from labels, attorneys say.

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Justices Ax 6th Circ. Abortion Order Amid Loper Bright Outcry

By Jeff Overley

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday erased a Sixth Circuit decision allowing abortion-related conditions on family planning grants, a victory for Tennessee officials who accused the circuit of flouting the high court's landmark rejection of judicial deference to regulators.

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Supreme Court Turns Away Jewish Texts Expropriation Suit

By Caroline Simson

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Tuesday to take up a petition challenging a D.C. Circuit ruling concluding that federal courts do not have jurisdiction over a Jewish group's decades-old allegations that Russia is illegally holding on to its long-lost sacred texts.

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Justices Set Time Limit To Ax Judgments, Ending 11-1 Split

By Jeff Overley

Almost every circuit court has wrongly allowed litigants to vacate invalid judgments regardless of how long ago the judgments became final, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, endorsing one circuit's outlier interpretation of a decades-old procedural rule.

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Justices Won't Hear Audi, VW Bid To Limit Calif. Jurisdiction

By Linda Chiem

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear Audi AG and Volkswagen AG's bids to limit when foreign manufacturers, whose products are sold through a U.S. distributor, are subject to specific personal jurisdiction in American state courts for product liability and personal injury claims.

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High Court Won't Review Timeliness Of MSU Bias Suit

By Grace Elletson

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to hear an Asian Michigan State University worker's challenge to a Sixth Circuit ruling that his race and age bias suit had been filed too late, despite his argument that the deadline for filing federal discrimination suits needs to be clarified.

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Brief

Supreme Court Security Gets $30M Boost In DHS Bill

By Courtney Bublé

The consolidated U.S. Department of Homeland Security funding bill for fiscal year 2026 released early Tuesday morning includes $30 million for the security of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

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Cracker Barrel Workers Push Justices To Hear Collective Fight

By Benjamin Morse

Cracker Barrel servers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up an appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision that only Arizona employees could opt in to a collective suit over tipped wages, rebutting the restaurant chain's arguments that a circuit split on the issue will resolve itself.

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Cracker Barrel Pushes For Justices' Review Of Collective Cert.

By Irene Spezzamonte

The Supreme Court needs to pick up a wage and hour case challenging the evidentiary standard of the two-step certification process to certify collectives, Cracker Barrel urged the justices, arguing that their intervention is paramount to establish the same certification process in all courts.

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Justices Ask If Hawaii 'Vampire Law' Violates 2nd Amendment

By Marco Poggio

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of a Hawaii law that makes it illegal for people to bring firearms onto private property open to the public without the owner's express permission.

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Trump Defends Birthright Citizenship Order At High Court

By Hailey Konnath

President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold his executive order aimed at limiting birthright citizenship, arguing that the order doesn't run afoul of the 14th Amendment, which he said was intended for freed slaves and their children — not "children of temporarily present aliens or illegal aliens."

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DC Circ. Doubts If EPA Had To Quantify Costs In PFAS Rule

By Ganesh Setty

The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday seemed to favor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's position that public comments were properly solicited before labeling two forever chemicals as hazardous substances, and expressed skepticism that the agency should have done a more rigorous analysis of clean-up costs for businesses.

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FTC Appeals Meta Loss To DC Circ.

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission gave notice Tuesday that it would seek D.C. Circuit intervention over a federal judge's rejection of its lawsuit accusing Meta Platforms Inc. of illegally monopolizing personal social media through what the agency described as a buy-or-bury strategy behind the Facebook parent's purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.

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Fed. Circ. Revives Inventor's Spinal Patent Case Against DePuy

By Theresa Schliep

The Federal Circuit on Tuesday revived an inventor's patent infringement suit against DePuy Synthes Cos., ruling that the persuasiveness of expert testimony that was excluded by a lower court is best left for the jury.

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Trump Media Investor Says Insider Trading Trial Was Flawed

By Stewart Bishop

A Florida trader sentenced to over two years in prison for insider trading on confidential plans to take President Donald Trump's media company behind Truth Social public urged the Second Circuit on Tuesday to reverse his conviction, saying the lower court wrongly excluded evidence at trial that backed his claims of acting in good faith.

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2nd Circ. Says US Not Venue For Kazakhstani Gov't Dispute

By Jack McLoone

A Second Circuit panel refused to revive a Kazakhstani businessman's suit against his business partners and the country's National Security Committee over an alleged scheme that made him take the fall for misappropriated funds used for bribes, determining the suit didn't belong in the U.S.

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3rd Circ. Sides With Doctor In Exam Question Copyright Suit

By Elliot Weld

The Third Circuit has affirmed a win for a doctor who was sued for copyright infringement by the American Board of Internal Medicine after emailing test materials to a test preparation company, saying there was not sufficient evidence that improper copying had occurred.

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NLRB Pushes Contempt For Pittsburgh Paper's Defiance

By Braden Campbell

The ailing Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is still defying the Third Circuit's order to restore newsroom workers it railroaded in collective bargaining to their old healthcare plan, the National Labor Relations Board said Tuesday in a renewed motion to hold the newspaper in contempt of the March 2025 ruling.

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Tax Court Wrongly Cut Conservation Gift Value, 4th Circ. Told

By Anna Scott Farrell

The U.S. Tax Court made multiple errors when it reduced the value of rock-rich land underlying a North Carolina partnership's conservation easement donation, the partnership told the Fourth Circuit, urging it to at least reverse penalties imposed by the court as a result of its findings.

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4th Circ. Caps Under Armour's Insurance Coverage At $100M

By Mark Payne

Under Armour's public financial forecasts and its accounting practices are a single claim under its insurers' excess policy language because they are "logically or causally related," the Fourth Circuit found Tuesday, overturning a trial court's ruling and capping the sportswear company's coverage at $100 million.

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Va. Tells 4th Circ. To Stay Order Blocking Vape Law On Appeal

By Mike Curley

The Commonwealth of Virginia is asking the Fourth Circuit to stay a district court order blocking enforcement of some aspects of its law banning the sale of unauthorized vapes, saying the district court was wrong to find the law was preempted by the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

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Chamber Tells 5th Circ. EPA Asbestos Ban Goes Too Far

By Mike Curley

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is urging the Fifth Circuit to vacate a 2024 rule by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banning the use of chrysotile asbestos, saying the agency overstepped its authority without consulting other regulators as it was required to.

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5th Circ. Urged Not To Transfer Google Antitrust Case

By Matthew Perlman

Mobile analytics software company Branch Metric urged the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday not to transfer from Texas to California its case accusing Google of monopolizing mobile device search markets, saying the case has sufficient connections to the Lone Star State.

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NC Doctor Cites 6th Circ. In Bid For New Medicare Fraud Trial

By Parker Quinlan

A North Carolina doctor who was convicted of participating in an $11 million Medicare fraud has asked a federal court for a new trial, pointing to a recent Sixth Circuit decision that overturned the conviction of another doctor involved in the same scheme.

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Minn. Tribe, Scholars Back 8th Circ. Bid In Tribal Divorce Row

By Crystal Owens

A Minnesota tribe and a slew of Native American law and history professors have separately backed an Indigenous man's Eighth Circuit bid for an en banc rehearing in a jurisdictional dispute over a tribal court divorce order, saying the conclusion is at odds with well-established history regarding sovereignty.

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9th Circ. Revives Malpractice Suit Against Bankruptcy Atty

By Rick Archer

The Ninth Circuit Tuesday reinstated a California woman's malpractice lawsuit against her bankruptcy attorney, but said the bankruptcy court needs to significantly narrow the permission to sue it granted to the debtor.

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Dish Investors Ask 10th Circ. To Revive 5G Fraud Suit

By Rachel Konieczny

Dish Network investors asked a skeptical Tenth Circuit panel Tuesday to revive their proposed class action alleging that the wireless communications company lied about the success of its 5G network rollout, saying the trial court's analysis of Dish's statements fell short.

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Split 11th Circ. Upholds SEC's $1M Penny Stock Victory

By Jessica Corso

A divided Eleventh Circuit has upheld a nearly $1 million judgment that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission won in a penny stock fraud case, finding that the remedy is not time-barred and cannot be overturned based on a question similar to one facing the U.S. Supreme Court.

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11th Circ. Backs Construction Co.'s Win In Race Bias Suit

By Chart Riggall

An Alabama-based construction company solidified its early win Tuesday in a race and age bias lawsuit from three Black construction workers after the Eleventh Circuit said "decline in work ethic," which the company asserted as its reason for termination, was enough to fire them.

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11th Circ. Won't Sink Pro Angler's $2.3M Plane Crash Award

By Mike Curley

The Eleventh Circuit has refused to upend a $2.3 million judgment in favor of a professional fisherman that resulted from a charter plane crash, rejecting the pilot's argument that the suit was decided under the wrong international law.

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Atty Missteps Warrant New Criminal Trial, Conn. Justices Say

By Cara Salvatore

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a robbery and assault conviction must be reversed after the defense lawyer failed to investigate an avenue of reasonable doubt impacting "pillars" of the prosecution's case.

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Fla. High Court Told Pot Ballot Plan Is Legal Amid AG probe

By David Minsky

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Tuesday that his office opened an investigation into several dozens of individuals who gathered signatures in connection to a marijuana legalization effort as the group behind the push for voter approval told the state's high court their ballot initiative complies with the law.

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Ill. Panel Scraps Ex-Smollett Attys' Malicious Prosecution Suit

By Celeste Bott

An Illinois appellate panel upheld a trial court's decision to permanently dismiss a malicious prosecution suit by the law firm that once represented Jussie Smollett, citing failure to allege special injury from the defamation lawsuit filed by the brothers accused of staging a hate crime with the "Empire" actor.

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McCarter & English Knocks Down Biotech Malpractice Appeal

By Madison Arnold

A New Jersey appellate court on Tuesday upheld the dismissal of a biotech company's malpractice and related claims against McCarter & English LLP, finding the biotech company was required to bring those allegations during the firm's earlier suit to recover more than $837,000 in unpaid legal fees.

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Delaware Supreme Court Reverses Moelis Governance Ruling

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed a Chancery Court ruling that had invalidated key provisions of Moelis & Co.'s stockholder agreement, holding that the challenged governance provisions were not void but merely voidable, and that a stockholder challenge brought nearly nine years later was time-barred.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court wrapped up last week with a mix of deal litigation, governance fights and disclosure battles, including a proposed settlement over a contested medical device sale, a merits dismissal tied to a $2 billion biotech exit and dueling lawsuits over Paramount Skydance's pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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Yamaha Says New Trial Needed In Golf Cart Rollover Suit

By Kelcey Caulder

Key evidence was wrongly barred from a trial that led to a family winning $7 million after their toddler was severely hurt in a Yamaha golf cart rollover, the motorized products maker told a Georgia appeals court Tuesday, urging the judges to wipe out the jury verdict. 

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LA Judge Faces Ethics Probe Over 'Bizarre' Comments

By Lauren Berg

California's judicial ethics watchdog announced Tuesday it is looking into misconduct allegations against a Los Angeles judge whose "extreme and bizarre" comments led a state appeals court to reverse a $10 million sexual harassment verdict.

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AI-Driven Harassment Poses New Risks For Employers

Two recent cases show that deepfakes and other artificial intelligence‑generated content are emerging as a powerful new mechanism for workplace harassment, and employers should take a proactive approach to reduce their liability as AI continues to reshape workplace dynamics, say attorneys at Littler.

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Navigating Privilege Law Patchwork In Dual-Purpose Comms

Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to resolve a circuit split in In re: Grand Jury, federal courts remain split as to when attorney-client privilege applies to dual-purpose legal and business communications, and understanding the fragmented landscape is essential for managing risks, say attorneys at Covington.

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Takeaways From 7th Circ.'s Bank Fraud Conviction Reversal

The Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in U.S. v. Robinson, holding that a bank fraud conviction must be grounded in a clear misrepresentation to the financial institution itself, signals that the court will not hesitate to correct substantive errors, even in unpreserved challenges, say attorneys at Quinn Emanuel.

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2026 Int'l Arbitration Trends: Tariffs Drive Transformation

In 2025, the Trump administration's sweeping tariffs triggered an unprecedented wave of trade-related disputes — and this, along with evolving M&A practices, the challenges of enforcing arbitral awards against sovereign states, and the role of emerging technologies, will continue to drive international arbitration trends this year, say attorneys at Cleary.

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Willkie Accused Of Aiding $735M Fraud In Buyout Deal

By Katryna Perera

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP on Tuesday was accused of aiding a $735 million fraud carried out by an investment manager to secure financing for a 2023 take-private transaction involving Franchise Group Inc., which was then used to pay off the manager's personal debts.

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McDonald Hopkins Forms Practice Group For Law Firm MSOs

By Emma Cueto

Midwestern firm McDonald Hopkins LLC announced Tuesday that it has launched a practice group focused on handling deals between law firms and prospective private equity investors, which the firm said is a natural extension of its work on litigation funding deals and private equity investment in other professional services.

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Ex-DOJ Attys Describe Fallout From Trump Takeover

By Stewart Bishop

Former federal prosecutors who resigned or were fired from the U.S. Department of Justice over the last year spoke Tuesday of their dismay over political interference at the department by the Trump administration, but largely expressed confidence that the DOJ could recover in time.

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Shooting Of Indiana Judge, Wife Prompts Call For Vigilance

By Lynn LaRowe

The shooting of an Indiana Superior Court judge and his wife over the weekend has prompted the chief of the state's highest court to urge all jurists in the Hoosier State to "remain vigilant in your security."

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Ex-Girardi Keese Atty To Take Plea Deal In Chicago Case

By Rae Ann Varona

Former Girardi Keese attorney Keith Griffin will take a plea deal in a case accusing him of helping Tom Girardi violate court orders and covering up the theft of client funds, according to a minute entry entered Friday in Illinois federal court.

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Lindsey Halligan Out As US Atty As Judge Criticizes 'Charade'

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that Lindsey Halligan's 120-day term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is over, the same day a Virginia federal judge criticized "this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading" in a role in which she was not lawfully serving.

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AI Firm Countersues Legal Publisher For Breach Of Contract

By Adam Lidgett

Artificial intelligence startup Alexi Technologies has accused Fastcase Inc. and its owner of weaponizing the legal system after the legal research firm filed a lawsuit in November claiming the AI company breached a former business relationship.

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