Flo Users Get Class Cert. In Google, Meta Data-Sharing Suit

By Allison Grande

A California federal judge has granted class status to users of the menstrual cycle tracking app developed by Flo Health Inc. in a suit accusing the company of unlawfully sharing their personal health information with Google and Meta, finding that the defendants' opposition to this move lacked clarity and support.

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SafeMoon CEO's Crypto Talk 'Riddled With Lies,' Jury Told

By Pete Brush

A Brooklyn federal jury was set to deliberate charges accusing a U.S. Army veteran from Utah of conspiring to loot crypto company SafeMoon, after federal prosecutors on Tuesday walked jurors through what they called powerful evidence of the former CEO's guilt.

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State AGs Back NJ Judicial Privacy Law At 3rd Circ.

By Jack Karp

Most states' attorneys general, along with law enforcement organizations and a data privacy group, have encouraged the Third Circuit to uphold a New Jersey judicial privacy measure, saying states have sovereignty to enact such laws in a time of increased threats against judges.

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Judge Denies Meta's Mid-Trial Bid To End FTC Monopoly Case

By Bryan Koenig

A D.C. federal judge refused Tuesday to cut short the trial in the Federal Trade Commission's monopolization lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc., not finding the clear evidentiary failure necessary to nix the government's case over the company's purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram.

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Meta Says Too Late For 'Dramatic Shift' In Antitrust Argument

By Craig Clough

Consumers who claim Meta monopolized the social media advertising market are attempting to make a late "dramatic shift" from their years-long argument that all of its users should have been paid a "made-up figure" of $5 a month for their data, the company told a California federal court Monday.

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Brief

FTC Case Against Greystar Stayed For Settlement Talks

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Colorado federal judge has stayed a Federal Trade Commission suit alleging developer and property manager Greystar advertised deceptive rental prices after the parties notified the court that they are in "active settlement negotiations" that could resolve the entire case.

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High Court Precedent Blocks FTC Commish Firings, Judge Told

By Matthew Perlman

A pair of recently fired Federal Trade Commission members sparred with the administration in D.C. federal court on Tuesday, with the judge raising questions about which Supreme Court precedent really holds in this dispute.

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Analysis

CFPB's Guidance Purge May Have Limited Impact For Industry

By Jon Hill

The Trump administration's recent culling of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau guidance may help advance the agency's pivot to lighter-touch regulation, but consumer advocates and even some financial services attorneys say the rescinded policies could still shape litigation and leave companies guessing about the agency's current views.

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TikTok's Bid To Get NY Docs From AG Sunk By New State Law

By Frank G. Runyeon

A New York state judge on Tuesday denied TikTok's bid to force the New York attorney general to turn over agency documents related to claims the app harms children's mental health, relying on an amendment tucked into the state's budget that was signed into law this month.

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Senate Dems Protest Broadband Deployment Delays

By Christopher Cole

A dozen Senate Democrats urged President Donald Trump to curtail the U.S. Department of Commerce's potential overhaul of a $42.5 billion broadband deployment program created during the Biden administration.

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FDIC Nixes Biden-Era Merger Rules As House Passes OCC Bill

By Jon Hill

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday finalized the repeal of stricter bank merger guidelines adopted last year, pulling them back the same day as the U.S. House moved to nullify the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's Biden-era merger policy rewrite.

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FCC Warned To Not Overreach In Undersea Cable Rules

By Christopher Cole

Network providers cautioned the Federal Communications Commission to stick to its legal authority when crafting new rules to beef up the security of undersea telecom cables, saying the FCC can't regulate beyond cable owners and operators under existing law.

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State AGs Say No To Nixing Wireless Site NHPA Reviews

By Nadia Dreid

Eight states are calling on the Federal Communications Commission not to listen to a major wireless trade group's petition encouraging it to cut "burdensome ... red tape," which the states say are actually mandates of the National Historic Preservation Act.

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Brief

Trump Calls For FCC Spectrum Auctions In Budget Bill

By Christopher Cole

President Donald Trump on Tuesday jumped into the ongoing debate about federal auctions of the airwaves by calling for inclusion of spectrum sales in the budget reconciliation bill pending in Congress.

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19-Year-Old Mass. Student Admits To PowerSchool Hacking

By Hailey Konnath

A 19-year-old student at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, has pled guilty to hacking into the networks of two companies, including education software and cloud storage company PowerSchool Group LLC, and extorting them for ransoms, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

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ZoomInfo Accused Of Illegally Selling Cellphone Numbers

By Jared Foretek

ZoomInfo is facing allegations that it violates Colorado law by selling individuals' cellphone numbers without their consent, in a proposed class action that was moved to Washington federal court last week.

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Meta Asks To Toss Claim That Illegal Tool Scraped Tax Info

By Anna Scott Farrell

Meta's tracking tool did not violate state privacy law, the company argued, urging a California federal court to toss a claim calling the tool an unauthorized recording device that collected sensitive information from tax filing websites H&R Block, TaxAct and Tax Slayer.

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Apple Can't Get Quick Pause Of App Store Order At 9th Circ.

By Dorothy Atkins

The Ninth Circuit agreed Monday to expedite briefing in Apple's appeal challenging a lower court's new injunction mandating certain App Store policy changes, but the panel declined to rule on Apple's emergency request to pause the injunction as Apple and Epic Games brief the hotly contested dispute.

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5 Ohio Cities Say Hyundai, Kia Negligence Claims Still In Play

By Linda Chiem

Five Ohio cities have told a California federal judge that Hyundai and Kia cannot try to circumvent the Ninth Circuit and scuttle negligence claims in consolidated litigation alleging the automakers knowingly sold vehicles with design flaws that spawned a car-theft crime wave.

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Veterans Seek Certification For VA Consultant Fee Claims

By Ryan Harroff

A proposed class of veterans urged a North Carolina federal judge to certify their claims against a consulting firm they allege charged them millions in illegal fees, arguing that the individual claims of thousands all hinge on a single statutory interpretation.

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Indirect Chicken Buyers' Attys Seek Additional $12M In Fees

By Celeste Bott

Attorneys for commercial and institutional indirect purchaser plaintiffs in sprawling antitrust litigation against the nation's top poultry producers asked an Illinois federal judge Monday to approve roughly $12 million in additional attorney fees after they secured more than $41 million in additional deals since a prior fee motion.

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Subpoena For Alleged Trans Care Must Stand, Texas Says

By Spencer Brewer

A Texas appeals court on Tuesday pressed the state to explain why the principle of sovereign immunity should stop patients who potentially received gender affirming care from trying to block a subpoena, saying during oral arguments a challenge to a subpoena seems to fall outside sovereign immunity.

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Medical Supply Co. Faces Ga. Suit Over Unwanted Texts

By Chart Riggall

A Florida-based medical supply company has been hit with a proposed Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action in Georgia federal court by a man who says he received several promotional text messages from the company after he added himself to the National Do Not Call Registry.

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Gov't Says Unions Too Slow In Calling For Halt Of Restructure

By Beverly Banks

President Donald Trump called for a California federal judge to tank an injunction bid from unions and advocacy groups about his executive order instructing agencies to plan for reductions in force, arguing the request was delayed and the district court lacks jurisdiction.

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Veterinarian, Manager Ask To Exit $6M Horse Semen Suit

By Elaine Briseño

Two employees of a veterinary firm have asked a Washington federal court to toss a lawsuit accusing them and others of malpractice and negligence stemming from the destruction of about $6.4 million worth of purebred Arabian stallion semen during transport, arguing the complaint improperly lumps all the defendants and allegations together.

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BofA Class In Out-Of-Network ATM Fee Fight Narrowed

By Hailey Konnath

A California federal judge tweaked the definition of a class of account holders suing Bank of America over out-of-network fees for balance inquiries at certain ATMs, agreeing to exclude certain members from the class but largely rejecting the bank's qualms with the class certification.

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Judge Questions Bank's Role In Jail Debit Card Fee Dispute

By Rachel Riley

A federal magistrate judge in Washington state signaled Tuesday she might advance a debit card fee class action against a Missouri bank to trial, suggesting there's still a factual dispute as to whether the prepaid cards were forced on people trying to regain access to their money after being released from correctional facilities. 

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Former Hemp Worker Brings Paraquat Suit Against Syngenta

By Sam Reisman

A Colorado man formerly employed in the hemp industry alleged in a new federal lawsuit that his exposure to the herbicide paraquat while at work is responsible for his Parkinson's disease.

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Brief

Vape Pen Exploded In Conn. Man's Pocket, Suit Says

By Jonathan Capriel

A Connecticut man claims a vape blew up in his pocket, causing severe burns to much of his leg, according to a state lawsuit that seeks damages against the retail store that sold the product and e-cigarette manufacturer GeekVape Technology Co. Ltd.

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Brief

Legal Ed Platforms Settle Attorney's Data Harvesting Suit

By Chart Riggall

Two platforms for continuing legal education content have settled a proposed class action from a Seattle attorney which alleged that the companies violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by using Meta's Pixel tracking software on their sites, the parties said Monday.

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How NY's FAIR Act Mirrors CFPB State Recommendations

New York's proposed FAIR Business Practices Act, which targets predatory lending and junk fees, reflects the Rohit Chopra-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recommendations to states in a number of ways, including by defining "abusive" conduct and adding a new right to file class actions, says Christian Hancock at Bradley Arant.

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Big Tech M&A Risk Under Trump May Resemble Biden Era

Merger review under the Trump administration may not differ substantially from merger review under the Biden administration, particularly in the Big Tech arena, in which case dealmakers and investors should shift the antitrust discount on M&A deals upward, says Jonathan Barnett at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

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How Mass Arbitration Defense Strategies Have Fared In Court

As businesses face consumers who leverage arbitration agreements to compel mass arbitration, companies are trying defense strategies like batching arbitration cases to reduce costs, and escaping specific mass arbitrations without rejecting the process completely, with varying results in the courtroom, say attorneys at Montgomery McCracken.

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Judge Warns Attys Using AI To 'Advocate — Not Hallucinate'

By Lauren Berg

A Florida federal judge on Tuesday sanctioned two attorneys in a shipping contract dispute for filing a brief that included a nonexistent case citation added by artificial intelligence, warning lawyers that they must "carefully evaluate, elucidate and advocate — not hallucinate" in their legal briefs.

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$1.8M From Legal Industry Fuels NYC Mayor's Race

By Anna Sanders

The legal industry poured at least $1.79 million into this year’s election for New York City mayor, the majority going to incumbent Eric Adams, attorney Jim Walden and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Law360 Pulse found.

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Democrats Wary of Nominees' Pledge To Honor Court Orders

By Courtney Bublé

Nominees for top roles at the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security fended off questions from Democrats on Wednesday about the Trump administration's willingness to defy court orders and pledged that the White House would at least follow rulings of the Supreme Court.

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Ford Hits Calif. Firms With RICO Suit Over Lemon Law Billing

By Emily Sawicki

The Ford Motor Co. sued several California-based law firms and lawyers in Los Angeles federal court Wednesday, accusing them of conspiring to overcharge clients and defraud major automotive manufacturers by more than $100 million by submitting falsely inflated time sheets in thousands of consumer protection cases.

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Girardi's Son-In-Law Was No 'Babe In The Woods,' Feds Say

By Lauraann Wood

The Chicago federal judge presiding over a summer client theft trial against Girardi Keese founder Tom Girardi's son-in-law should not limit the government's case based on positions it took during Girardi's California trial because its positions are consistent, and the cases are charged differently, prosecutors argued Wednesday.

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SF Law Firms' Ex-CFO Gets 3 Years For Embezzling $1.3M

By Bonnie Eslinger

A former chief financial officer of two San Francisco law firms was sentenced to just over three years in prison Wednesday for stealing more than $1.3 million from the firms and others, after one firm's founder said the defendant appeared to enjoy "stabbing us all in the back."

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Apologetic NJ Atty Gets 21 Months For $350K COVID Fraud

By George Woolston

A New Jersey attorney sentenced to 21 months in federal prison on Wednesday for claiming he was a business in order to receive nearly $350,000 earmarked for small businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic apologized to the court for the "embarrassment" he caused to the legal profession.

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Immigrant Groups Appeal Denied Bid To Halt IRS-ICE Deal

By Natalie Olivo

Immigrant advocacy groups on Wednesday appealed a D.C. federal judge's order denying their bid to block the IRS from sharing taxpayer data with immigration enforcement agencies, with their counsel warning "it will be too late" once the information is shared.

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