Amid Investor Cheers, Musk Gets His $1 Trillion Pay Package

By Sue Reisinger

In a landmark vote that turned corporate governance on its head, Tesla Inc. shareholders on Thursday thumbed their noses at both Delaware Chancery Court and top proxy advisers by awarding CEO Elon Musk an estimated $1 trillion compensation package, according to preliminary results.

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Texas AG Wants To Halt Kenvue $400M Shareholder Pay

By Jonathan Capriel

Texas wants to block Johnson & Johnson consumer health spinoff Kenvue from paying $400 million to shareholders, calling it a "fraudulent transfer" amid the company, which makes Tylenol, facing "tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities" in the state's suit alleging the company hid the risk that acetaminophen could lead to autism.

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Google-Epic Judge Raises Doubts About App Antitrust Deal

By Bonnie Eslinger

The California federal judge overseeing Epic Games' antitrust suit against Google expressed serious doubts Thursday about their recent deal to end their fight over Android app distribution, ordering an evidentiary hearing and warning he's not sure the proposed deal will correct Google's illegal conduct.

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Social Media Apps Must Face Jury After Section 230 Loss

By Dorothy Atkins

A California state judge refused Wednesday to grant social media companies summary judgment on claims their platforms harm young users' mental health, again rejecting arguments that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields them from liability, and sent three cases to bellwether trials, with the first to begin Jan. 27.

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Ex-COO Says Yale New Haven Hospital Owes Him Nearly $1M

By Brian Steele

Yale New Haven Hospital owes its former chief operating officer more than $994,000 under a noncompete agreement that guarantees him regular payments, according to a Connecticut federal lawsuit claiming that the hospital is improperly withholding the money because he supposedly did not give enough notice of his resignation.

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Lilly, Novo Nordisk Enter Obesity Drug Price Deal With Trump

By Rae Ann Varona

Pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk cut a deal with the Trump administration to slash the pricing of their popular weight loss drugs in the U.S., becoming the latest to enter "most-favored-nation" pricing agreements, the White House announced Thursday.

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Samourai Wallet Exec Gets 5 Years In Crypto Laundering Case

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge sentenced the CEO of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet to five years in prison Thursday after he admitted that his business facilitated big-dollar transfers derived from criminal activity including narcotics trafficking and extortion.

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$10M Fee Likely For Ross Aronstam In Wireless Co. Case

By Jarek Rutz

A Delaware vice chancellor Thursday signaled he is prepared to award roughly $10 million in attorney fees to Ross Aronstam & Moritz LLP following the firm's successful challenge to an executive's ouster from Gabb Wireless, saying previous voting and settlement agreements include fee-shifting provisions that apply when a party must mitigate to protect bargained-for governance rights.

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Sutter Health Patients' Attys To Get Over $100M Fees, Costs

By Craig Clough

A California U.S. magistrate judge said Thursday that she is ready to grant final approval of a $228.5 million deal settling a 13-year case over claims that Sutter Health boosted costs by pushing all-or-nothing networks on insurers, which includes $75.4 million in attorney fees and over $28 million in litigation expenses.

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6th Circ. Won't Rethink FirstEnergy Bribe Probe Docs Ruling

By Jessica Corso

The Sixth Circuit said Thursday it would not reconsider a ruling blocking FirstEnergy investors from accessing documents prepared by BigLaw firms investigating the company's $1 billion bribery scandal, and clarified that the decision also applies to depositions taken in the proposed class action.

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Black Exec Who Confronted McDonald's CEO Loses Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

McDonald's defeated a Black former security executive's suit alleging he was fired for confronting the company's CEO about racial disparities, with an Illinois federal judge ruling his remarks about social inequities weren't protected by federal law.

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Del. Justices Uphold Toss Of Trade Desk CEO's $5.2B Pay Suit

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Supreme Court Thursday affirmed a Chancery Court ruling that threw out a stockholder derivative challenge to an advertising technology company's multiyear compensation package for its co-founder, CEO and controlling stockholder, rejecting claims that the award, worth up to $5.2 billion, was a product of bad faith board conduct.

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Amazon Taps Crowell & Moring Partner For Aviation Biz

By Gina Kim

Aviation expert and former U.S. Department of Transportation senior trial attorney Amna Arshad has joined Amazon as an associate general counsel in charge of the legal teams for its worldwide aviation business, after spending the last year and a half in the aviation and transportation practices at Crowell & Moring LLP.

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Akerman Adds Alternative Investments Pro From Crowell

By Andrea Keckley

Akerman LLP announced on Wednesday that it has hired a former Crowell & Moring LLP attorney with a history of working in-house for institutional investment firms.

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2nd Circ. Peloton Ruling Emphasizes Disclosure Context

The Second Circuit’s recent decision to revive shareholders’ suit alleging that Peloton made materially misleading statements makes clear that public companies must continually review risk disclosures to determine if previous hypotheticals have materialized, say attorneys at Baker Botts.

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Federal Acquisition Rules Get Measured Makeover

The Trump administration's promised overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulation is not a revolution in rules, but a meaningful recalibration of procurement practice that gives contracting officers more space to think, to tailor and to try, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.

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Series

Mindfulness Meditation Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Mindful meditation enables me to drop the ego, and in helping me to keep sight of what’s important, permits me to learn from the other side and become a reliable counselor, says Roy Wyman at Bass Berry.

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Lawmakers Rip Judges Over Anonymous High Court Criticism

By Ryan Boysen

Two Republican lawmakers have asked Chief Justice John Roberts to rein in judges who've anonymously criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's flurry of "shadow docket" rulings, but a full-on investigation appears unlikely.

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Atty Exits Bankruptcy Case Amid Judge Romance Fallout

By Emily Sawicki

The embattled wind-down trustee for defunct life insurance bond seller GWG Holdings in a Houston Chapter 11 case has resigned from the role amid the fallout from her secret romance with a then-bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Texas.

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Trump Taps Ex-Kansas AG Deputy For DOJ Legal Policy Role

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump has nominated Dan Burrows, a White House official and former chief deputy attorney general of Kansas, to be assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy.

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Goldstein Loses Bid To Trim Tax Charges Before Trial

By Jared Foretek

A Maryland federal judge Thursday handed SCOTUSblog co-founder Tom Goldstein a series of losses on pre-trial motions aimed at trimming the 22 federal tax charges he'll face at trial next year, ruling that many of the motions involved factual disputes fit for trial and keeping the government's case intact.

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Tom Girardi's Brother, Bankruptcy Trustee Settle Legal Fees

By Lauren Berg

The brother of disgraced attorney Tom Girardi and the trustee for their now-defunct law firm, Girardi Keese, have reached an agreement resolving John Girardi's claim seeking legal fees for cases he worked on after leaving the firm, the trustee told the California bankruptcy court.

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Atty Ordered Detained After Harassment Of BigLaw Attys

By Spencer Brewer

A Texas federal judge on Thursday ordered U.S. marshals to put an attorney accused of cyberstalking other attorneys at BigLaw firms in jail until trial, saying the attorney has continued to make harassing online posts while on pretrial release and didn't attend mandatory mental health treatment.

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Judge Mehta 'Still Digging Out' From Google, Oath Keepers

By Bryan Koenig

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta said Thursday he is still playing catch-up from a period during which his time was spent with virtually nothing but the Google search case and the prosecution of Oath Keepers charged with sedition and other crimes from the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

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DOJ Gives Comey Seized Materials, Balks At Grand Jury Docs

By Lauren Berg

The U.S. Department of Justice Thursday informed a Virginia federal court that it has handed over to former FBI Director James Comey materials seized under years-old search warrants, but it will challenge a magistrate judge's order to produce grand jury materials.

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Ex-DOJ Staffer Cleared After Tossing Sandwich At CBP Officer

By Elaine Briseño

A D.C. federal jury on Thursday found former U.S. Department of Justice employee Sean Dunn, who threw a Subway sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, not guilty of misdemeanor assault.

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2nd Circ. Orders New Look At Trump's Hush Money Case

By Aaron Keller

In a published opinion, the Second Circuit on Thursday ordered a federal district judge to take a fresh look at President Donald Trump's attempt to move his New York hush money conviction to federal court, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 presidential immunity ruling as grounds for reconsidering the case.

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Miss. Judge, US Atty Nominees Held Up In Committee

By Courtney Bublé

Consideration of judicial and U.S. attorney nominees for Mississippi has stalled in committee over tensions between senators that are unrelated to the nominations, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee chair's office.

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