NY Appeals Court Nixes Chris Cuomo's Arbitrator Bias Claim

By Caroline Simson

Ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on Tuesday could not convince a New York appeals court to revive his bid to disqualify the JAMS arbitrator overseeing his $125 million unlawful termination claim against CNN due to the arbitrator's representation of the news network more than two decades ago.

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Senate Confirms Trump's Pick For EEOC, Restoring Quorum

By Anne Cullen

The Senate voted along party lines Tuesday to confirm an assistant U.S. attorney to serve on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, restoring the agency to its full decision-making capacity after months without a quorum.

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Senate Confirms Trump's Wage Chief Pick

By Max Kutner

The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division on Tuesday.

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Accenture Settles With Worker Who Blamed His Firing On DEI

By Grace Elletson

Consulting firm Accenture has agreed to resolve a sex bias suit from a former employee who alleged that the company declined to promote him and eventually fired him so it could advance less experienced women to achieve gender parity goals, according to an Illinois federal court filing.

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Copyright Chief Says DC Circ. Decision Bars Removal

By Adam Lidgett

Shira Perlmutter has shot back at the government's arguments defending President Donald Trump's decision to fire her as head of the U.S. Copyright Office, saying the D.C. Circuit has said in her case that Trump likely never had the power to do so.

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Senate Confirms Boyden Gray Atty As Trump's Labor Solicitor

By Max Kutner

The Senate confirmed on Tuesday a Boyden Gray PLLC managing partner as President Donald Trump's nominee for labor solicitor, the third-highest-ranking position at the U.S. Department of Labor.

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Ex-Reed Smith Atty Says NJ Pay Bias Law Goes Back 6 Years

By Jake Maher

A former Reed Smith LLP attorney suing the firm for gender discrimination told a New Jersey appeals court Tuesday that a 2018 equal pay law was intended by the Legislature to be a "game changer" and be applied retroactively, expanding the scope of her claims.

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Walgreens Seeks Atty Sanctions For 'Baseless' Claims

By Chart Riggall

Walgreens has called on a Georgia federal judge to slap sanctions on counsel for a former pharmacist suing the chain for discrimination, arguing that she should pay for the company's efforts to dismiss a handful of claims with "no legal basis" after her attorney refused to voluntarily drop them.

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NC Housing Authority Fights $2.3M Hostile Workplace Verdict

By Hayley Fowler

The public housing authority in Charlotte, North Carolina, said a jury should never have heard evidence about alleged discrimination in one of its programs during a former coordinator's hostile work environment trial, telling a federal judge to reverse the $2.3 million verdict or order a new trial.

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United Can't Sanction Ex-Flight Attendant Over Pay Suit

By Irene Spezzamonte

A former United Airlines flight attendant will avoid sanctions in his now-ended suit seeking unpaid wages, a New York federal judge ruled, saying he didn't abuse the judicial process even if his evidence that state law applied to his claims was weak.

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EMS Workers Tell 4th Circ. NC County Owes Them Wages

By Irene Spezzamonte

Emergency medical services workers argued that a North Carolina county created a "mathematical impossibility" when it calculated their wages, urging the Fourth Circuit to flip a federal court's ruling that the county didn't owe them anything despite having violated federal law.

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Rutgers Must Rehire Union-Repped Psych Prof, Court Says

By Emily Brill

Rutgers University's medical school must reinstate a union-represented psychiatry professor whom it fired after she refused to take on a new job task, but it doesn't have to cover the legal fees the union incurred fighting for her reinstatement, a New Jersey state appeals court ruled.

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11th Circ. Won't Halt Labor Mandate Case For Gov't Shutdown

By Irene Spezzamonte

The federal government can't stay a builders association's case challenging an executive order that requires union-favoring labor agreements for expensive government contracts, the Eleventh Circuit ruled, declining a request made in light of the government shutdown.

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Firefighters' Union Drops PFAS Suit Against Safety Group

By Julie Manganis

A firefighters' union has dropped a 2023 lawsuit in Massachusetts state court accusing a fire safety organization of ignoring the cancer risk of "forever chemicals" in maintaining safety standards that continued to call for their use in firefighting gear.

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United, Teamsters Move To Toss Mechanic's Pay-Dispute Suit

By Katherine Smith

United Airlines and the Teamsters are both seeking an early exit from a technician's suit alleging that the union failed to pursue his grievance accusing United of violating a raise policy in its labor contract, arguing that his claims shouldn't be resolved in California federal court.

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Feature

4 Oral Argument Sessions Benefits Attys Should Watch In Oct.

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Second Circuit will hear from Teamsters looking to revive a proposed class action alleging mismanagement of a multiemployer pension plan, while Alcoa will ask the Seventh Circuit to overturn a ruling requiring the aluminum maker to cover union retirees' healthcare for life. Here, Law360 looks at four arguments that benefits attorneys should have on their radar this month.

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Unions Seek $1.5M In Fees, Costs In Alcoa Life Insurance Row

By Emily Brill

A group of retirees and unions that recently won a life insurance benefits class action against Alcoa have asked an Indiana federal judge to compel the aluminum producer to cover their $1.5 million in legal fees, costs and expenses.

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Brief

Ex-Trinoor VP Agrees Not To Solicit Customers, For Now

By Elliot Weld

A former vice president at Georgia-based software company Trinoor LLC agreed Tuesday not to solicit the company's customers for business in a case alleging she stole internal data before joining a competitor firm.

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Litigation Funder, Ex-GC To Take Fight Out Of Texas Court

By Lynn LaRowe

Litigation funder Siltstone Capital LLC has agreed to arbitration with a former general counsel it has accused in a Texas state lawsuit of diverting business opportunities and using confidential business information when secretly forming a new rival litigation funder, Signal Peak Partners LLC.

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9th Circ. Rejects 'Kitchen Sink' Challenge To Vaccine Mandate

By Ben Adlin

A Ninth Circuit panel on Monday upheld a lower court's rejection of a lawsuit brought by dozens of former employees of a nonprofit healthcare system who claimed Washington state's requirement that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 violated their statutory and constitutional rights.

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Bank's Ex-Compliance Chief Sues Over 'Bad Faith' Termination

By Sarah Jarvis

A Florida community bank has been sued in New Jersey federal court by its former chief risk and compliance officer, who claims that he was fired without cause just months after signing a three-year contract with the bank at a $250,000 annual salary.

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Calif. Justices Usher In Stricter Era For Wage Law Ignorance

In Iloff v. LaPaille, the California Supreme Court determined that neither an employer's ignorance of wage obligations nor a worker agreeing to an unconventional arrangement is sufficient to establish good faith, demonstrating that the era of casual wage arrangements without legal vetting is over, says Brandy Alonzo-Mayland at Michelman & Robinson.

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What The New Nondomiciled-Trucker Rule Means For Carriers

A new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration interim final rule restricting states' issuance of commercial drivers licenses to nondomiciled drivers does not alter motor carriers' obligations to verify drivers' qualifications, but may create disruptions by reducing the number of eligible drivers, say attorneys at Benesch.

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Understanding And Managing Jurors' Hindsight Bias

Hindsight bias — wherein events seem more predictable after the fact than they were beforehand — presents a persistent cognitive distortion in jury decision-making, but attorneys can mitigate its effects at trial through awareness, repetition and framing, say consultants at Courtroom Sciences.

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Williams & Connolly Says It Was Targeted By Foreign Hackers

By Lauren Berg

Williams & Connolly LLP recently discovered that hackers had wormed their way into a few attorney email accounts but that there is no evidence the threat is ongoing, the firm told Law360 Tuesday, amid other attacks on the legal and technology sectors by hackers with suspected ties to the Chinese government.

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Musk Atty Alex Spiro Faces DQ Bid Ahead Of Twitter Deal Trial

By Dorothy Atkins

A certified class of former Twitter investors accusing Elon Musk of tanking the social media platform's stock during acquisition negotiations has urged a California federal judge to disqualify Musk's proposed lead trial counsel Alex Spiro before a January trial, arguing he's a "critical first-hand witness" and may testify, according to documents unsealed Monday.

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Judge Concerned As Feds Keep Immigration Atty's Phone Data

By Julie Manganis

A federal prosecutor told a Massachusetts judge on Tuesday that the government has returned a phone it seized from an immigration lawyer but does not intend to delete data it pulled from the device, prompting the court to raise concerns that the information could be used to identify and arrest immigrants.

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Goldstein's $968K Border Cash Claim To Be Admitted At Trial

By Jared Foretek

A Maryland federal jury will hear claims from prosecutors that SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein told Dulles International Airport border guards that the $968,000 in cash he brought into the country in 2018 had been gambling winnings, after a judge shot down his efforts to suppress his alleged statements Tuesday.

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SEC's Atkins Wants To 'Future-Proof' Deregulatory Agenda

By Jessica Corso

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins said Tuesday that he hopes that moving quickly to adopt new rules deregulating the public and private markets will "future-proof" his agenda against potential tampering by succeeding presidential administrations.

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Fed. Circ. Talks Judge Denzel Washington, AI Susan Sarandon

By Dani Kass

More than half of the Federal Circuit's judges were in Boston on Tuesday conducting out-of-town oral arguments, and afterward they discussed the most concerning and most promising elements of artificial intelligence, how to write a good brief, why en banc hearings are rare and which celebrities they'd love to see on a panel.

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Bondi Declines To Discuss James Comey Indictment

By Courtney Bublé

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi deflected when questioned on the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and other controversies involving the U.S. Department of Justice. 

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Fitch Even's $1.2M Fee Fight Appears Headed To Arbitration

By Lauraann Wood

Fitch Even Tabin & Flannery LLP's $1.2 million fee dispute with a former client and a litigation funder's CEO may be paused and sent to arbitration before the firm can convince an Illinois federal judge to halt any alleged use or transfer of the money at issue.

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NJ Justices Won't Disturb Locke Lord Win In Oil Co.'s Suit

By Jake Maher

The New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to review a lower appellate court decision handing a victory to Locke Lord LLP over malpractice claims from an oil processing company on the grounds that the firm does not have a significant connection to New Jersey and cannot be sued in the state's courts.

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Senate Confirms 2 DOJ Nominees, 16 US Attys

By Courtney Bublé

The U.S. Senate voted 51-47 Tuesday, along party lines, to confirm a slew of nominees for the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Attys Urge Mass. Courts To Protect Immigrants' Court Access

By Rae Ann Varona

Civil rights lawyers urged the Massachusetts trial court system to better protect migrants' due process rights amid increasing arrests by federal immigration officers inside and outside courthouses, saying Tuesday the court is "well within its right" to do so.

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Approach The Bench: Judge Kaplan On Suit Against The Gov't

By Cara Bayles and Steven Trader

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Elaine Kaplan's docket doesn't always garner attention in the same way trial court cases do, but that may change as the executive branch makes sweeping budget and policy changes that could lend more political significance to monetary claims against the government.

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