Netflix Drops WBD Bid, Paving Way For Paramount Deal

By Al Barbarino

Netflix Inc. ditched its effort to buy Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday after WBD announced that it determined a competing bid from Paramount Skydance is the "superior proposal."

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Goldstein Placed Under Home Confinement Until Sentencing

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein was placed under home confinement by a Maryland federal judge until his sentencing, but will likely be able to keep his $3 million D.C. home after the jury that convicted him separately found there wasn't a clear nexus between the property and his mortgage fraud conviction.

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'Lifetimes Wasted' From Scrolling Tech, Meta's NM Jury Hears

By Cara Salvatore

A tech design guru who said he was an inventor of infinite scroll told a jury in the New Mexico attorney general's social media mental health trial against Meta that he's seen firsthand the power of interface design and the way inventions like his can be wielded for good or for ill.

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Judge Scolds 'Impenetrable' TikTok In NY AG's Addiction Suit

By Frank G. Runyeon

A New York state judge Thursday chided TikTok's attorneys for failing to search for financial and corporate records in the state's social media child addiction lawsuit, appearing poised to force TikTok companies to hand over more business data to calculate potential damages or disgorgement.

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Fla. Biologist Fired Over Kirk Meme Says Boss Lied To Court

By David Minsky

A biologist fired from her state agency position for posting a Charlie Kirk meme on social media asked a Florida federal court to issue penalties in her free speech lawsuit, claiming her request for immediate reinstatement was denied based on a fraudulent declaration filed by a former supervisor.

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X Corp. Beats OnlyFans Creator's Revenge Porn Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

A Texas federal judge has tossed an OnlyFans creator's proposed class action that sought to hold X Corp. liable under a revenge porn statute after someone shared his photos on the social media platform, saying the creator's images had not been "produced" by fraud or misrepresentation as required for damages.

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Musk, OpenAI Spar Over AG OKs, Altman Firing, AI Safety

By Bryan Koenig

Elon Musk, OpenAI and Microsoft traded blows Wednesday in a series of California federal court briefs fighting over what a jury will see when the parties go to trial in late April on Musk's challenge to OpenAI's transition from the nonprofit structure he'd backed with $38 million in donations.  

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Judge Backs $19M Default Judgment In Amazon's Piracy Suit

By Ivan Moreno

A Texas federal judge has recommended a copyright default judgment of nearly $19 million against a man whom Amazon and other major studios accuse of running an illicit streaming operation that began with the sale of "jailbroken" Fire TV sticks to stream content for free.

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Defense Atty In Valve Patent Troll Trial Says He Never Used AI

By Rachel Riley

An intellectual property attorney who defended inventor Leigh Rothschild in a landmark patent-trolling trial has denied allegations that his firm used artificial intelligence to prep a pretrial brief, according to a Thursday filing, following a Seattle federal jury's Feb. 17 verdict in favor of plaintiff video game company Valve Corp.

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Texas AG, Samsung Ink Deal To End TV Data Collection Suit

By Allison Grande

Samsung agreed to strengthen its data privacy disclosures in order to resolve a lawsuit being pressed by the Texas attorney general, who accused the company of "secretly" monitoring what smart TV consumers watch and unlawfully collecting their data without permission, the parties revealed Thursday.

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Social Media Plaintiff 'Wanted To Be On It All The Time' As Kid

By Craig Clough

The plaintiff in a landmark bellwether trial over claims Instagram and YouTube harms children's mental health testified Thursday she started obsessively using the platforms as a small child, and that her obsession with them contributed to or worsened her anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia.

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TikTok, Meta Get Hot Bench In 'Subway Surfing' Death Appeal

By Frank G. Runyeon

Social media giants TikTok and Meta Thursday faced a barrage of questions by New York state appellate court judges as the companies seek dismissal of a lawsuit over the death of a boy who climbed atop a moving subway car, which his parent alleged was due to a "challenge" video pushed to minors.

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DOJ, Apple Clash Over Discovery For Monopolization Case

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Department of Justice pushed back against a plan Apple pitched for discovery disputes in a monopolization suit against the company, arguing the company has sought sensitive information and asked a federal judge to fix an "'emergency' of its own making."

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LA Times Joins Ad Tech Antitrust Litigation Against Google

By Lauren Berg

The publisher of The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday threw its hat into multidistrict litigation targeting Google's advertising placement technology dominance, alleging that Google's monopolization forces publishers to sell ad space at depressed prices that boost the tech giant's profits while dramatically cutting revenue for publishers and Google's ad technology rivals.

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Roundup

Conn. High Court Snapshot: Transcripts, Signatures & Lyrics

By Brian Steele

When the Connecticut Supreme Court opens its new term Monday, the justices will consider if prosecutors were wrong to introduce a rap video into a murder trial and whether a former Democratic party bigwig was wrongfully denied an opportunity to challenge the expert witness in his voter fraud case.

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House Bill Would Cap FCC License Reviews At 180 Days

By Christopher Cole

A bipartisan U.S. House bill introduced Thursday would codify the Federal Communications Commission's standard 180-day limit on reviewing license applications, potentially speeding up merger reviews.

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FCC Denies Cos.' Bids To Scrap Regulatory Fee Late Charges

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission is declining to waive the 25% penalty it slaps on top of regulatory fees from 2023 and 2024 that come in late, dashing the hopes of nearly two dozen companies that had asked the agency to do just that.

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DirecTV Urges Top FCC Officials To Nix Nexstar-Tegna Deal

By Christopher Cole

DirecTV went to the top ranks of the Federal Communications Commission in recent days to push against the proposed merger of TV station giants Nexstar and Tegna, calling it a clear threat to local media competition.

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TV Azteca Seeks Reorganization In Mexico

By Emily Lever

Mexican television channel TV Azteca on Thursday announced it had begun insolvency proceedings in Mexico, saying it is facing economic headwinds as well as mounting liabilities and needs to reorganize.

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Insurer Dodges Spinoff Coverage Suit From 'Maya' Verdict

By Carolina Bolado

A professional liability insurer does not have to defend the law firm that secured a $213 million award for the woman at the center of the documentary "Take Care of Maya" in a dispute over trial consultant fees, after a Florida federal judge found Wednesday that the claims are not covered by the insurance policy.

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What Recent Dataset Suits Signal For AI Training Litigation

Plaintiffs are moving away from abstract debates about artificial intelligence at large and toward dataset provenance, and three filings illustrate how provenance is pled using public dataset documentation, archives and discovery‑ready allegations about copying, retention and downstream handling, says Yulia Leshchenko at Name & Fame.

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Series

Playing Piano Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing piano and practicing law share many parallels relating to managing complexity: Just as hearing an entire musical passage in my head allows me to reliably deliver the message, thinking about the audience's impression helps me create a legal narrative that keeps the reader engaged, says Michael Shepherd at Fish & Richardson.

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How Epstein Referred Clients To BigLaw Partners In His Orbit

By Aebra Coe

Billionaire and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein always had top lawyers in his orbit. He also had extensive and lasting relationships with several partners at BigLaw firms, files newly released by the Department of Justice show.

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'One Way Or Another, ICE Will Comply,' Minn. Judge Vows

By Lauren Berg

The Minnesota federal court's chief judge who admonished U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for violating nearly 100 court orders concerning the Trump administration's immigration operations in the state vowed Thursday "to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law," including holding government officials in criminal contempt.

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IRS Broke Law 42K Times By Giving Info To ICE, Judge Says

By Anna Scott Farrell

The federal judge who stopped the Internal Revenue Service from sharing taxpayer addresses with immigration authorities said Thursday that a recent admission by the agency showed that it broke the law more than 42,000 times last summer when it disclosed addresses by relying on a computerized matching system.

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Calif. Atty Agrees To Discipline From State Bar Over AI Errors

By Hailey Konnath

A Los Angeles attorney has agreed to be disciplined for filing appellate briefs rife with artificial intelligence-hallucinated case law quotations, according to a stipulation approved Wednesday by the California State Bar Court, which found that he "recklessly and with gross negligence failed to perform legal services with competence."

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Reed Smith Says Atty Can't Expand Pay Bias Damages Period

By Grace Elletson

Reed Smith LLP is urging a New Jersey state court to rule that an attorney who claimed the firm unlawfully underpaid her cannot expand the time window for which she's seeking damages, arguing a legal doctrine used to revive continuing claims can't be used to collect back pay.

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Feds Seek To Toss DOJ Official's Suit Over Epstein-Talk Firing

By Lynn LaRowe

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a D.C. federal court to ax a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former DOJ official who was fired after he was surreptitiously filmed talking about Jeffrey Epstein on what he thought was a date, saying district courts don't have jurisdiction and the matter belongs in front of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

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Atty Owns 'Sloppy' Incorrect Citations Before Texas Justices

By José Luis Martínez

A Houston attorney told a Texas appellate panel Thursday that incorrect case citations in his brief were "sloppy" and "embarrassing," taking responsibility for errors that included nonexistent cases and inaccurate quotations.

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Brief

Senate Judiciary Advances Illinois US Atty

By Nadia Dreid

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nomination of Gregory Gilmore to be U.S. attorney for the Central District of Illinois in a quick vote that passed without comment.

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