No High Court Review In NY Nursing Home COVID Death Case

By Gianna Ferrarin

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the dismissal of a civil suit against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other former state officials over COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes that allegedly stemmed from the state's controversial early pandemic policies.

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Stella McCartney Exec Accuses 'Europe-First' LVMH Of Bias

By Gina Kim

A senior Stella McCartney America Inc. executive accused the fashion brand and its former co-owner LVMH of bias for denying him compensation raises, job security and promotions under a "Europe-first hierarchy" that prioritized European female executives over American employees. 

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NY Judge Slams ICE Arrest Tactics, Orders Officers To Testify

By Britain Eakin

A New York federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to testify about after-the-fact administrative arrest warrants, saying the government is trying to obscure whether the arrests of two people were lawful.

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Google Wants Piracy Case Trimmed After Cox Ruling

By Elliot Weld

Google has asked a Manhattan federal judge to throw out a contributory infringement claim asserted by a group of textbook publishers in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that internet service providers aren't accountable for piracy committed by users.

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UK Wine Fraudster Gets 10 Years For $97M Ponzi Scheme

By Stewart Bishop

A Brooklyn federal judge on Monday sentenced a former executive of a U.K. wine company to 10 years in prison for his role in a $97 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors in loans that were falsely billed as being fully collateralized by high-value wine collections, calling it a "very brazen crime that led to mass amounts of theft."

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'Unserious Leaders Are Unsafe': RFK Jr.'s Trans Edict Voided

By Mark Payne

An Oregon federal judge struck down Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s efforts to enforce the agency's restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, finding the restrictions unlawful and criticizing Kennedy's leadership and the policy declaration that introduced the changes. 

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Mobile Game Co. Lied About Reliance On Skill, Jury Told

By Elliot Weld

An attorney for mobile game maker Skillz Platform Inc. told a Manhattan federal jury Monday that rival Papaya Gaming Ltd. lied to customers about their ability to win based on skill in its games, and that bots made sure users never won too much.

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Justices Won't Consider IP Theft Allegations Against Akin

By Dani Kass

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a former Cornell University graduate student's petition trying to revive his malpractice suit against Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP stemming from patent litigation against Illumina Inc. over DNA sequencing intellectual property.

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Reddit Defends Data-Scraping Claims Against Perplexity

By Matthew Perlman

Reddit Inc. is defending its case accusing Perplexity AI Inc. and three data-scraping companies of circumventing security measures to access copyrighted content in order to train the artificial intelligence startup's "answer engine."

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NFL, Teams Try To Ditch Flores' Latest Discrimination Claims

By David Steele

The National Football League and three teams that appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to have a proposed racial discrimination class action sent to arbitration have asked a New York federal court to throw out the suit's civil rights claims.

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NY Atty Says Okla. Law Firm Misclassified, Denied Benefits

By Emily Sawicki

A New York attorney has filed a $3.1 million contract suit against her former employer, accusing an Oklahoma-based national litigation firm of terminating her employment after she requested an overdue invoice, following more than three years of full-time contract work without benefits.

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BBQ Executives Ink $22.5M Deal To End ESOP Fight

By Grace Elletson

Executives behind a New York-based barbecue chain and its employee stock ownership plan caretaker have agreed to pay $22.5 million to resolve a class action claiming they tanked workers' savings in a $99 million stock purchase, according to a federal court filing.

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NY Hospital Co. Fights Workers' ERISA Suit Over Plan Switch

By Emily Brill

A group of employees of a Buffalo, New York-area hospital network can't prove their employer violated federal benefits law when it switched them from a pension plan to a cash-balance plan in the late 1990s, the company argued, asking a federal judge to toss the suit.

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SEC Says Adviser Traded On Firm Clients' Confidential Info

By Sydney Price

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued an ex-investment advisory firm associate in Manhattan federal court on Monday, accusing him of using a close relative's brokerage account to trade ahead of market-moving announcements by three biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that his firm was researching.

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Swim Training Co.'s IPO Was Pump-And-Dump, Suit Says

By Sydney Price

Singapore swim-school operator Fitness Champs Holdings Ltd. was hit with a proposed class action accusing it of concealing a social media-driven "pump-and-dump" scheme in which stock promoters posed as financial advisers to hype the stock through online forums, destroying the company's market capitalization after the shares were dumped.

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NFT Buyer Says Ex-Software Biz Orchestrated Token Rug Pull

By Emilie Ruscoe

A purported blockchain technology platform faces proposed class action allegations it made millions off a so-called rug pull, introducing a series of nonfungible tokens and teasing a cryptocurrency offering that never materialized, then selling those tokens into the artificial market it created and abandoning the platform.

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SEC Says Trader Ran $5M Market Manipulation Scheme

By Katryna Perera

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday filed suit against a trader based in Puerto Rico who allegedly manipulated the prices of hundreds of securities and deceived investors into buying them at artificially inflated prices, netting him more than $5 million in illicit profits.

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Feds Get SEC Suit Paused Against Corporate Raider Bilzerian

By Emilie Ruscoe

Prosecutors can pause U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fraud claims in New York federal court against convicted corporate raider Paul Bilzerian and his associates as the government's own charges against him, his accountant and a vape company head for an October trial.

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Live Nation Wants Expert, Damages Cut After Antitrust Verdict

By Matthew Perlman

Live Nation is asking a New York federal court to strike the testimony of a key expert witness for the states and to wipe the damages awarded by the jury based on her work, in the antitrust case accusing the company of monopolizing the live entertainment industry.

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Justices Won't Review Class Cert. In $12B VRDO Suit

By Katryna Perera

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Second Circuit decision upholding class certification in a $12 billion municipal-bond antitrust lawsuit after a group of major banks argued the district court erred in not resolving an expert witness evidence dispute before granting certification.

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3 Firms Advise Blue Owl's $2.4B Tampa Healthcare REIT Buy

By Nate Beck

Blue Owl Capital agreed to pay $2.4 billion for healthcare-focused real estate investment trust Sila Realty Trust in a take-private deal announced Monday advised by Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP.

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Credit Agricole's Hedging Strategy Cost Investors, Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

Credit Agricole Group has been hit with a suit in New York federal court alleging that the French bank engaged in a yearslong scheme to fraudulently induce two clients into a trading strategy it deemed the "perfect hedge" against certain market risks, when in reality, the strategy created hidden liabilities, forced liquidations and tens of millions of dollars in damages. 

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2nd Circ. Ruling Reinforces Securities Act Limits Post-Slack

The Second Circuit's recent decision to limit treatment of mandatory reverse splits as actionable sales in Knapp v. Barclays is narrow but important, offering issuers a stronger basis to challenge expansive Securities Act theories and reinforcing the post-Slack v. Pirani discipline of tracing, says Elisha Kobre at Sheppard.

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Black McDermott Atty Says White Men Favored For Partner

By Lauren Berg

A Black female McDermott Will & Schulte attorney accused the firm of gender, race and pregnancy discrimination in a lawsuit lodged in California state court, saying she has been consistently bypassed for promotion by less-experienced white attorneys and was yanked off casework after taking medical leave following a life-threatening illness during pregnancy.

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'Kind Of Lawyering We Don't Like': Judge Rips Quinn Emanuel

By Bonnie Eslinger

Guardant Health Inc. urged a California federal judge on Monday to make Quinn Emanuel pay nearly $1.3 million on top of $3 million in sanctions already imposed over misrepresentations lawyers made representing its rival Natera Inc., prompting the judge to criticize Quinn Emanuel lawyers for making distinctions so fine they veer into misrepresentation.

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Q&A

She Has A Point: Fish & Richardson's Nitika Gupta Fiorella

By Dani Kass

Fish & Richardson PC principal Nitika Gupta Fiorella is "a no-stone-unturned, always super prepared" lawyer who "epitomizes professionalism and respect," according to Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP partner Cora Holt.

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Fox Lawyer In Dominion Case Confirmed To Texas Bench

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 47-46 Monday evening to confirm Andrew Davis, a partner at Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP who defended Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, to serve on the bench in the Western District of Texas.

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DC Ethics Office Says Ex-Interim US Atty Can't Remove Case

By Emily Sawicki

Washington, D.C., ethics officials have asked a federal court to send U.S. Department of Justice official Ed Martin's ethics case back to the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, arguing the D.C. federal court lacks jurisdiction over a disciplinary matter, which is neither a civil action nor a criminal prosecution.

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Ex-Newman Clerks, Judges Back High Court Suspension Fight

By Adam Lidgett

A group of former clerks for Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, as well as former federal judges, have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the challenge to her suspension imposed by her colleagues.

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Insurer Intentionally Avoiding $200M Loan Claim, Court Told

By Hope Patti

A litigation funding firm has accused its insurer of wrongfully refusing to pay out its policy's guaranteed $200 million in coverage for an unpaid loan, saying the insurer buried it in duplicative and burdensome information requests to avoid paying a valid claim.

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Judge Says Ill. Justices Can't Fire Him Over MAGA Op-Ed

By Jack Karp

Illinois Supreme Court justices have no authority to remove a state judge from the bench for alleged misconduct, so their effort to dismiss a retired state trial judge's claims that his removal for penning a political opinion column violated his constitutional rights should be rejected, the retired jurist has said.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court this past week delivered another mix of procedural rulings, fiduciary duty disputes and deal litigation, highlighting both the court's gatekeeping role and its continued focus on stockholder rights and transactional fairness.

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