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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Ex-NBA Player Damon Jones Denies Role In Gambling Ruse

By Elliot Weld

Former NBA player and coach Damon Jones pled not guilty on Thursday in a pair of cases accusing him of participating in mob-connected, rigged poker games that cheated players out of millions of dollars and conspiring to impact outcomes of bets on NBA games.

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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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Capital One's $425M Rate Deal Rejected Over Low Payouts

By Hailey Konnath

A Virginia federal judge Thursday refused to sign off on Capital One's proposed $425 million settlement with customers accusing the bank of deceptively advertising its 360 Savings accounts, finding that the customers deserve "significantly greater relief" than what's outlined in the deal.

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AI Developer Made $100M By Dumping Tokens, Suit Says

By Sydney Price

A purported open-source artificial intelligence developer has been hit with a proposed class action accusing it of reaping over $100 million in ill-gotten gains by manipulating a token merger and breaching a covenant to develop AI tools in an "ethical and acceptable manner."

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'Restore Coherence': Trump Admin Told To Fully Fund SNAP

By Lauren Berg

The Trump administration must fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in full this month, a Rhode Island federal judge ruled Thursday while admonishing the government for "entrenching delay" of benefits for the 42 million low-income Americans who rely on food assistance.

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Cannabis Biz Says NY Law Preempts Town's Zoning Policy

By Isaac Monterose

A cannabis dispensary has urged a New York federal court to take its side in a dispute with a town that it says is preventing it from doing business, arguing the court should rule the state's Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act preempts a local zoning law that requires the company to obtain additional approval.

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FEMA Says States 'Mistaken' On Disaster Mitigation Program

By Julie Manganis

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday urged a Massachusetts federal judge to throw out a lawsuit by 22 states and the District of Columbia over the future of a program that funds infrastructure-hardening projects to mitigate the effects of natural disasters.

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Brief

Insurer, Former Exec Settle In Military Housing Fraud Case

By Tom Lotshaw

Military housing developers alleging that they were defrauded out of millions of dollars through excessive and undisclosed premiums and fees have struck a settlement agreement with two defendants, Ambac Assurance Corp. and its former managing director, Chetan Marfatia, court records show.

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Education Tech Co. Inks $5.1M Data Breach Deal With 3 AGs

By Aaron Keller

Technology company Illuminate Education Inc. will pay a total of $5.1 million to California, Connecticut and New York and strengthen its data security efforts after a breach in late 2021 and early 2022 exposed the information of millions of students to online hackers, the attorneys general of the three states announced Thursday.

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Skadden, Debevoise Lead Aquarian's $4.1B Brighthouse Buy

By Al Barbarino

Skadden and Debevoise are advising on a new agreement for Aquarian Capital to purchase U.S. life insurer Brighthouse Financial Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at about $4.1 billion, the companies announced Thursday. 

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Software Co. Can Bar Ex-Founder's Money Transfers For Now

By Joyce Hanson

A software investment company has for now won its bid asking a New York federal judge to bar its former chairman, Invisalign inventor Zia Chishti, from trying to transfer his only remaining money out of the United States to avoid a $9 million arbitral award against him.

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Crocs Urges Fed. Circ. To Reverse ITC Clog Import Ruling

By Ivan Moreno

Clogs maker Crocs urged the Federal Circuit on Thursday to reverse a decision from the U.S. International Trade Commission not to impose a ban on imports that the Colorado-based company says are confusingly similar to its own footwear, arguing that the ITC erred in how it considered Crocs' fame and its competitors' intent to confuse consumers.

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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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Troutman Adds Transactions Pro From Kirkland In NY

By Christine DeRosa

Troutman Pepper Locke LLP has expanded its energy transactional practice group in New York with a private equity and mergers and acquisitions attorney from Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the firm said Thursday.

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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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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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What's At Stake In High Court Compassionate Release Case

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Fernandez v. U.S. next week about the overlap between motions to vacate and compassionate release, and its ultimate decision could ultimately limit or expand judicial discretion in sentencing, says Zachary Newland at Evergreen Attorneys.

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Delaware Fee Inflation Worries Overblown, Study Says

By Jeff Montgomery

A newly published report by two Stanford University researchers asserts that high-dollar attorney fee awards in Delaware courts make up "a very small minority of cases" and are "no basis for concern," throwing cold water on growing worries about so-called fee inflation in the First State.

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'It's A War, Man': Trump's Deputy AG Unloads On Judges, Bars

By Jeff Overley

The U.S. Department of Justice is in "a war" with federal judges who are "not following the law," and it is separately formulating plans to block "activist, obnoxious" bar associations from assessing ethics complaints against government lawyers, a top DOJ official said Friday.

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Jeffer Mangels Hit With Pregnancy Bias Suit By Ex-Associate

By Hailey Konnath

A former Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP associate has accused the firm of discriminating against women, especially pregnant women, claiming that she was harassed throughout her pregnancy and eventually fired after she advocated for herself and pointed out the disparate treatment.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Ex-Calif. Judge Seeks To Toss Sex Assault, Coverup Charges

By Craig Clough

A former California state judge on Friday moved to toss federal criminal charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a court employee and lied to investigators, saying the employee was not under his direct supervision so he could not have been acting under the "color of law" when the alleged assault occurred.

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Ex-Polsinelli Atty Agrees To Dismiss Sexual Harassment Case

By Hailey Konnath

A former Polsinelli PC equity shareholder agreed to drop her suit alleging two former partners sexually harassed her, and she was fired after reporting it, according to a notice filed Friday in Washington, D.C., federal court.

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Mass. Federal Judge Mark Wolf Retires After 40 Years

By Chris Villani

Senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf on Friday announced that he is retiring after more than 40 years on the federal bench, having presided over some of the most notable cases in Massachusetts federal court over the past four decades.

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Hearing Officer Clears Mass. Judge Of Aiding ICE Escape

By Julie Manganis

A hearing officer has concluded that Massachusetts state court Justice Shelley Richmond Joseph was not aware of a plan to allow a defendant to evade an ICE agent waiting at a suburban Boston court in 2018, but is recommending a public reprimand for other actions the judge took that day.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen Big Technologies file fresh claims against its ousted chief executive, West Ham United FC sue Arthur J. Gallagher Insurance for breach of duty, and RSM UK face a new claim over a company's administration. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K. 

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Del. Federal Court Won't Keep Trump's Interim US Atty In Role

By Jack Karp

Delaware's federal court will not appoint the district's current interim U.S. attorney and President Donald Trump's choice for that position to remain in the role, according to a notice from the district's chief judge.

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DOJ Backs Trump In NY False-Records Conviction Appeal

By Emily Sawicki

The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing its support behind President Donald Trump's effort to overturn his New York criminal conviction for falsifying business records, filing a proposed amicus brief on Friday citing the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2024 decision "defining the contours of a president's federal constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution."

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Brief

Pension Corp. Installs EEOC Ex-Chair Dhillon As Director

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. swore in former U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair and commissioner Janet Dhillon as the 17th director of the federal agency, which runs two insurance programs backstopping the nation's single and multiemployer defined-benefit pension plans.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

The federal judge overseeing Epic Games' antitrust suit against Google Inc. has doubts about their settlement deal and is asking for more evidence. And a Black McDonald's executive, who claimed he was fired for confronting his CEO over a racial comment, has lost his bias suit. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Latham & Watkins LLP and Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Eighth Circuit vacated a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Home Depot illegally forced out a worker who showed support for Black Lives Matter.

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Shutdown, Funding Crisis Leave Federal Defenders Unpaid

By Courtney Bublé

The record-long government shutdown has hindered an already dire funding situation for the federal defense community, but now the judiciary is working on requests to Congress to alleviate that.

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Analysis

How One Law Firm Got Two Big White-Collar Wins In 48 Hours

By Phillip Bantz

The white-collar team at Dykema Gossett PLLC secured back-to-back dismissals of two criminal cases in as many days last month by challenging the government's experts, flagging discovery issues and hammering on other perceived weaknesses in the prosecutions.

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