Crowell Lands 16 Reed Smith Health Partners Across 4 Cities

By Lynn LaRowe

Crowell & Moring LLP announced Wednesday that it is expanding its healthcare practice with dozens of attorneys from Reed Smith LLP, including 16 healthcare litigation partners based in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas, where the firm is launching a new shop with a former Reed Smith lawyer at the helm.

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5th Circ. Says Texas Voter ID Law Is Legally Sound

By Spencer Brewer

A Fifth Circuit panel upheld a Texas law that requires voters to provide an identification number when voting by mail, finding the law complies with the Civil Rights Act and that the state designed it to combat mail-in ballot fraud.

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Stone Hilton Rips Claims As 'Slinging Mud' For Prosecutor

By Katherine Smith

Stone Hilton PLLC pushed Tuesday to strike certain claims from a former aide's sexual harassment lawsuit, arguing that they were made against the firm — founded by former top prosecutors in the Texas attorney general's office — as a means of "slinging mud" on behalf of Attorney General Ken Paxton's second-in-command.

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McDermott Investors Say One Class Is Enough In Fraud Case

By Catherine Marfin

An employee retirement plan leading an investor class action against McDermott International Inc. asked the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday to reverse an order certifying two subclasses of investors based on whether they held stock before or after a 2018 merger.

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States Push DOJ To Crack Down On Illegal Offshore Gambling

By Elaine Briseño

Attorneys general from several states have written a letter asking the U.S. Department of Justice to target the "rampant spread" of illicit offshore online sports betting and gambling operations, which they say are harming United States citizens and depriving states of tax revenue.

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Ex-USPTO Heads, Judges Oppose Anti-Patent Thicket Bill

By Elliot Weld

A pro-innovation group composed of former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officials and former Federal Circuit judges on Tuesday asked Congress to oppose a bill introduced last month that would limit so-called patent thickets used by pharmaceutical companies to restrict the production of generic counterparts to their drugs.

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Texas Man Gets Real Sentence For AI-Generated Child Porn

By Elizabeth Daley

A Texas man has been sentenced by a Florida federal judge to up to two years in prison for using an artificial intelligence app to generate child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced on Tuesday.

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Tesla Hit With Suit Over Autonomous Vehicle Issues

By Spencer Brewer

A Tesla Inc. investor has launched a proposed securities class action against the company in Texas federal court, claiming it overhyped its autonomous driving vehicles despite flaws that led to regulatory and legal blowback, including a recent $329 million verdict involving the Autopilot feature.

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Infant Death Suit Reinstated Against Texas Hospital, Doctors

By Mike Curley

A Texas appeals panel on Tuesday reinstated a couple's suit against Texas Children's Hospital and doctors with Baylor College of Medicine over the death of their 5-week-old infant, finding the trial court abused its discretion in finding their expert report was insufficient to support their claims.

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5th Circ. Wipes Out Honeywell Win In Worker's Vaccine Fight

By Hailey Konnath

The Fifth Circuit on Tuesday resurrected a former Honeywell employee's suit claiming he was fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine after his request for a religious exemption was denied, ruling that a jury could indeed determine that the worker faced religious discrimination.

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Fed. Circ. Presses Brita On Bid To Revive Water Filter Patent

By Ryan Davis

A Federal Circuit panel Tuesday questioned Brita LP's effort to reverse a U.S. International Trade Commission decision that a water filter patent is invalid, suggesting the patent describes little more than an unpredictable scientific formula.

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Ex-Supreme Court Clerk, AG Counselor Joins Haynes Boone

By Lynn LaRowe

Haynes Boone announced Tuesday that it has added a partner who has clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices and served as counselor to the U.S. attorney general.

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Noncompete Forecast Shows Tough Weather For Employers

Several new state noncompete laws signal rough conditions for employers, particularly in the healthcare sector, so employers must account for employees' geographic circumstances as they cannot rely solely on choice-of-law clauses, say lawyers at McDermott.

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Opinion

The Legal Education Status Quo Is No Longer Tenable

As underscored by the fallout from California’s February bar exam, legal education and licensure are tethered to outdated systems, and the industry must implement several key reforms to remain relevant and responsive to 21st century legal needs, says Matthew Nehmer at The Colleges of Law.

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Law, Medical School Orgs Face Application Fee Antitrust Suits

By Gina Kim

The Law School Admission Council and the Association of American Medical Colleges have each been hit with a proposed class action in Pennsylvania and D.C. federal courts, respectively, by candidates who said the nonprofits conspired with their member schools to charge excessive application fees that have been fixed at the same price regardless of the school.

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Judge Mulls Sanctioning Hagens Berman In Thalidomide Suits

By Lauren Berg

The Pennsylvania federal judge presiding over dozens of product liability actions against manufacturers of the morning sickness drug thalidomide Tuesday ordered Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP to explain why it shouldn't be sanctioned for allegedly conducting "grossly inadequate" pre-suit inquiries, obstructing discovery and doctoring evidence.

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Analysis

Tesla Verdict Could Embolden Plaintiffs With Similar Claims

By Carolina Bolado

The $329 million verdict handed down by jurors in Miami on Friday over a fatal Florida Keys crash is the first to find Tesla's autopilot defective and will likely embolden other plaintiffs with similar claims to take them to trial, personal injury attorneys told Law360.

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Analysis

A Free Exercise 'Blueprint' In Colo. Abortion Reversal Order

By Mark Payne

A Colorado federal judge's decision to allow medication abortion "reversals" on free exercise grounds could serve as a model for other lawsuits meant to legitimize a practice that is outside the standard practice of medicine.

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Law Profs Urge 11th Circ. To Toss Judge-Shopping Sanctions

By Madison Arnold

A group of seven law school professors is urging the Eleventh Circuit to toss a sanctions ruling against three attorneys for judge shopping, arguing that federal law does not forbid the practice and citing the "potentially chilling effect the order will have on counsel, especially those involved in pro bono representation."

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OptumRx Urges Panel To DQ Motley Rice In LA Opioid Suit

By Craig Clough

OptumRx told a California appellate panel Tuesday that Motley Rice should be disqualified from representing Los Angeles County in a lawsuit alleging it colluded with drugmakers to fuel the opioid crisis, saying the firm violated state law by using confidential information obtained in the case in other lawsuits it's handling against Optum.

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Feature

Meet FDA Chief Counsel Sean Keveney

By Dan McKay

The new top attorney at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, described as a "tremendous technical lawyer," rose through the ranks as a federal prosecutor before helping lead President Donald Trump's confrontation with elite universities this year.

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Analysis

Medicaid Cuts May Worsen Incarceration-Linked Death Risks

By Hannah Albarazi

A new public health investigation reveals an association between incarceration and elevated risk of early death, not only for people who have been behind bars but for entire communities. Experts caution that impending disinvestment in Medicaid could worsen outcomes in vulnerable populations.

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Ghislaine Maxwell Slams Feds' Bid To Unseal Grand Jury Docs

By Lauren Berg

Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking children for late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, urged a New York federal judge Tuesday to deny the government's bid to unseal grand jury transcripts, saying release of the sealed materials could jeopardize the appeal of her 2021 conviction.

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Ex-Patent Examiner Fights USPTO Exclusion At High Court

By Adam Lidgett

A former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office examiner wants the U.S. Supreme Court to review his exclusion from practicing before the agency, saying the justices should look at issues relating to a suspension he received and also federal civil rights protections.

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Approach The Bench: Justice Wecht On Judicial Campaigns

By Cara Bayles and Steven Trader

If running for judicial office often requires walking the line of being a sitting jurist and a politician, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht is no stranger to that tightrope.

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