NASCAR Inks Midtrial Antitrust Deal With Teams

By Hayley Fowler

NASCAR has agreed to give its race teams permanent contracts as part of an otherwise confidential settlement that cut short a high-profile antitrust trial in which two teams — including one owned by retired NBA star Michael Jordan — accused it of illegally maintaining a monopoly on premier stock car racing.

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Ex-Abercrombie CEO Headed For Competency Hearing

By Cara Salvatore

A New York federal judge said Thursday she will hold a competency hearing for former Abercrombie & Fitch Co. CEO Michael Jeffries to see whether he can stand trial on sex trafficking charges, following recent findings that he's overcome his earlier incompetency.

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EDTX Jury Finds TV Ad Tech Patent Invalid In Win For Taiv

By Adam Lidgett

A Texas federal jury on Thursday cleared Canadian smart TV box company Taiv Inc. of infringement allegations by MyChoice LLC over a television advertising technology patent, and also found the patent was invalid.

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FTC, Amazon Want To Delay Antitrust Trial By 7 Weeks

By Bryan Koenig

As they try to get back on track after the government shutdown, the Federal Trade Commission and Amazon asked a Washington federal judge Wednesday to push back the start of the antitrust trial accusing the online retail giant of creating an artificial pricing floor.

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Samsung Gets PTAB To Ax Patent Claim From $12.5M Verdict

By Adam Lidgett

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found that Samsung was able to prove the invalidity of one claim in an Empire Technology Development LLC cellphone signal patent tied to a $12.5 million verdict against the South Korean electronics giant.

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LA Bellwether Jury To Decide If J&J Hid Talc Risk For Decades

By Craig Clough

An attorney for one of two women who claim Johnson & Johnson's talcum products caused their ovarian cancer told a California jury Thursday in a bellwether trial's closing arguments that the company hid the health risks of talc for decades, while the company's attorney insisted the science is on their side.

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Ill. State Sen. Fends Off Bribery Retrial With Government Deal

By Lauraann Wood

A sitting Illinois state senator who was set for a criminal bribery retrial has agreed instead to enter a deferred prosecution agreement that will see his federal case dismissed next year as long as he follows certain conditions without issue and pays the U.S. government $6,800.

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5th Circ. Backs Man's Convictions In $3.6M Fraud Scheme

By Gina Kim

The Fifth Circuit upheld conspiracy convictions for a Dallas man accused of fleecing a bank out of $3.6 million in renewed business loans, after rejecting his argument that the jury's learning of his brother's guilty plea tainted his case, ruling Wednesday that the plea did not directly implicate the man in the conspiracy.

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Colo. Appeals Court Backs New Reasonable Doubt Instruction

By Parker Quinlan

A split Colorado appeals court Thursday upheld the use of a new model jury instruction on a reasonable doubt standard that a man convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material said lowered the burden for prosecutors to prove that a defendant is guilty.

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Agri Stats Says DOJ Wants To 'Leapfrog' Pork Pricing Claims

By Matthew Perlman

Agri Stats urged a Minnesota federal court to reject the Justice Department's bid to "leapfrog" a set of private antitrust cases involving pork prices by using a scheduled May trial for its information sharing claims against the data firm instead.

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Judge Slams Eaton Expert For Offering Legal Analysis

By Molly Moses

A report submitted by one of Eaton's expert witnesses in its acquisition financing trial overstepped the limits of an expert's role, offering legal rather than economic analysis and seeming to advocate for the company​​​​, a U.S. Tax Court judge said Thursday.

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NBA, MLB Betting Indictments: Slam Dunks Or Strikeouts?

Recent fraud charges against bettors, NBA players and MLB pitchers raise questions about what the government will need to prove to prosecute individuals involved in placing bets based on nonpublic information, and it could be a tough sell to juries, say attorneys at Ford O'Brien.

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Series

Knitting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Stretching my skills as a knitter makes me a better antitrust attorney by challenging me to recalibrate after wrong turns, not rush outcomes, and trust that I can teach myself the skills to tackle new and difficult projects — even when I don’t have a pattern to work from, says Kara Kuritz at V&E.

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Wash. Justices Retroactively Lower Bar Exam's Passing Score

By Ben Adlin

As Washington state is preparing to transition to a new bar exam, its Supreme Court has ordered a retroactive adjustment to the current exam's minimum passing score, making an estimated hundred-plus law school graduates who narrowly failed in recent years newly eligible for admission to practice law.

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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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Dems Demand Release Of 2nd Jack Smith Report

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday demanding she release the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office the first time.

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Roundup

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

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Shell hit with a climate change claim from 100 survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines, London Stock Exchange-listed Oxford Nanopore bring legal action against its co-founder, and the editors of Pink News sue the BBC for defamation following its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the news site.

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Higgs Fletcher Forms White Collar, Regs Enforcement Team

By Andrea Keckley

San Diego-based law firm Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP has launched a white collar crime and regulatory enforcement defense practice group, citing heightened regulatory scrutiny in the financial and healthcare sectors and rising enforcement risks for licensed professionals and institutions.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to review the influence that proxy adviser firms have, and law firms saw a 9.8% increase in compensation expenses along with a similar increase in billable rates. ​These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Watchdog Sues White House For Records On Law Firm Deals

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington-based nonprofit watchdog has sued the Trump administration, seeking records related to deals BigLaw firms struck to provide an estimated nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to further the administration's priorities, following the president's executive orders to withhold security clearances and investigate the firms.

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Ex-NJ Municipal Court Admin Says COVID Got Her Fired

By George Woolston

The former municipal court administrator for West Windsor Township, New Jersey, has alleged that the town failed to accommodate her disability when it fired her instead of giving her a short medical leave of absence after she contracted COVID-19.

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US Atty Nominee For Wyo. Was Outside Capitol On Jan. 6

By Courtney Bublé

One of President Donald Trump's U.S. attorney nominees, who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently told senators he still thinks "there were imperfections" in the 2020 election process, has been advanced toward Senate confirmation.

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Del. US Atty Resigns Citing 'Politics,' Successor Appointed

By Rose Krebs

The acting U.S. Attorney for Delaware said Friday that she is resigning, citing "a highly politicized, flawed blue-slip tradition" for nominees and saying she "fully" supports her first assistant, who has been appointed by a federal judge to succeed her.

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Bonus Spotlight

Axinn Veltrop's Bonuses Reach Up To $240K

By Andrea Keckley

Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP is giving out bonuses of up to $240,000 for its associates, according to an in-house memo seen by Law360 Pulse.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Ninth Circuit handed Epic Games Inc. a partial win by mostly affirming an injunction blocking Apple Inc. from charging developers "prohibitive" commissions on iPhone app purchases made outside its systems.

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