Wash. AG Sues Contractor To Keep Benefits Data From Feds

By Rachel Riley

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown launched a lawsuit in Evergreen State court on Thursday seeking to block a fintech contractor from providing the federal government with the private details of food assistance benefit recipients, saying the Trump administration intends to use the data for its "mass deportation project."

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Green Groups Cleared To Join EV Funding Freeze Challenge

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge will let the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations enter a multistate lawsuit against the federal government seeking to preserve funding for new electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, concluding the groups have a significant interest in protecting the project funds.  

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Boeing Hit With Disability Bias Suit Over Bonus Exclusion

By Emily Brill

Boeing employees on long-term disability leave missed out on a $12,000 bonus distributed after workers ratified a union contract in September, a new proposed class action alleges, claiming that limits on who qualified for the bonus violated Washington state discrimination law.

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Eli Lilly's Trademark Suit Not 'Abuse Of Process'

By Mike Curley

A Washington federal judge has tossed out counterclaims by a pair of clinics being sued for trademark infringement by Eli Lilly & Co., saying the acts of filing the suit and making a settlement demand are not in themselves abuse of process.

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Trump Admin Asks Justices To Stay Block On NIH Grant Cuts

By Rae Ann Varona

The Trump administration on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a district court's preliminary injunction so that the National Institutes of Health can resume terminating $783 million in grants, saying the lower court, under a recent high court ruling, lacked jurisdiction to make the government pay the grants.

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Split 9th Circ. Affirms Block Of Calif. Ammunition Regulation

By Hailey Konnath

A split Ninth Circuit panel Thursday affirmed a lower court's finding that California can't require gun owners to undergo background checks before buying ammunition, ruling that the law runs afoul of the Second Amendment in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Bruen.

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9th Circ. Urged Not To Let $1.3B India Award Suit Drag On

By Caroline Simson

Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an outlier Ninth Circuit decision refusing to enforce a $1.3 billion arbitral award against India, an Indian satellite communications company's shareholders are now urging the circuit court to minimize or nix briefing on issues left open by the justices.

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Feds Say 9th Circ. Order Supports Nixing Delay Of TPS End

By Britain Eakin

The U.S. Department of Justice told the Ninth Circuit it can hear an immediate appeal of a district court's decision postponing the Trump administration's termination of temporary protected status for Venezuelans, citing a recent decision from the appeals court narrowing an injunction in a separate case.

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IRS Can Levy Religious Group's Property, Split 9th Circ. Says

By Kat Lucero

The IRS can impose a lien on an Arizona residential property held by a religious organization to collect unpaid taxes owed by a bankrupt couple who had decision-making authority over the entity's finances and bank account, a divided Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday.

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Series

Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

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Courts 'Turning Up The Heat' On AI Fake Citation Sanctions

By Emily Sawicki

As the volume of sanctions orders resulting from attorneys' use of faulty citations blamed on artificial intelligence continues to rise, federal judges are beginning to pivot from financial sanctions to more creative means of disciplining lawyers, including targeting their professional reputations in ways that could really hurt.

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Trump Admin Making Another EO Appeal, Targeting WilmerHale

By Jack Karp

The Trump administration is appealing a D.C. federal judge's ruling that President Donald Trump's executive order targeting WilmerHale amounts to a "staggering" assault on the First Amendment, according to a notice filed Friday.

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Will Tom Girardi's Wardrobe Mishap Help His Appeal?

By Craig Clough

When once-legendary attorney Tom Girardi's pants fell down as he finished testifying in his defense, the judge had to decide: Was this a desperate bid to feign incompetence and avoid prison for stealing client funds, or just an accident by an 86-year-old man with dementia? And if it really was an accident, does it now give Girardi a shot at winning his appeal and overturning his sentence?

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Former Jan. 6 Prosecutor, 2 Other Ex-DOJ Employees File Suit

By Rose Krebs

A former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has filed a federal lawsuit along with two other ex-Department of Justice employees alleging they were unlawfully fired.

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Epic Defends Apple Antitrust Injunction After Birthright Ruling

By Dorothy Atkins

Epic Games has told the Ninth Circuit the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in litigation challenging President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order should not affect a nationwide injunction and civil contempt order issued in its antitrust case over Apple's App Store policies, arguing Apple misread the high court's precedent.

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11th Circ. Calls Dismissal Of Ga. Bar Bias Suit 'Indefensible'

By Chart Riggall

An Eleventh Circuit panel appeared all but certain Friday that it would revive a Georgia attorney's race bias suit against the state's bar association, calling a federal district court's dismissal of her claims that the bar has a two-tiered disciplinary system "indefensible."

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Podcaster At Fees Hearing Blames His Atty For Sanctions

By Zach Dupont

A podcaster accused of spreading lies that a former Dominion Voting Systems Inc. executive rigged the 2020 election blamed his lawyer Friday for his noncompliance with the Colorado federal court, accusing the attorney of "malpractice" and "negligence."

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Dentons Stalling Discovery In Terraform Ch. 11, Court Told

By Alex Wittenberg

The bankruptcy plan administrator for failed cryptocurrency platform Terraform Labs has accused Dentons US LLP of blocking his discovery requests in an attempt to secure final approval of some $25 million in fees, saying the law firm is seeking to "run out the clock" to dodge an investigation into its role in Terraform's collapse.

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Veteran CFPB Enforcement Atty Heads For The Exit

By Jon Hill

A longtime Consumer Financial Protection Bureau litigator told a Virginia federal court on Friday that she is leaving after more than a decade at the agency, becoming the latest departure at the regulator as its future under the Trump administration remains in limbo.

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Legal Org Urges DC Circ. To Reject Trump's Tariff Powers

By Anna Scott Farrell

The D.C. Circuit should affirm a ruling that sided with toy makers and blocked President Donald Trump from using an international economic law to impose emergency tariffs because the law does not give the president the authority he claims, a legal organization argued.

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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 the owner of a £6 million ($8 million) mansion once rented by Adele sue real estate consultants Strutt & Parker, Romanian-Australian mining investor Vasile Frank Timis bring a claim against reputation and privacy firm Schillings, and a Chinese businessman bring a legal action against his former lawyer over an alleged £12.5 million mortgage fraud.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Glass Lewis brought a lawsuit against Texas over a measure it claims requires the proxy advisory firm to "publicly condemn itself" when its advice for clients reflects certain viewpoints the government disfavors. Meanwhile, a new proposed class action alleges Boeing employees on long-term disability leave missed out on a $12,000 bonus distributed after workers ratified a union contract. 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

Jones Day and DLA Piper lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Federal Circuit overturned a more than $125 million judgment against Medtronic's CoreValve unit for infringing a Colibri Heart Valve LLC patent.

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