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April 26, 2024
5th Circ. Upholds Pecan Farm's Flood Win Against Sand Mine
A Fifth Circuit panel has upheld a more than $659,000 jury verdict against the owner of a sand and gravel mine after a "120-year flood" event severely damaged an Austin pecan farm, holding the evidence showed the company's large freshwater pit was responsible for the damage.
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April 26, 2024
Texas Justices Rule Trial Court Must Admit Out-Of-State Attys
An El Paso court that barred two out-of-state attorneys from appearing pro hac vice because they seemed to have signed a filing prior to being admitted must let the lawyers into the case, the state high court ruled Friday, finding the trial court abused its discretion in blocking them.
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April 26, 2024
5th Circ. Reverses Coverage For Fatal Race Accident Suit
An insurer doesn't have to defend the organizers of an amateur drag racing event against underlying negligence claims stemming from a fatal car crash, the Fifth Circuit ruled Friday, reversing a lower court's decision and determining that a commercial general liability policy was not ambiguous.
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April 26, 2024
DC Circ. Says Bomb Victims Can't Go After World Bank Or IMF
Victims of a 2016 terrorist bombing in Afghanistan who secured a $138.4 million judgment against the Taliban and other entities cannot attach assets held by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that the victims alleged belong to the Taliban-controlled Afghan central bank, the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday.
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April 26, 2024
Real Estate Authority: Homelessness, PFAS, Flood Zones
Law360 Real Estate Authority covers the most important real estate deals, litigation, policies and trends. Catch up on this week's key developments by state — as well as on U.S. Supreme Court arguments over local homelessness policies, real estate attorney reactions to new rules on "forever chemicals," and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's latest take on building standards in flood zones.
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April 26, 2024
TETRA Tech Shareholder Sues In Del. To Stop Poison Pill
A TETRA Technologies Inc. investor has filed a proposed class action in Delaware's Court of Chancery accusing the company of adopting a poison pill as a prohibited anti-takeover weapon rather than an allowable shield for $411 million in tax-advantaged net operating losses.
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April 26, 2024
Locke Lord Strikes $12M Deal To End Claims Over Gas Fraud
Locke Lord LLP will likely pony up $12.5 million to settle claims it stood by as its clients carried out a fraudulent $122 million oil and gas scheme, with a Texas federal magistrate judge recommending approval of the settlement at a hearing in Fort Worth.
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April 26, 2024
Texas Must Face Feds' Suit Over Anti-Migrant Buoy Barrier
A Texas federal judge will allow the Biden administration's lawsuit to proceed over Texas' 1,000-foot barrier in the Rio Grande to keep out migrants, ruling Friday that the administration had plausibly alleged its domain over structures in navigable waters.
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April 26, 2024
Ex-BP Commodities Trader Says Co. Reneged On Bonus
A former BP commodities trader accused the company in Texas federal court of shorting him to the tune of $6 million when it abruptly fired him in January 2022 and paid him a smaller bonus than the $11 million he expected to receive.
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April 26, 2024
4 More Indicted In Alleged Abusive Trust Tax Scheme
A federal grand jury in Denver indicted four more people in connection with what prosecutors call a conspiracy to defraud the government in a multistate scheme to promote abusive tax shelters using sham trusts to hide business income and illegally deduct personal expenses such as family weddings.
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April 26, 2024
Wachtell Guides Apollo On $1.85B Deal For Minerals Co.
Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz-led Apollo Global Management has agreed to purchase Morrison Foerster LLP-advised U.S. Silica Holdings Inc. at a $1.85 billion enterprise value, the producer of commercial silica disclosed Friday, sending its stock soaring more than 20%.
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April 25, 2024
DOJ Pressed On Prosecutions Of Muslim Asylum-Seekers
The U.S. Department of Justice is facing new questions from Capitol Hill over prosecutions of Muslim asylum-seekers in the wake of a Los Angeles Times report showing that migrants from majority-Muslim countries were disproportionately imprisoned at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.
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April 25, 2024
Tesla Says Investors May Want To Influence Shareholder Vote
Tesla on Thursday questioned the motives of investors who want billions of dollars in company stock put into a trust, saying that their push to hasten the court's decision in their suit over Elon Musk's compensation plan raises concerns that they want to "elicit commentary" ahead of a shareholder meeting.
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April 25, 2024
Texas County's Electioneering Rules Face Questions In Court
A Texas federal judge pushed a top Fort Worth-area county official on whether new restrictions on signage outside an election site were put in place to stop voter intimidation, pressing county officials on how the policy complies with the First Amendment.
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April 25, 2024
5th Circ. Axes Class Claims Over Anadarko's $900M Write-Off
The Fifth Circuit on Thursday decertified a class of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. shareholders who claim they lost money on the company's bad oilfield bet, ruling a lower court judge didn't allow the company to respond to an expert report that tied a stock price drop to a $900 million write-off disclosure.
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April 25, 2024
McDermott Judge U-Turns, Says Some Investors Deserve Cert.
A Texas federal magistrate judge reversed his recommendation that investors be denied class certification in litigation over McDermott International's $6 billion merger with Chicago Bridge & Iron, saying a former CB&I shareholder class "should be certified now" and a putative McDermott stock purchaser class be created for subsequent consideration.
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April 25, 2024
Crypto Co. Sues 'Crusading' Gensler Over SEC's Ether Stance
Cryptocurrency software company Consensys Software Inc. sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday in Texas federal court over the agency's treatment of the Ethereum network's ether token as a security after the company received a so-called Wells notice that agency staff intends to recommend an enforcement action over its products.
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April 25, 2024
Real Estate Exec Can't Escape Shareholder's Self-Dealing Suit
A California federal judge ruled that a derivative shareholder suit accusing the president of a real estate management and investment firm of misusing nearly $35 million of company revenue now passes the so-called Zuckerberg test since the plaintiff sufficiently pled that demand on the company's board members would be futile.
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April 25, 2024
Biden Admin's Gas Venting Curbs Are Illegal, ND Says
A North Dakota-led alliance of states has accused the Biden administration of pushing through limits on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector illegally disguised as a rule to reduce industry waste, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
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April 25, 2024
PHX Minerals Stockholders Sue In Del. To Change Bylaws
A proposed class of PHX Minerals Inc. stockholders has sued the natural gas and oil mineral company and its board in Delaware state court, arguing that the company's bylaws must be changed to bring them into compliance with the Delaware General Corporation Law.
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April 25, 2024
Texas Doc Can't Avoid Woman's Suit Over Son's Brain Injury
A Texas appeals court on Thursday declined to throw out a woman's suit alleging an anesthesiologist wrongly administered an epidural during delivery and caused her son to suffer a brain injury, finding the judge did not find the woman's expert report deficient despite giving her a month to amend it.
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April 25, 2024
SEC Says Texas Crypto Mining Co. Execs Ran $5.6M Fraud
A crypto asset mining and hosting company and two of its principals face U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims they defrauded about 64 investors with an unregistered securities offering that raised $5.6 million, spending investor funds lavishly on themselves while neglecting to set up, or in some cases even buy, the mining equipment they had said they would get.
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April 25, 2024
3 Accused Of $36M COVID Test Fraud Scheme In Fla. Case
Three owners of laboratories spanning the U.S. were indicted by a grand jury in Florida on federal charges that they conspired to defraud the U.S. government by more than $36 million in a scheme that involved submitting false COVID-19 testing claims to healthcare benefit programs.
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April 25, 2024
Houston Surgeon OKs Order For Docs In Wrongful Death Suit
A transplant surgeon at Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center in Houston and the families of three patients who died while on the hospital's liver transplant waiting list told a judge Thursday that they had agreed to a temporary restraining order preventing the doctor from deleting or altering any documents related to the families' wrongful death claims.
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April 25, 2024
US Says Seizure Power Erodes Landowner's Border Wall Suit
The federal government told the Fifth Circuit that its eminent domain authority should defeat a landowner's claims that she owns a $6.5 million section of border wall that was allegedly built on her farm without authorization in 2008.
Expert Analysis
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The Case For Post-Bar Clerk Training Programs At Law Firms
In today's competitive legal hiring market, an intentionally designed training program for law school graduates awaiting bar admission can be an effective way of creating a pipeline of qualified candidates, says Brent Daub at Gilson Daub.
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CFPB, DOJ Signal Focus On Fair Lending To Immigrants
New joint guidance from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Justice effectively broadens the scope of protected classes under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to include immigration status, indicating a significant shift in regulatory scrutiny, say Alex McFall and Leslie Sowers at Husch Blackwell.
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Attorneys Have An Ethical Duty To Protect The Judiciary
The tenor of public disagreement and debate has become increasingly hostile against judges, and though the legislative branch is trying to ameliorate this safety gap, lawyers have a moral imperative and professional requirement to stand with judges in defusing attacks against them and their rulings, says Deborah Winokur at Cozen O'Connor.
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Questions Linger Over Texas Business Court's Jurisdiction
If parties to a case in Texas' new business court do not agree on whether the court has supplemental jurisdiction over their claims, then those claims may proceed concurrently in another court — creating significant challenges for litigants, and raising questions that have yet to be answered, says Ryan Sullivan at Reichman Jorgensen.
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Cross-Market Implications In FTC's Anesthesia Complaint
The Federal Trade Commission's recent complaint against a private equity firm's acquisition of anesthesiology practices highlights the controversial issue of cross-market harm in health care provider mergers, and could provide important insights into how a court may view such theories of harm, say Christopher Lau and Dina Older Aguilar at Cornerstone Research.
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AI Can Help Lawyers Overcome The Programming Barrier
Legal professionals without programming expertise can use generative artificial intelligence to harness the power of automation and other technology solutions to streamline their work, without the steep learning curve traditionally associated with coding, says George Zalepa at Greenberg Traurig.
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10 Essential Bankruptcy Litigation Tips For In-House Counsel
Bankruptcy litigation is a complex and multifaceted area of law that poses unique challenges for in-house counsel, and there are several tools at legal professionals' disposal, like appraisals and understanding jurisdictions, to stay well-informed and protect their companies' interests, says Alison Ashmore at Dykema.
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Total Stay Of CFPB Small Biz Data Rule Is Boon To Lenders
The Southern District of Texas’ nationwide halt of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Small Business Lending Rule would end if the CFPB wins a pending U.S. Supreme Court case, but the interim pause allows valuable extra time for financial institutions to plan their compliance strategies, say attorneys at Greenberg Traurig.
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Why The Effect Of Vivint Has Been Minimal
A survey of recent ex parte reexamination decisions since the Federal Circuit’s 2021 In re: Vivint decision appears to support the court’s conclusion that the ruling was limited in scope and would have limited impact, says Yao Wang at Fish & Richardson.
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Opinion
What 5th Circ. Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Ruling Got Wrong
The Fifth Circuit’s recent ruling in National Press Photographers Association v. McGraw threatens to dilute the First Amendment rights of photographers using uncrewed aircraft systems and undermine federal control of the airspace, and is indicative of how other courts may misinterpret the Federal Aviation Administration's new fact sheet down the line, say attorneys at Wiley Rein.
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What Texas Business Court Could Mean For Oil, Gas Cases
While the new business court in Texas might seem an ideal venue for the numerous oil and gas disputes litigated in that state, many of these cases may remain outside its reach under the rules governing the court's jurisdiction — at least for now, say Conrad Hester and Emily Fitzgerald at Alston & Bird.
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Preparing Law Students For A New, AI-Assisted Legal World
As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the legal landscape, law schools must integrate technology and curricula that address AI’s innate challenges — from ethics to data security — to help students stay ahead of the curve, say Daniel Garrie at Law & Forensics, Ryan Abbott at JAMS and Karen Silverman at Cantellus Group.
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SEC Fines Mean Cos. Should Review Anti-Whistleblower Docs
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s expanding focus on violations of whistleblower protection laws — as seen in recent settlements where company contracts forbade workers from reporting securities misconduct — means companies should review their employment and separation agreements for language that may discourage reporting, says Caroline Henry at Maynard Nexsen.
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SolarWinds Ushers In New Era Of SEC Cyber Enforcement
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent lawsuit against software company SolarWinds Corp. and its chief information security officer is the first time the SEC has ever filed suit over scienter-based fraud involving cybersecurity failures, illustrating that both companies and CISOs need to be extra cautious in how they describe their cybersecurity practices, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.
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General Counsel Need Data Literacy To Keep Up With AI
With the rise of accessible and powerful generative artificial intelligence solutions, it is imperative for general counsel to understand the use and application of data for myriad important activities, from evaluating the e-discovery process to monitoring compliance analytics and more, says Colin Levy at Malbek.