Analysis

Many Plans Already In Front Of 11th Circ. Trans Health Ruling

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Eleventh Circuit's recent decision that a county health plan's coverage exclusion for gender transition surgery violated federal anti-discrimination law likely won't have a big impact on plans because they have already made adjustments for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling the appeals court applied, experts say.

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3rd Circ. Seeks Briefing On Wesco's Impact In 401(k) Fee Suit

By Grace Elletson

The Third Circuit asked a digital services business and employees who sued the company alleging it saddled their retirement plan with excessive recordkeeping fees to explain whether the workers' bid to revive their tossed suit should be kicked to a lower court in light of a recent precedential ruling.

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Frontier Attacks Ex-CEO's $17M Life Insurance Tax Refund Bid

By Aaron Keller

Pointing to a 2004 arbitration agreement and criticizing its ex-CEO's compensation, Frontier Communications has asked a Connecticut state court judge to hang up on a call by Leonard Tow to litigate a $17 million demand for reimbursements on life insurance policies.

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Tech Co. Can Force Solo Arbitration In 401(k) Forfeiture Suit

By Patrick Hoff

A former Tetra Tech Inc. employee must individually arbitrate her suit alleging the company misused forfeited 401(k) contributions, a California federal judge said Friday, ruling federal benefits law doesn't override the arbitration agreement's bar on planwide reimbursement.

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BCBS Says 'Clear' Contract Ends Ex-NBA Player's Suit

By Travis Bland

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina pressed a state district court to throw out a lawsuit brought by retired NBA star Rodney Rogers that alleges in-home nursing was suddenly denied, arguing the "clear language" of his benefits doesn't provide for long-term, in-home nursing.

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Analysis

Industry Emboldened After Justices Galvanize Agency Attacks

By Jeff Overley

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court said "extraordinary" and "far-reaching" attacks on administrative enforcers can skip agency tribunals and go straight to federal district court, ambitious challenges to regulatory powers are rapidly gaining traction, and the high court is poised to put them on an even firmer footing.

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Kohl's Directors' Aversion To Sale Was Self-Serving, Suit Says

By Sydney Price

A Kohl's shareholder has hit the retailer's brass with a derivative suit alleging they covered up the results of a disastrous shift in business strategy and takeover offers, all in a bid to protect their own positions.

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Aramark Spinoff Faces Investor Action Over Slow Growth

By Sydney Price

Uniform supplier Vestis Corp. was hit with a proposed class action on Friday alleging that it concealed years of underfunding prior to being spunoff by Aramark last year, leaving it unable to grow its revenue and retain customers.

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Analysis

Alito Flag Report Fuels Ethics Debate, But Likely No Recusal

By Katie Buehler

Responses to a report that an upside-down American flag flew outside U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home following the 2020 presidential election broke along partisan lines Friday, with conservatives decrying it as a smear campaign and liberals calling for his recusal from pending election-related cases and for general court ethics reform.

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Solicitor General Says No High Court Case Is 'Hopeless'

By Thy Vo

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told lawyers Saturday that despite the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority, she has never thought a case she's overseen for the Biden administration was "entirely hopeless," and that there's always room to shape the court's opinion.

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Analysis

How A $3K Pro Se Claim Led To A 9-0 High Court Decision

By Daniel Wilson

A milestone victory at the U.S. Supreme Court for $3,000 in wages started with a Pentagon worker’s principled commitment to his employer — a dedication that ironically led to a decadelong fight against his own bosses. Stuart R. Harrow and his attorneys speak to Law360 about how a seemingly low-stakes conflict turned into a high-profile case with reverberations for hundreds of federal employees.

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Calif.'s Top Judge Launches Task Force To Probe AI Uses

By Lauren Berg

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero has created a new task force to look into how generative artificial intelligence could benefit the court system and its users, while also evaluating its potential risks, the court announced Friday.

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Trump Hush Money Judge Warned For Biden Donation

By Frank G. Runyeon

The judge presiding over Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial was quietly cautioned after making a political campaign contribution to President Joe Biden and a Democratic group, disposing of an ethics investigation into the donation, it was confirmed Friday.

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Analysis

Trump's Potential Witness Could Be Defense 'Dynamite'

By Phillip Bantz

As Donald Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan nears its end, experts say criminal defense attorney Robert Costello, who once advised the former president's ex-fixer and key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, has surfaced as a potentially bombshell witness for the defense.

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Menendez Bribery Trial: 5 Things To Know About Week 1

By Carla Baranauckas

Explosive opening statements, closed-door jury questioning and an FBI agent's recount of the moment he found a treasure trove of gold bars and cash highlighted the first week of trial in the government's second corruption case against U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.

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Ga. Judge In 2020 Election Cases To Take Senior Status

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones of the Northern District of Georgia, who has presided over high-profile cases involving the 2020 election, voting rights and abortion, will take senior status on Jan. 1, 2025, according to an update Friday.

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AG Garland Held In Contempt By House Committees

By Courtney Bublé

Two House committees voted late Thursday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for not turning over audio recordings of the president and his ghostwriter speaking with special counsel Robert Hur for his investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents.

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Dozens Of Pro Bono Attys Back 3rd Circ. Nominee Mangi

By Courtney Bublé

Forty-nine pro bono partners, counsel and chairs from major law firms and organizations wrote to Senate leadership on Friday with concerns that the staunch opposition against Third Circuit nominee Adeel Mangi over his pro bono work will have a chilling effect on future attorneys seeking judgeships, according to a letter shared with Law360.

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Man Admits To Threatening Judge Over 'Don't Say Gay' Ruling

By Christine DeRosa

A retired teacher from Pensacola, Florida, has pled guilty to threatening to harm a federal judge in five voicemails he left after the jurist ruled against a challenge to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law, federal prosecutors announced.

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Jenner & Block Sued For Firing Worker Over Vax Refusal

By Henrik Nilsson

A former Jenner & Block LLP employee filed a discrimination suit against the law firm Friday, claiming she was fired after the firm refused to provide a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate despite her belief that taking the vaccine would make her complicit in abortion.

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Ex-Baltimore State's Atty Says 20-Month Sentence Too Harsh

By Emily Sawicki

Former Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby has asked a federal judge to cut down prosecutors' requested 20-month prison sentence after she was convicted of abusing a COVID-19-era program to obtain money from a retirement fund and conning a lender to obtain a vacation home, arguing the proposal "stray[s] from the reality of this case."

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'We Feel It': NJ Ranks 2nd In Ch. 11 Cases, Chief Judge Says

By George Woolston

New Jersey federal courts saw the second most Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in the nation over the last year, Chief U.S. District Judge Renée Marie Bumb of the District of New Jersey said on Friday.

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NJ Courts Chief Warns Plan To Pick Appeals Bench A 'Mistake'

By George Woolston

Chief Justice Stuart Rabner of the New Jersey Supreme Court on Friday defended how the state judiciary assigns appeals court judges, criticizing a proposal to move the power to appoint appellate judges from the chief justice to the state Senate and the governor's office.

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1st Circ. Rejects Ex-Immigration Judges' Bid For Asylum Redo

By Elliot Weld

The First Circuit's full bench refused to reopen a Salvadoran woman's case seeking asylum, despite former immigration judges weighing in to say that the judge who denied her asylum didn't follow a legal requirement to ensure her record was complete.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Haynes and Boone LLP and Lubin & Enoch PC lead this week's edition of Law360's Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously determined that federal courts do not have discretion to toss a case once it's decided that the claims belong in arbitration.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

The SEC adopted cybersecurity rules to require investment advisers and broker-dealers to put procedures in place for detecting data breaches and for notifying customers when their personal information may have been compromised, and lawyers said SPACs won't get sought-after relief from a new 1% tax on stock buybacks under a recent Treasury Department proposal. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen a wave of claims filed against Verity Trustees Ltd., Harley-Davidson hit retailer Next with an intellectual property claim, Turkish e-commerce entrepreneur Demet Mutlu sue her ex-husband and Trendyol co-founder Evren Üçok and the Solicitors Regulation Authority file a claim against the former boss of collapsed law firm Axiom. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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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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