Texas Court Tosses $222M Verdict In Worker Burn Death Suit

By Y. Peter Kang

A Texas appeals panel on Thursday tossed a $222 million jury verdict in a suit alleging a piping repair company failed to properly service a faulty relief valve that caused a Kansas power plant worker's burn death, saying the Lone Star State was not the proper forum for the suit.

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Exxon Pipeline In Dallas At Risk Over Excavation Co. Dumping

By Spencer Brewer

ExxonMobil and a commercial excavation company have agreed to a temporary injunction that would prevent the company from dumping cement slabs and other debris on land over a key Exxon fuel pipeline that runs under Dallas, with a state judge on Thursday indicating she would sign off on the proposal.

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Houston Hospital Must Face Patient's Improper Care Claims

By Spencer Brewer

A split Texas appellate court gave a patient a second shot at his lawsuit accusing Houston Methodist Hospital of botching his post-surgery care, finding Thursday that an expert report supporting the patient's allegations was adequate to survive a dismissal bid.

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FCC To Pull Phone Co.'s Authorization To Operate In US

By Christopher Cole

The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday it plans to revoke a telecom company's authorization to operate in the U.S. after the business failed to comply with an agreement with federal agencies stemming from a security review.

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'Christian' Co. Scammed WWII Vet Out Of $300K, Feds Say

By David Minsky

Five members of an Alabama-based self-described Christian company were indicted on conspiracy and fraud charges stemming from a scheme in which they allegedly took at least $300,000 from a World War II veteran after telling him the money would pay for a vocational school.

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Analysis

Buckle Up: CFPB's High Court Win Will Thaw Frozen Docket

By Jon Hill

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is walking away from the U.S. Supreme Court with its funding and rulebook intact, a victory that caps off years of constitutional wrangling over how the agency was set up and will usher in a wave of activity that has financial services attorneys bracing for impact.

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La. Parties Split On How Voting Law Alters Consent Decree

By Catherine Marfin

A civil rights group told the Fifth Circuit on Thursday that a Louisiana state law enacted two weeks before the court reconsidered whether to dissolve a 30-year-old voting consent decree was enough to end its dispute, but disagreed with the state over the dissolution process for the consent decree determining how the state's high court justices are chosen.

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Fracking Services Co. Nitro Hits Ch. 11 After IP Trial Loss

By Rick Archer

Oil and gas fracking services provider Nitro Fluids LLC filed for Chapter 11 protection in a Texas bankruptcy court with more than $50 million in debt, months after a jury found it had infringed another company's patents.

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Del. IP Ruling May Mark Limitation-By-Limitation Analysis Shift

A Delaware federal court's recent ruling in Lindis Biotech v. Amgen, which involved complex technology where the complaint contained neither facts nor a specific allegation directed to a claim limitation, might spark a shift away from requiring a limitation-by-limitation analysis, say Ted Mathias and Ian Swan at Axinn.

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Exploring An Alternative Model Of Litigation Finance

A new model of litigation finance, most aptly described as insurance-backed litigation funding, differs from traditional funding in two key ways, and the process of securing it involves three primary steps, say Bob Koneck, Christopher Le Neve Foster and Richard Butters at Atlantic Global Risk LLC.

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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 'Hopeless' Cases Before High Court

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 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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