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The law firms leading class-action litigation against PacifiCorp over a 2020 blaze in Oregon want a court to let them look into whether the utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is colluding with three other law firms to reach lowball settlements with fire victims, our colleague Jonathan Stempel writes. PacifiCorp has paid more than $1 billion to settle nearly 2,000 wildfire claims, but faces billions of dollars of additional claims, including a $30-billion lawsuit.
Edelson PC, Keller Rohrbach and Stoll Berne said they were blindsided when PacifiCorp and the three other firms — Warren Allen, Spreter Petiprin and the Swigart Law Group — jointly announced a $178 million settlement on June 3 with 403 victims. The settlement came one week after mediation to resolve the class action broke down.
Edelson, Keller and Stoll called the amount a “PacifiCorp-approved, bargain-basement price point.” They want a Portland judge overseeing their case to let them review communications between PacifiCorp, the three other firms and class members for possible collusion, and allow victims who settled to back out if collusion were found, Stempel writes.
In a statement, the firms that brokered the June settlement called the claims “simply untrue.” PacifiCorp said Edelson, Keller and Stoll appeared to be trying to persuade their clients to hold out for more money and to collect higher legal fees for themselves.
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- President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign had a massive bank account that can now benefit an alternative candidate, but campaign finance rules limit how that cash could be spent. Experts on campaign finance law disagree on how readily Biden’s campaign money could change hands.
- Johnson & Johnson lost its bid to disqualify the law firm Beasley Allen from representing plaintiffs claiming they got cancer from the company’s talc, a setback for the company as it tries to resolve more than 60,000 such claims for $6.48 billion through bankruptcy. A judge said J&J had not presented “any credible basis” for its claims that a Beasley Allen partner formed an unethical alliance with one of the company’s former lawyers. J&J has denied plaintiffs’ claims that its talc is tainted with cancer-causing asbestos, saying the product is safe.
- The DOJ said it made a referral to its internal watchdog to potentially examine matters related to conflicts involving Joshua Kindred, a federal judge in Alaska who resigned last week in a misconduct scandal, and prosecutors who appeared before him.
- The California bar is moving forward with a plan to administer its own bar exam as early as February 2025, parting ways with the national attorney licensing test. The state bar plans to enter into an $8.25 million, five-year contract with Kaplan Test Prep to develop exam questions. The new version of the national exam has 21 other jurisdictions on board.
- Attorney Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official who is accused of helping Donald Trump try to overturn his 2020 election loss, said the disciplinary proceedings against him must be dismissed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling. The D.C. bar countered that the high court’s decision had no bearing on Clark’s disciplinary case.
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A lawsuit against Citigroup for waiving its $3 out-of-network ATM fee for customers of certain credit unions and community banks, most of them minority-owned, strikes Jenna Greene as an instance of no good deed going unpunished. In her latest column, Greene looks at a proposed class action against Citi by Consovoy McCarthy, which claims the fees discriminate against customers of banks owned by people of the “wrong race” – and why the litigation boutique may face an uphill fight in making the claims stick.
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“I’m struggling to think of an outage
at quite this scale.“
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—Ciaran Martin, professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, remarking on the global tech outage that crippled an array of industries on Friday. A software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered systems problems that grounded flights and left some customers without access to healthcare and banking. The FTC said it was impacted, and courts were also hit. The Nevada Supreme Court, for example, closed on Friday and granted filing extensions until today. Courts in Kansas remained open, but some electronic processes switched to paper. Maryland courts closed statewide to the public but were open for emergency matters.
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- Today, a former DraftKings executive will ask a U.S. appeals court to overturn a judge’s order that restricted the type of work he could do after he joined sports betting rival Fanatics. Michael Hermalyn is urging the 1st Circuit in Boston to overturn an injunction that a federal judge issued after DraftKings sued to enforce a non-compete agreement he had signed.
- Tuesday is the deadline that U.S. District Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge in Philadelphia set for her ruling on the FTC’s noncompete ban. Hodge heard arguments on July 10 and indicated she would rule by July 23 on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas partially blocked the rule. Brown said the FTC lacked the power to adopt broad rules prohibiting practices that it deems unfair methods of competition.
- On Wednesday, the DOJ will aim to file its plea agreement with Boeing. The planemaker on July 7 agreed in principle to plead guilty to a fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of $243.6 million after the DOJ said the company had breached a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. Prosecutors told a U.S. judge last week that they will “work expeditiously” to submit the agreement by July 24.
- Also on Wednesday, Harvard University’s lawyers at Wilmer Hale and King & Spalding will ask U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston to dismiss a lawsuit by Jewish students who accused the school of allowing its campus to become a bastion of rampant antisemitism. In a filing, Harvard told Stearns the lawsuit is “neither an effective nor legally appropriate vehicle to address antisemitism at Harvard.”
- On Thursday, the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will meet and hear arguments in Portland, Maine, federal court. Among other cases, the panel will weigh selecting a venue for a class action accusing Hess, Pioneer and other oil and gas producers of conspiring to curb output of shale oil, causing consumers to pay inflated fuel prices.
- On Friday, Apple’s Kirkland defense team and DOJ prosecutors are expected to submit a proposed briefing schedule to the New Jersey federal judge assigned to hear the government’s blockbuster antitrust case against the iPhone maker. U.S. District Judge Julien Neals in Newark met briefly with the lawyers in the case last week for a preview of Apple’s plan to challenge the lawsuit. Apple has denied claims that it is unlawfully monopolizing the smartphone market.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s U.S. affiliate received approval from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in D.C. to invest certain customer assets in U.S. Treasury bills. The order frees Binance.US from restrictions levied by the SEC, the affiliate said.
- A U.S. judge approved $284 million in antitrust settlements resolving claims that 10 major U.S. universities conspired to shortchange students needing financial aid in favor of wealthier applicants seeking admission. Litigation in federal court in Chicago is continuing against seven other schools. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly awarded the plaintiffs’ firms $94 million in fees for their work so far.
- A Delaware federal jury found Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing part of Ryanair’s website without permission – an outcome that the airline said would help end unauthorized screen scraping by booking sites. The Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, has in recent years launched a series of legal actions against third-party booking platforms that resell its tickets without permission.
- Amazon won dismissal of a proposed class action accusing the e-commerce giant of misleading customers about the benefits of its subscription service Prime, causing them to pay a hidden $9.95 delivery fee for some Whole Foods purchases. U.S. District Judge Tana Lin in Seattle ruled the consumer lawsuit failed for now to adequately make a claim of deceptive practices under a Washington state consumer protection law.
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- Akin added technology transactions partners Justin Stock, Stephen Rosen and David Bresnick. The lawyers were at Cooley, where Stock, who joins as international head of Akin’s technology practice, was the London managing partner. (Akin)
- Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres hired former Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Kilbride and appellate lawyer Adam Vaught as partners in the litigation practice from Kilbride & Vaught. (CFDB)
- Alston & Bird added Boong-Kyu (B.K.) Lee to its finance group and structures and warehouse finance team in New York. He previously was at Skadden. (Alston & Bird)
- Dentons added bankruptcy partner Jill Nicholson to the firm’s Chicago office. Nicholson was previously at Foley & Lardner, where she led the bankruptcy and reorganization team. (Dentons)
- Greenberg Traurig expanded its white-collar defense practice in San Francisco with Tracy Combs, who most recently was director of the SEC’s Salt Lake City regional office. (Greenberg Traurig)
- Holland & Hart hired appellate partner Abe Smith in the firm’s Las Vegas office from Lewis Roca. (Holland & Hart)
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A solid business foundation is essential for the success of any law firm, and investing in the business needs of your firm can actually create more time for the practice of law, writes Catherine Enck of Major, Lindsey & Africa’s Hire an Esquire. Legal outsourcing can be a useful tool to help, and it’s one that’s currently underutilized by small firms.
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