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Good morning. Boeing might have finalized a deal with the DOJ to plead guilty after breaching a 2021 agreement, but families of victims killed in two 737 MAX crashes say they’ll fight to stop it. Plus, Monsanto strikes a deal to settle Seattle’s claims over PCB contamination and New York Governor Kathy Hochul is facing a lawsuit over her decision to halt congestion pricing in NYC. Hello, Friday!
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U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor should reject a “sweetheart” plea deal the DOJ struck with Boeing, relatives of 15 of the 346 people killed in two fatal 737 MAX crashes said, our colleague David Shepardson reports.
This week, the planemaker finalized an agreement to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay at least $243.6 million after breaching a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
But family members said in a court filing in Texas that they will submit a comprehensive objection to the plea deal by next week, arguing that there are a number of issues, including its “outdated and misleading statement of facts,” use of “inaccurate sentencing guidelines,” and “ambiguous restitution commitment” by Boeing. The families’ lawyers also questioned the “unexplained calculation” of the fine and the lack of acknowledgement by the company that its crime killed 346 people.
In May, the DOJ said that Boeing had breached its obligations in the agreement that shielded the planemaker from criminal prosecution stemming from misrepresentations about a key software feature tied to fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
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- Alfredo Perez, a former partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, has taken the bench as a bankruptcy judge in Houston, Texas, filling a vacancy created when former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones resigned over a previously undisclosed romantic relationship with a lawyer whose firm regularly appeared before him.
- The fate of a $185 million payday for Quinn Emanuel was in a judge’s hands after the law firm squared off in a Washington, D.C. courtroom against a group of health insurers who claim it received an undeserved windfall. The same judge — Kathryn Davis of the U.S. Federal Claims Court — awarded the fees after Quinn Emanuel secured a $3.7 billion judgment in 2020 for a class of insurers in a case over Obamacare. The Federal Circuit struck down the fee award last year. Read more in the latest Legal Fee Tracker.
- A Denver-area web designer who won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that said the right to free speech allows some businesses to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings has asked a federal judge to award her attorneys at conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom nearly $2 million in legal fees.
- A Nevada man was charged with making a death threat against the prosecutor who secured Donald Trump’s criminal conviction and the judge who oversaw Trump’s trial, according to court records and a person familiar with the case. The indictment did not name the targets, but a person familiar with the case said the initials “A.B.” and “J.M.” referred to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Justice Juan Merchan. The man pleaded not guilty.
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That’s how much Bayer’s Monsanto will pay to settle a lawsuit by the city of Seattle that accused it of polluting the city’s drainage system and the local Lower Duwamish River with toxic chemicals known as PCBs. Monsanto said it will pay $35 million for PCB remediation, and $125 million to address other Seattle claims. The company did not admit liability or wrongdoing. City Attorney Ann Davison called the settlement the largest for a single city over PCB pollution.
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There is no doubt that plaintiffs firms representing nearly 900 clients who claim to have developed cancer after taking the heartburn medication Zantac wanted to litigate their clients’ cases in Connecticut state court instead of federal court. Pharma company defendants claimed that they nevertheless triggered federal-court jurisdiction as a ‘mass action’ under the Class Action Fairness Act when they asked for their cases to be consolidated in Connecticut’s complex litigation court. The 2nd Circuit weighed in this week, siding with three other federal appellate courts that have said CAFA allows courts weighing remand to consider plaintiffs’ intentions. The new decision, writes Alison Frankel, deepens a split between those courts and the 6th Circuit, which ruled otherwise last year.
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“This silence is deafening.“
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— U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen in Roanoke, Virginia, in a decision ordering lawyers in a whistleblower lawsuit to explain why they should not be sanctioned for submitting a filing that appeared to include made-up case citations and non-existent quotations from real opinions. He said the plaintiffs’ lawyers have not explained where the apparently fabricated material originated. The judge said the defendant in the case, federal contractor MSA Security, had identified the citations and “posited that they were the result of ‘ChatGPT run amok.'”
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- The DOJ faces a deadline today in the D.C. Circuit to file its response to a lawsuit brought by a group of TikTok creators, TikTok and its parent Bytedance seeking to block a federal law that could ban the app. The law requires China-based ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban. Arguments are scheduled for September.
- Today is also the deadline for talc claimants to vote on J&J’s third attempt to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging the company’s baby powder and other talc products contain cancer-causing asbestos. At the end of June, a federal judge rejected a bid by some cancer victims for a preliminary order in New Jersey to prevent J&J from filing for bankruptcy outside the state, which would have effectively foiled its $6.48 billion settlement plan. The healthcare conglomerate faces lawsuits from more than 61,000 plaintiffs. J&J maintains its talc is safe, asbestos-free and does not cause cancer.
- 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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- Two lawsuits accusing New York Governor Kathy Hochul of violating state law with her decision to halt the implementation of a congestion charge to drive into parts of Manhattan were filed by commuter and environmental advocacy groups. One of the lawsuits, filed by the City Club of New York and two Manhattan residents, alleges that Hochul does not have the authority to “single-handedly” block the law’s implementation.
- A Paramount Global investor has sued to block its merger with Skydance Media, saying the deal would cost its shareholders $1.65 billion. The lawsuit claims the merger’s primary purpose is to cash out media mogul Shari Redstone’s investment in Paramount at a substantial premium, while other shareholders would receive far less. The defendants did not respond to requests for comment.
- U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mindy Mora ruled that the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump news site, should be dismissed from bankruptcy, exposing the site to lawsuits from election workers and others who faced harassment after the site made false claims that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen. Mora ruled that the Gateway Pundit’s bankruptcy was a litigation tactic, rather than a good-faith effort to reorganize a struggling business.
- The Manhattan prosecutors who secured Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction disputed the former U.S. president’s claim that the verdict should be set aside in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. In a court filing, the prosecutors said the Supreme Court’s ruling had no bearing on their case, which stemmed from hush money paid to a porn star.
- A U.S. Senate committee opened an investigation into the bankruptcy of privately owned hospital network Steward Health, voting to compel the company’s CEO to testify at a public hearing in September. Steward, which filed for Chapter 11 protection in May, is attempting to sell its 31 hospitals in bankruptcy.
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