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Good morning. The lawyers — and the judge — involved in the criminal case against Donald Trump have had a role in some of the other cases dogging the former president and his associates. Plus, Patrick Fitzgerald leaves Skadden, and the 3rd Circuit won’t wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the Texas two-step before dismissing a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary’s bankruptcy. It’s a news firehose! Stay with us.
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REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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The legal team defending Donald Trump in his criminal case — and the judge overseeing it — have been part of some of the other legal issues dogging the former president and his associates, report Jacqueline Thomsen and Tom Hals.
Trump’s team is made up of attorneys Susan Necheles, Joe Tacopina and Chad Seigel.
Tacopina, a former Brooklyn prosecutor who founded law firm Tacopina Seigel & DeOreo with co-counsel Seigel, is also defending Trump in a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll over Trump’s denial of Carroll’s claim that he sexually assaulted her.
Necheles, a former Brooklyn prosecutor as well, defended the Trump Organization in a criminal trial last year in which the company was convicted of a scheme to defraud tax authorities.
The same judge who oversaw the tax case, Justice Juan Merchan, has been assigned Trump’s criminal case. Merchan, who sentenced the Trump Organization and longtime executive Allen Weisselberg after they were convicted in the tax scheme, is also handling the criminal case against former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and fraud related to a nonprofit that raised funds for building a wall on the U.S. border.
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A group of 125 law firms in India called for a reform that will allow the entry of foreign firms into India to be put on hold. The firms said in a letter to the Bar Council of India that the proposal was “discriminatory” and that it creates an unlevel playing field between local and overseas companies. (Reuters)
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Patrick Fitzgerald, who was Chicago’s longest-serving U.S. attorney and led high-profile federal probes into public corruption and leaks of classified information, is leaving Skadden after more than a decade there as a top partner. (Reuters)
- Two groups of attorneys vying to guide more than two dozen lawsuits against Norfolk Southern over last month’s Ohio train derailment faced off before a federal judge, presenting competing proposals to steer the litigation — with one group emphasizing national experience and the other its local roots. (Reuters)
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Among critics of the phenomenon known as mass arbitration, Samsung is already a poster child for alleged abuses by plaintiffs lawyers who have signed up more 160,000 clients to bring arbitration claims for violations of Illinois’ biometric data privacy law. A new filing by the company is going to lend those critics even more ammunition, writes Alison Frankel. Samsung has long insisted that Labaton Sucharow, which is litigating to compel the company to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars to arbitrate claims by 50,000 Labaton clients, was so hot to amass clients that it didn’t bother to check their bona fides. Now it turns out that at least 241 purported Labaton clients also signed up with Robbins Geller, which has its own roster of 60,000 clients threatening to file arbitration against Samsung. Labaton told Frankel that Samsung is engaging in gamesmanship to try to besmirch two well-regarded plaintiffs firms.
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“Copyright governing bodies are going to be under enormous pressure to permit copyrights to be awarded to computer-generated works.“
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—Ryan Merkley, former chief of Creative Commons, a U.S. organization that issues licenses to allow creators to share their work. If users and owners of the new AI systems could get copyrights, he said, they would stand to reap huge benefits. At a time when new AI programs like ChatGPT, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion seem poised to transform human expression as they smash records for user growth, the legal system still hasn’t figured out who owns the output — the users, the owners of the programs, or maybe no one at all. Billions of dollars could hinge on the answer, legal experts told our colleagues Tom Hals and Blake Brittain.
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A three-day hearing before an administrative law judge begins in the FTC’s complaint against Intuit over claims it misleads consumers into believing they can file their taxes for free through TurboTax. The agency said Intuit put out ads about TurboTax that repeated the word “free,” when in reality the vast majority of tax filers would not be eligible to use the free version of the software to submit their filings. In January, the FTC commissioners denied the FTC staff’s bid for summary judgment against Intuit, saying the case would be better decided at trial before the administrative law judge.
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The criminal trial of Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of The Fugees continues, as prosecutors seek to show Michel accepted millions in exchange for illegally lobbying on behalf of Malaysian financier Jho Low and the Chinese government. Michel is charged with 11 counts over his alleged role in three separate lobbying schemes linked to Low, who is suspected of embezzling $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, and a Chinese government influence campaign aimed at repatriating dissident Guo Wengui. Michel’s lawyers are expected to argue that Michel did not know he was acting as a foreign agent and believed he was furthering American interests.
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As part of a push to widen the pool of potential federal magistrate and bankruptcy judges, the federal judiciary is holding a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., entitled “Who Me? A Bankruptcy or Magistrate Judge?” The panel will be moderated by the 5th Circuit’s Judge Carl Stewart and will feature 6th Circuit Judge Stephanie Dawkins Davis, Manhattan Chief District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kesha Lynn Tanabe and Magistrate Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai. The discussion will focus on each judge’s path to the bench.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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On Tuesday, a liberal candidate and a conservative one will face off for a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court with major consequences for abortion rights, control of the state government and possibly the 2024 presidential election. Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge who has spoken in favor of abortion rights, secured the top spot in a four-way nominating contest in February, according to results compiled by the Associated Press. Former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a staunch conservative who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump when he ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2020, took second place. The winner between Protasiewicz and Kelly will likely serve as the swing justice when the court eventually decides whether to uphold the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban.
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Also on Tuesday, 3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies will ask the 7th Circuit to overturn a bankruptcy court decision that declined to protect its parent company from lawsuits involving allegedly defective military earplugs. The bankruptcy court ruled in August that more than 230,000 lawsuits could continue to move forward against 3M, which is not bankrupt. Aearo argues that the lawsuits must be stopped to allow Aearo the opportunity to restructure its debts. Aearo and 3M have argued that bankruptcy offered a faster and fairer way to compensate veterans who say that earplugs made by Aearo caused hearing loss.
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On Wednesday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission will vote on whether to adopt proposed amendments to the sentencing guidelines. The amendments include a proposal to curtail the power of judges to impose longer sentences on defendants based on conduct for which they were acquitted at trial. Another proposal would stiffen prison sentences for so-called straw purchasers of guns.
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On Friday, the founder of Infinity Q Capital Management is scheduled to be sentenced on charges of inflating the New York firm’s assets by over $1 billion to collect more fees. James Velissaris pleaded guilty in November to securities fraud. Prosecutors said Velissaris mismarked many holdings, sometimes inflating their values to “impossible” levels and concealed the mismarking from auditors. Velissaris has sought to withdraw his plea, and U.S. District Judge Denise Cote will hold oral arguments and issue a ruling on his motion before the scheduled sentencing.
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- Johnson & Johnson unit LTL Management lost out on a stay of the 3rd Circuit’s ruling dismissing its bankruptcy while it appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. LTL entered bankruptcy as a strategy to deal with thousands of lawsuits claiming its talc products cause cancer, but the 3rd Circuit said that neither LTL nor J&J had a legitimate need for bankruptcy protection because they were not in “financial distress.” J&J maintains its consumer talc products are safe and asbestos-free. (Reuters)
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Bed Bath & Beyond was sued by its former CEO, Mark Tritton, over claims the troubled retailer failed to honor his $6.8 million severance agreement. Tritton said Bed Bath & Beyond stopped making required bi-monthly payments in January, with its chief legal officer citing the need to preserve cash as the sole reason. (Reuters)
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Apple convinced the Federal Circuit to throw out a $502 million verdict for patent licensing company VirnetX in a long-running fight over internet privacy technology. The court said the verdict could not stand after the VPN patents VirnetX accused Apple of infringing were canceled. (Reuters)
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Amazon lost its bid to dismiss a California state antitrust lawsuit accusing the online retailer of illegally forcing merchants to accept policies that result in artificially high prices for consumers. California sufficiently alleged that Amazon’s policies “have had the anticompetitive effect of raising prices on competing retail marketplaces as well as on third-party sellers’ own websites,” Judge Ethan Schulman in San Francisco Superior Court wrote. Amazon, represented by Covington and Williams & Connolly, has denied the claims. (Reuters)
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The DOJ is suing Norfolk Southern in Ohio federal court, seeking to ensure that the railroad pays the full cost of cleanup and any long-term effects of the derailment in Ohio of one of its freight trains in early February.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the EPA, seeks penalties and injunctive relief for the unlawful discharge of pollutants under the Clean Water Act and an order addressing liability for past and future costs. (Reuters)
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Jenner & Block hired Laurel Loomis Rimon, a former U.S. prosecutor from rival Paul Hastings, to help lead its financial technology and cryptocurrency practice. Rimon will be a partner in D.C. and co-chair of the fintech and crypto assets practice. (Reuters)
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Sidley Austin added London-based M&A partners James MacArthur and Ed Freeman, who focus on private equity and infrastructure funds. They were previously at Weil. (Reuters)
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Linklaters will bring on Rahul Chatterji as a Singapore-based leveraged finance partner in May from Shearman & Sterling. (Reuters)
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