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Good morning. Donald Trump says he is due to appear next Tuesday in Miami court on federal charges, marking the first federal indictment of a former president. The Voting Rights Act got a surprise boost from the U.S. Supreme Court, but more challenges to the law loom. Plus, another federal judge is directing lawyers to disclose any use of AI systems, and the University of Arizona’s law school is again breaking new ground — again. Here it is: Friday.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been indicted by a federal grand jury for retaining classified government documents and obstruction of justice, according to a source familiar with the matter, Sarah N. Lynch reports.
Trump said on social media that the DOJ had told his lawyers he was charged. He said the charges were “seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” a reference to the federal investigation that led to a raid at his Florida home in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump said he had been summoned to appear in Miami federal court on Tuesday.
Trump faces seven criminal counts in the federal case. The specific charges Trump is facing in the indictment remain under seal. In a sworn statement to a federal court last year, an FBI agent said there was probable cause to believe several crimes were committed, including obstruction and the illegal retention of sensitive defense records.
A spokesperson for Special Counsel Jack Smith, the DOJ official who was appointed to handle the investigation, declined to comment.
The case will add to the raft of legal troubles facing the former president. Trump is set to go to trial in New York in March on charges that he falsified business records to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts.
Read more: Trump documents case: A timeline of the investigation and charges
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- A New York lawyer asked a U.S. judge not to sanction him for including made-up case citations generated by an artificial intelligence chatbot in a legal brief. Steven Schwartz said at a hearing he “never” thought ChatGPT could make up fake cases and also that he did not intend to mislead the court. Meanwhile, another U.S. judge is directing lawyers in his court to disclose any use of generative artificial intelligence tools, citing security concerns of users inputting confidential information. (Reuters)
- The University of Arizona’s law school is again breaking new ground, developing a new entrance exam and eight-week online admissions course for prospective law students that has won the blessing of the American Bar Association. The school in 2016 pioneered the use of the GRE in law school admissions, which other law schools have followed. (Reuters)
- Holland & Knight said its managing partner Steven Sonberg is stepping down after 16 years. Robert Grammig, co-leader of the firm’s corporate, M&A and securities practice, will assume newly created senior leadership roles of chair and CEO once the transition is complete in early 2024. (Reuters)
- Legal AI company EvenUp raised an additional $50.5 million in Series B funding from new investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, the San Francisco-based company said, valuing the company at $325 million. EvenUp provides a product to personal injury law firms that automates the workflow for demand letters, using generative AI and a proprietary legal data set. (Reuters)
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That’s the Jack Daniel’s whiskey brand that prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court in a trademark and First Amendment dispute with the maker of a poop-themed dog toy resembling the distiller’s widely recognized black-label bottle but labeled instead “Bad Spaniels” and “The Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet.” Dog toys and whiskey? “Two items seldom appearing in the same sentence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s ruling, which rejected the contention that the toy was a constitutionally protected “expressive work.” Chew on the ruling.
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Class action plaintiffs lawyers are now officially on notice: If you are litigating in the 9th Circuit, you’d better not expect to be paid more in fees than your clients took home. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel reversed a $1.7 million fee award for plaintiffs lawyers who represented a class of songwriters asserting copyright infringement claims against music streamer Rhapsody International, now known as Napster. The trial judge based the award on class counsel’s lodestar billings and a promise from Napster to pay out as much as $20 million. But the appeals court said neither of those numbers was as important as the actual payout to class members — a “measly” $53,000. Alison Frankel has the details on the decision, which class action reformer Jay Edelson called “the most consequential decision on class action settlements in over a decade.”
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“They’re kicking the can.”
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—Legal recruiter Dan Binstock at Garrison & Sisson, on law firms that defer employment offers but do not rescind them. The decisions by Cooley and Fenwick to defer starting dates for some incoming associates shows ongoing challenges for corporate dealmaking and the technology sector, but also signals an expectation that the cooled M&A market will warm back up, legal industry observers told reporter David Thomas. On matters of workforce, law firms are in a holding pattern.
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- Lawyers for Donald Trump are due to file a legal brief in the 11th Circuit, as the former U.S. president seeks to revive his claim that the 2016 presidential election was rigged. U.S. District Judge John Middlebrooks threw out Trump’s lawsuit in September. Trump’s attorneys are also fighting the court’s imposition of a fee-award. In January, Middlebrooks directed Trump’s lawyers to pay more than $937,000 in sanctions. Middlebrooks said the sanctions were warranted because Trump had exhibited a pattern of misusing the courts to further his political agenda. “This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it,” the judge said.
- U.S. Rep. George Santos’ criminal defense team faces a deadline to say whether it will appeal a U.S. judge’s order requiring disclosure of bond-related information currently under seal. Media outlets sought to unseal information about bond guarantors in the prosecution of the New York Republican member of the U.S. House. Santos was charged last month with fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. The New York Times in a letter to U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert argued the requested files are “judicial records that are properly open to the public.” Santos, who has resisted calls to resign for lying about his resume, said after appearing in court recently he would “fight my battle.” Santos was released on a $500,000 bond and is due back in court for his next appearance on June 30.
- The DOJ faces a deadline to explain whether writer E. Jean Carroll’s filing of an amended $10 million defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump moots its effort to substitute itself for the former U.S. president as the defendant. Such a substitution would doom Carroll’s case, because the government cannot be sued for defamation. A jury last month ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for sexual assault and a separate defamation, and Carroll filed an amended complaint that cited Trump’s comments to CNN following the jury verdict.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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WHAT TO CATCH UP THIS WEEKEND
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- Apple and Epic Games both want the 9th Circuit to take a new look at a panel’s antitrust ruling that dinged Apple and spurned Epic’s broader claims. Epic appellate attorney Thomas Goldstein contends the panel didn’t do a “rigorous” balancing of asserted benefits and harms of Apple’s AppStore practices. Apple’s legal team, including Mark Perry of Weil, said the panel strayed in holding Apple liable for a California unfair competition law. (Reuters)
- A 2nd Circuit panel refused to reinstate a lawsuit by Amy Cooper, the white woman who became known as “Central Park Karen” after calling police on a Black birdwatcher, against the employer that fired her following the encounter. Cooper did not prove that Franklin Templeton illegally dismissed her on the basis of race or defamed her by branding her a racist, the appeals court said. (Reuters)
- Donald Trump asked for a new trial in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, in which a jury in Manhattan last month found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages. Trump’s lawyers said the jury’s $2 million award for the sexual abuse portion of the verdict was “excessive” because the jury had found that Carroll was not raped, and that the conduct she alleged did not cause any diagnosed mental injury. (Reuters)
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- Cryptocurrency operator Circle Internet Financial hired Heath Tarbert, former Trump-era chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as its chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs. Tarbert, who will join Circle from Citadel Securities, succeeds Flavia Naves. (Reuters)
- Simpson Thacher added Tracey Zaccone and David Teh as New York-based partners who will co-lead the firm’s alternative capital and private credit practice. Zaccone was previously at Paul Weiss, and Teh arrives from Latham. (Reuters)
- Morgan Lewis hired five labor attorneys from Epstein Becker & Green for its labor and management relations practice in Los Angeles. The team is led by partner Adam Abrahms, former co-chair of the labor-management relations practice at Epstein Becker, and includes one counsel and three associates. (Reuters)
- David Sewell is leaving Perkins Coie to join Freshfields’ U.S. global transactions practice, and New York-based Damien Ridealgh joined Freshfields’ finance practice from Weil. (Reuters)
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When the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 issued its decision in Liu v. SEC, placing limits upon the SEC’s ability to obtain disgorgement, most expected to see a drop in engorgement recoveries in the agency’s civil enforcement actions. That hasn’t happened, writes Elisha Kobre of Bradley.
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