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Jury selection is expected to begin today in the corruption trial of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a case that could impact the Democrat’s reelection prospects and help determine which party controls the Senate next year, reports Jonathan Stempel.
Menendez, 70, and two New Jersey businessmen face charges in a bribery conspiracy case in Manhattan federal court, in a trial that could last eight weeks. The senator’s wife Nadine Menendez has also been charged but will be tried separately. All four have pleaded not guilty, but a fifth defendant, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty to bribery and fraud charges in March and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Prosecutors said the Menendezes accepted cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for wielding his political influence in New Jersey and with Egypt and Qatar’s governments. The senator allegedly promised to help Egypt obtain arms sales and other military aid, and helped defendant Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman, obtain a lucrative monopoly on the certification of halal meat exports to Egypt.
This is not Menendez’s first corruption trial. In 2017, a New Jersey federal judge declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked on whether Menendez broke the law by providing help to a wealthy ophthalmologist, Salomon Melgen, in exchange for lavish gifts and political contributions.
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- Oklahoma’s attorney general said he is firing the outside legal team hired to defend a state law prohibiting state pension systems from contracting with companies that limit investment in the oil and gas industry, days after a judge temporarily blocked the statute’s enforcement. Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he was firing counsel at the Plaxico Law Firm, which he said was handpicked by state Treasurer Todd Russ to defend the law.
- Michael Cohen is expected to take the witness stand today in Donald Trump’s trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, setting the stage for the most crucial testimony so far in the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former U.S. president. Cohen was for years Trump’s loyal lawyer and “fixer” when the Republican businessman-turned-politician ran his New York-based family real estate company.
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That’s how much Locke Lord will pay out in a settlement resolving claims against it turned a blind eye to a $122 million fraud scheme operated by one of its former energy industry clients. A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, signed off on a settlement between the Dallas-founded law firm and a receiver overseeing the activities of Heartland Group Ventures, an oil and gas company that was accused of fraud by the SEC in December 2021. Locke Lord denied all allegations of wrongdoing and also said it disagreed with the SEC.
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“They fail because they stand as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress in enacting the Copyright Act.“
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—U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, who dismissed a lawsuit in which Elon Musk’s X Corp accused an Israeli data-scraping company of illegally copying and selling X content and selling tools that let others do the same, saying in part X’s claims interfere with the rights the federal Copyright Act gives to content creators. Alsup gave X the chance to amend its complaint but warned that it should bring its best arguments or the case would be dismissed for good. Lawyers for X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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- Today, Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang will go to trial in Manhattan federal court on charges stemming from the 2021 collapse of his $36 billion fund Archegos Capital Management. The case has been closely watched as a test of prosecutors’ ambitious market manipulation theory, and because it is expected to shed light on the inner workings of Wall Street’s dealings with profitable but risky clients. Hwang has pleaded not guilty.
- Also today, Massachusetts’ attorney general is slated to take Uber and Lyft to trial in a lawsuit challenging their classification of drivers as independent contractors instead of employees entitled to sick time and other costly benefits. Should the industry fail in court and at the ballot box, Uber and Lyft face the prospect of a sweeping overhaul of their business model. Uber’s lawyers said in court papers such a change could force it to cut or end service in Massachusetts.
- On Tuesday, baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, is due to appear in federal court in California, where he was charged with stealing more than $16 million from the Los Angeles Dodges power-hitting pitcher to cover gambling debts. Ohtani has said he was a victim of theft by Mizuhara and that he never bet on baseball or knowingly paid a bookmaker. Mizuhara is planning to plead guilty, prosecutors said last week.
- On Wednesday, the Delaware Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging a lower court’s approval of a $267 million legal fee in a shareholder lawsuit that Dell Technologies settled over its 2018 stock conversion deal involving its stake in VMware. The court is being asked to reconsider how legal fees should be paid in large settlements of shareholder lawsuits and it could impact the $6 billion legal fee sought in the Elon Musk Tesla pay case.
- On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan will hold a case management hearing in the lawsuit that Jane Street Group lodged against Millennium Management, one of the world’s largest hedge fund firms. Jane Street accused it of stealing a valuable in-house trading strategy after two traders defected to join Millennium in February. Millennium and the two traders have denied Jane Street’s allegations.
- On Friday, lawyers involved in the “cement additives” multidistrict litigation will appear before U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan for an initial scheduling conference. French building materials giant Saint-Gobain and other major European makers of construction chemicals are fighting claims they conspired to fix the prices of key ingredients that are added to cement, concrete and mortar.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Texas’ highest court limited the ability of women to recover damages from medical providers for unwanted pregnancies, saying state law does not treat the birth of a healthy child as an injury for which a parent must be compensated. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that a mother in El Paso who sued her doctor for negligently failing to perform a sterilization procedure was not entitled to recover any damages from him.
- U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough in Kansas City has approved $208 million in consumer antitrust settlements with Re/Max and two other leading real estate brokerages, casting aside objections that the deals could bar others from pursuing their own claims that the defendants inflated home sales commissions. The judge said the “miniscule” number of objections were not enough to derail the settlements with Anywhere Real Estate, Keller Williams and Re/Max.
- The Port of Oakland is defending the name of its airport’s use of “San Francisco Bay,” as the city denied neighboring San Francisco’s allegations that the new name would confuse flyers. Oakland’s port told the court that airports in Chicago, Dallas, London, Paris and Beijing peacefully share their cities’ names and said that its branding and continued use of the OAK airport code would prevent confusion.
- Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon lost his challenge in the D.C. Circuit to his conviction for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A three-judge panel ruled unanimously against him. Bannon’s four-month prison sentence has been on hold pending the outcome of his appeal.
- A Pennsylvania jury ordered ExxonMobil to pay $725.5 million to a former mechanic who claimed toxic chemicals in the company’s gasoline and solvents caused his cancer, according to his lawyers. The jury found Exxon liable for negligently failing to warn about the health risks of benzene and awarded the money entirely in compensatory damages. Exxon said it will exhaust all available appeals.
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- Dinsmore & Shohl picked up employment litigator Michele Choe as a partner in Denver. Choe was previously at Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell. (Dinsmore)
- Buchalter hired corporate partner Juan Pablo Albán in Los Angeles. He was previously at Stuart Alban Law. (Buchalter)
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