 //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591700&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591701&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591702&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591703&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591704&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
|
|
|
| //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=874768&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31493591&stpe=static” border=”0″ style=”max-height:12px;” /> |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Good morning. Already, this is the year of corporate bankruptcies – and the last few days have been especially busy. Plus, Elon Musk is getting roped into some of the litigation fallout from Jeffrey Epstein, and he failed to convince the 2nd Circuit to let him tweet without a Tesla lawyer’s oversight. Thanks for being here – let’s go.
Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here.
|
A wave of companies joins 2023’s bankruptcy flood
|
This is the year of corporate bankruptcies, with the number of Chapter 11 filings hitting the highest level since 2010. And just in the last few days, seven more major companies sought bankruptcy protection.
Vice Media Group, with its Vice and Motherboard websites, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, as did KKR & Co-backed Envision Healthcare.
Kidde-Fenwal, a subsidiary of Carrier Global that specializes in fire control systems, on Sunday filed for bankruptcy as it fights lawsuits alleging that “forever chemicals” in its firefighting foam products have contaminated water sources.
Also on Sunday, drugmaker Athenex and British chemicals producer Venator Materials filed for Chapter 11.
This year has seen several industries hit hard by insolvency, from cryptocurrency to SPACs to retail. Many of the businesses have cited rising interest rates as the reason for their insolvency.
Fifty-four corporate bankruptcy petitions were filed in April, down from 70 in March, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showed. But as of earlier this month, the year-to-date count had more than doubled from a year ago.
|
|
|
|
- DOJ lawyer and former O’Melveny partner Bradley Garcia was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 53-to-40 vote to be the first Latino to serve on the D.C. Circuit. Garcia will be President Joe Biden’s fourth appointee to the D.C.-based federal appeals court. (Reuters)
- Exxon’s lawyers at Paul Weiss settled a human rights case in D.C. federal court that claimed the soldiers hired by the energy company to guard a natural gas facility in Indonesia committed murder and torture. The lawsuit led to the abrupt 2021 resignation of Alex Oh as the SEC’s enforcement director, after a U.S. judge raised concerns about Oh’s conduct while representing Exxon at Paul Weiss. (Reuters)
- Holland & Knight brought on 28 lawyers from Bogotá, Colombia-based firm Cuberos Cortés Gutiérrez in the Florida-founded firm’s latest group hire. (Reuters)
- Baker Botts re-entered the Asia-Pacific market with an office in Singapore, almost 18 months after it shut its Hong Kong office, its last physical outpost in the region. The firm’s Singapore office will be led by energy and infrastructure-focused M&A partner Richard Guit, who was previously at Ashurst. (Reuters)
|
That’s the percentage of how much Cadwalader reduced its office footprint in Manhattan, or roughly 120,000 square feet, when renewing its lease during Q1 2023, according to commercial brokerage Savills. The firm leased 225,000 square feet in its lower Manhattan building. In another reduction, Chicago-based Katten Muchin leased 204,000 square feet, a more than 7% cut in space, Savills said. Four large leases over 100,000 square feet signed in the first quarter helped bump up the quarterly leasing volume to 1.6 million square feet, according to Savills. That marks a 45.5% increase from the last quarter of 2022. Leasing during Q1 returned to more usual levels, Savills said.
|
A Delaware judge delivered a gut-punch to plaintiffs lawyers when he sided with Oracle founder Larry Ellison and co-CEO Safra Catz in a long-running case accusing them of overpaying for NetSuite to score a big payday for Ellison. But that wasn’t the only blow: The judge also took a swipe at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Friedlander & Gorris for theorizing that Oracle board member Renee James, a onetime president at Intel, was not independent because she needed Ellison’s help to advance her career. That theory, wrote Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock of Delaware Chancery Court, seemed to have an “odor of denigrating the abilities of women executives to succeed based on their merits.” Alison Frankel has the background, along with a rebuttal from plaintiffs lawyers.
|
“Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information from politically affiliated persons and entities.“
|
|
|
|
- In Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel will hear from various plaintiff and defense interests about discovery coordination between the Google digital advertising multidistrict litigation pending before him and a similar case against the technology and search company that is ongoing in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court. The DOJ and a group of states are suing Google in Virginia, and the case was fast-tracked before U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. The litigation before Castel includes advertisers, publishers and individual plaintiffs. Castel said in an order he “does not intend to stand idly by while wasteful practices are employed” and will issue a ruling to govern the litigation “so as not to interfere” with the proceeding in Virginia.
- Quinn Emanuel lawyers will defend in a new court filing the firm’s bid for $185 million in legal fees for its work on a healthcare case at the Federal Claims court. A federal appeals court panel in January struck down the award and ordered a do-over. The firm is resisting an effort from class objectors, led by UnitedHealthcare and Kaiser, to secure an accounting of the fees, which the firm paid out prior to the appeals court vacating the award. The objectors, represented by Sheppard Mullin, have argued an accounting was necessary “to make sure that these funds are safe and protected.”
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will make his first appearance before a U.S. Senate panel today as federal lawmakers grapple with how best to regulate artificial intelligence as the technology becomes more powerful and widespread. Altman will testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law on what laws might be needed to safeguard Americans as agencies and companies dial up their use of AI. IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer, Christina Montgomery, is also expected to testify today. Watch the hearing.
- Also on Capitol Hill, a U.S. Senate panel will hear from executives from two failed banks: Gregory Becker, the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, and Scott Shay and Eric Howell, former senior executives for Signature Bank. The hearing will mark the first time the former executives have spoken publicly since the March collapse of SVB and Signature.
|
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
- Elon Musk lost his appeal in the 2nd Circuit to modify or end his 2018 agreement with the SEC that required him to obtain prior approval from a Tesla lawyer for some of his tweets. A panel heard arguments just last week in the case, marking a fast repudiation of the electric vehicle maker’s legal arguments. Quinn Emanuel represented Musk in his appeal. (Reuters)
- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a bid by the Biden administration to block a lawsuit by several congressional Democrats seeking details of a government lease for a Washington hotel concerning when it was owned by his predecessor Donald Trump. The General Services Administration appealed a lower court’s ruling allowing the lawsuit, which was brought by lawmakers after the agency declined to provide details of a 2013 lease of the Old Post Office building to Trump’s company to convert it into a hotel. (Reuters)
- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a dispute involving a lawsuit against Bayer AG’s Monsanto that could rein in cy pres awards. The justices turned away an appeal by Anna St. John, the general counsel and president of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, who opposed Monsanto’s agreement to pay more than $39 million to settle claims that the company deceptively labeled certain Roundup weedkiller products because $14 million to $16 million of the award would go to consumer nonprofit groups and a university that were not injured by the company’s alleged misconduct. (Reuters)
- A former associate of Rudy Giuliani is suing him for sexual assault and other wrongdoing, seeking $10 million in damages. In a civil complaint filed in a New York state court in Manhattan, Noelle Dunphy said Giuliani began abusing her almost immediately after hiring her in January 2019 as a director of business development and making clear that satisfying his sexual demands was an “absolute requirement” of her job. (Reuters)
- The 2nd Circuit said a buffet at a New York City casino may have been distinct enough from the rest of the facility to warrant advance notice before 177 of the restaurant’s employees were abruptly laid off. In a 2-1 ruling, the court revived a nearly decade-old proposed class action claiming Genting New York LLC, which operates the Resort World Casino in Queens, violated federal and state laws when it laid off the buffet’s staff in 2014. (Reuters)
|
|
|
- Kirkland said John Lausch, former U.S. attorney for Chicago, will return to the firm as a partner in the government, regulatory and internal Investigations practice. (Reuters)
- Winston & Strawn added former Kirkland litigator Eric Lansing White as a Chicago-based partner. White helped to investigate the Minneapolis Police Department following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. (Reuters)
- Crowell & Moring has hired a trio of lawyers from Allen & Overy in New York, including partner Paul Keller, a leader of its IP disputes group. (Reuters)
- Mayer Brown hired partner Adam Hickey, former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s national security division, to handle cybersecurity, data privacy and national security matters. He will split his time between the firm’s D.C. and New York offices. (Reuters)
- Paul Hastings added New York-based M&A partner John Kubek from Willkie. (Reuters)
- Perkins Coie added partners Buck Endemann and Elizabeth Crouse from K&L Gates, where they previously led the firm’s renewables and power practice. Endemann will be based in San Francisco, and Crouse joins the firm’s Portland office. (Perkins Coie)
- Venable added Saminaz Akhter as a D.C.-based corporate practice partner from Blank Rome. (Venable)
- K&L Gates brought on Lance Dial as a Boston-based partner focused on asset management and investment funds. He was previously at Morgan Lewis. (K&L Gates)
- Pryor Cashman brought on corporate partner David Fisher in New York from Bryan Cave. Fisher focuses on M&A, securities and corporate finance. (Pryor Cashman)
|
|
|
Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletter or other Reuters news content.
Get Reuters News App
Want to stop receiving this newsletter? Unsubscribe here.
To manage which newsletters you’re subscribed to, click here.
|
|
|
|
