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Good morning. While everyone was focused on the Trump indictment, the FTC’s fight to stop Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard has ramped way up – and now a $3 billion deadline is looming. Plus, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could face two more defamation trials this year, and Twitter is hit with a $250 million copyright infringement suit. It’s still not Friday.
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The FTC’s fight to block Microsoft’s planned $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has reached a boiling point, reports David Shepardson.
The FTC, as you’ll recall, has challenged the deal, which would be the largest in the history of the video game industry, through its in-house administrative process, saying it would give Microsoft’s XBox exclusive access to Activision Blizzard’s popular games. Microsoft has defended the deal, arguing it would benefit gamers and gaming companies.
On Monday, the agency ramped things up by asking a federal judge for a preliminary injunction against the deal, saying the companies had indicated it could close as early as Friday.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said the preliminary injunction hearing would start on June 22 and blocked the companies from completing the deal in the meantime. That hearing will focus on whether to put the deal on hold temporarily while the FTC considers the case. But the companies said they would have to give up the deal altogether if a temporary hold is granted because the slow pace of the FTC review would make waiting impractical.
That’s because Microsoft’s agreement to acquire Activision has a termination date of July 18 – and contains a $3 billion termination fee.
Read more on the history of the deal.
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- Reed Smith is laying off attorneys and staff “totaling less than 2% of its workforce.” A spokesperson for the firm told Reuters last week that its incoming class of first-year associates would start on time in October. (Reuters)
- The U.S. Senate confirmed Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, on a nearly party-line 50-49 vote as a judge on the Manhattan federal district court. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the lone Democrat who voted against the nomination. Ho also faced intense resistance from Republican senators over his past social media posts that were critical of GOP senators and conservative policies. (Reuters)
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As federal judges this week begin hiring their next round of clerks, Jenna Greene in her latest column looks at the Legal Accountability Project. The new nonprofit is building a database of reviews by former clerks to candidly – and if they prefer, anonymously – judge their judges. “There’s a dearth of information about judges as managers and the clerkship experience,” said founder Aliza Shatzman, who launched the project after a disastrous experience clerking for a former Washington, D.C., Superior Court judge.
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“Any questions about this matter will have to be answered by their filings in court.“
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—–U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, in his first comments about the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump. Garland expressed confidence in Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team but said he wouldn’t be commenting on the particulars of the case.
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- Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried will ask U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to throw out criminal charges in an indictment accusing him of stealing from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Prosecutors have opposed Bankman-Fried’s bid to dismiss charges. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy, making illegal campaign contributions and foreign bribery.
- Crypto developer Do Kwon and his company Terraform Labs are in court before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan to argue that the SEC’s case accusing them of defrauding investors should be dismissed. According to the SEC’s complaint, Terraform Labs and Kwon misled investors about the stability of crypto token TerraUSD and claimed that the firm’s crypto tokens would increase in value. Terra’s collapse in May of last year roiled cryptocurrency markets. Kwon and Terraform have argued that the digital assets involved in their case are not securities, so they could not have violated securities law.
- Former President Donald Trump faces a deadline to file written arguments supporting his push to move the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal case against him from state court to federal court. Trump is charged with falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment allegedly made to porn star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has pushed back against the move, arguing that Trump is not entitled to the change in venue because he is not a federal officer.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- The 2nd Circuit said the exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui should remain in jail while he awaits trial over an alleged fraud that federal prosecutors have said exceeds $1 billion. Guo, a critic of China’s Communist Party and business associate of Steve Bannon, has been jailed in Brooklyn since his March arrest on charges he defrauded thousands of followers who invested in a media company, cryptocurrency and other ventures. (Reuters)
- A unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit ruled that Indian IT services company Tech Mahindra’s U.S. subsidiary will have to face a lawsuit by a white former employee, alleging that the company discriminates against non-South Asian workers. The judge who dismissed Lee Williams’ 2020 proposed class action applied the wrong standard when he ruled that Williams failed to claim that he would not have been fired but for his race, the appellate panel found, adding that Williams only has to establish a “pattern or practice” of race discrimination in a proposed class action. (Reuters)
- New York’s Suffolk County agreed to shut down dozens of underground cesspools and auto waste wells across eastern Long Island, an exercise that the DOJ said could cost up to $7 million. The settlement resolves a lawsuit brought by the federal government alleging the waste sites risk contaminating drinking water. The county also agreed to pay a $200,000 civil penalty. (Reuters)
- Zhang Li, the billionaire co-chairman and CEO of Chinese developer Guangzhou R&F Properties, agreed to be extradited from London to the U.S., where he faces charges for allegedly participating in a scheme to bribe public officials between 2015 and 2020. Lawyers for U.S. prosecutors at a hearing in December said that Zhang was involved in the payment of bribes to officials in San Francisco for the benefit of R&F’s U.S. affiliate, Z&L Properties. (Reuters)
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- Barnes & Thornburg added restructuring partner Aaron Gavant to its Chicago office from Mayer Brown. (Barnes & Thornburg)
- Vedder Price brought on white collar criminal defense litigator Adam Schwartz as a partner in its Miami office. (Vedder Price)
- Bradley Arant Boult Cummings added to its corporate practice in Houston, where Philip Dunlap and Cyrus Chin joined as partners, along with an associate. (Bradley)
- Brian Sylvester from Covington & Burling joined Perkins Coie’s food and beverage regulatory and litigation practices as a partner in its Washington, D.C., office. (Perkins Coie)
- Jason Myers joined Womble Bond Dickinson as a partner in its capital markets practice in Houston. (Womble)
- Baker Donelson hired corporate attorney Matthew Huddle, who was most recently at Nelson Mullins, as a partner in the firm’s Baltimore office. (Baker Donelson)
- Lewis Roca added partner Daniel Crane to its litigation practice group in Phoenix. Before joining Lewis Roca, Crane was a partner at Kercsmar Feltus & Collins. (Lewis Roca)
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With fears of an impending recession and rising interest rates, mortgage borrowers and servicers are both likely to feel the strain. Andrea Nixon, Michele Maman and Thomas Curtin of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft write that, under these adverse conditions, the efficacy of intercreditor agreements will be tested.
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