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Good morning. Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling said they will merge, forming one of the world’s largest legal practices. Sam Tobin has the details. Plus, Montana’s TikTok ban faces a few hurdles, and a U.S. judge just halted American Airlines’ alliance with JetBlue in the northeast. California is eyeing its own bar exam, and Skadden is suing a group of California landowners for $510 million in damages over real estate prices. Scroll down for our weekly look-ahead in the courts. Let’s jump in!
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London-based law firm Allen & Overy and New York’s Shearman & Sterling said they will merge to form a nearly 4,000-lawyer firm across 49 offices, our colleague Sam Tobin reports. The tie-up is pending a vote from the partners of the two firms.
The deal would create one of the world’s largest legal practices with revenue of about $3.4 billion. The firms said the merger would create the third-largest law firm in the world by gross revenue. This year has seen a number of big law firm tie-ups already. Incoming leaders of Allen & Overy in April said they wanted to speed up the firm’s growth in the United States.
The proposed merger comes just months after Shearman abandoned talks over a tie-up with transatlantic firm Hogan Lovells. Shearman announced in February that it was laying off attorneys and business professionals in the United States. The firm has seen a number of partner-level departures in recent months.
The new firm — Allen Overy Shearman Sterling — would be called A&O Shearman for short. In a statement, the firms said the combination “will be the only global firm with U.S. law, English law and local law capabilities in equal measure.” Simpson Thacher is advising Allen & Overy, and Davis Polk is counsel to Shearman.
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- William Asa Hutchinson III, the son of former Republican Arkansas governor and 2024 presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, won back his Arkansas law license for now after his arrest on drug and vehicle charges led to its suspension. Hutchinson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, could still face attorney ethics discipline, including suspension or loss of his law license in future proceedings. (Reuters)
- The California bar’s Board of Trustees approved a plan for the state to develop its own bar exam to test federal and California law instead of using an overhauled version of the national bar exam that is set to debut in 2026. (Reuters)
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That’s how much Skadden said client Flannery Associates is seeking in antitrust damages over allegedly inflated real estate prices for rangeland in California between San Francisco and Sacramento. Agricultural land buyer Flannery is suing private landowners in Sacramento federal court, asserting that they unlawfully conspired to fix prices and reduce competition. Much of the land at issue is home to energy projects, including wind turbines.
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The FTC has issued a clear warning to companies that use facial recognition and other biometric identifiers in their interactions with customers: Think hard about whether you need it and how you use it. The FTC’s caution, writes Alison Frankel, came in a new policy statement that reflects what the commission said is “increasingly pervasive” use of technology that culls biometric markers, such as facial features, eye scans, fingerprints and even voice recognition, from consumers. The FTC said companies may be running afoul of fair trade practices depending on how they use the data and what they tell customers — and it looks like the commission is itching to expand its heretofore skimpy docket of biometric privacy enforcement actions.
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“I’ve got to admit, the film is an eye-popper.”
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—2nd Circuit Judge Barrington Parker, describing at a court hearing the viral video of Amy Cooper, the white woman who called police on a Black bird-watcher in New York City’s Central Park. Parker and his colleagues are weighing Cooper’s claim that her former employer, Franklin Templeton, represented by Morgan Lewis, illegally fired and defamed her after video of the incident was widely shared. The appeals court appeared unlikely to reinstate Cooper’s lawsuit.
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- Google’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel will ask a Delaware federal court to dismiss it from a patent dispute between Samsung and computer-memory company Netlist. Google said it should not be held liable for buying memory modules from Samsung that allegedly infringe Netlist’s patents. Netlist won a $303 million jury verdict against Samsung in a related case in East Texas last month. The jury in Marshall, Texas, determined after a six-day trial that Samsung’s “memory modules” for high-performance computing willfully infringed all five patents that Netlist accused the Korean tech giant of violating.
- The graduate student accused of stabbing four University of Idaho college students to death is expected to appear in court for his arraignment and to enter a plea on first-degree murder charges. Bryan Kohberger, 28, is scheduled to appear in a Latah County courtroom in front of District Judge John Judge. A grand jury recently indicted him on four counts of murder and one count of burglary.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers in Huntington, West Virginia, will hear arguments on the state’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by abortion pill maker GenBioPro challenging its abortion ban. The company argues the ban is preempted by the FDA’s approval of its drug, a generic version of mifepristone. GenBioPro said West Virginia’s Unborn Child Protection Act, which in September banned nearly all abortion, “conflicts with the strong national interest in ensuring access to a federally approved medication to end a pregnancy.” GenBioPro’s legal team includes attorneys from Arnold & Porter, Kellogg Hansen and Democracy Forward Foundation.
- On Thursday, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will meet in Philadelphia and hear arguments on a variety of cases, including litigation over the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. More than 10 class actions were filed in California and Florida federal courts on behalf of FTX customers claiming they were bilked. The suits overlap, but they name a variety of different defendants and espouse several different legal theories, according to an analysis by our colleague Alison Frankel. Lawyers from Boies Schiller and The Moskowitz Law Firm filed a petition asking the multidistrict panel to transfer all of the private FTX cases to federal court in Miami.
- On Friday, two members of the right-wing group Oath Keepers — Kenneth Harrelson and Jessica Watkins — will appear in D.C. federal court for sentencing after being convicted at trial for obstructing Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. They were acquitted of sedition. Prosecutors are seeking an 18-year prison term for Watkins and 15 years for Harrelson. “Watkins has derided the charges against her and eschewed any responsibility for her actions,” prosecutors said. The government called Harrelson “an early member of the group who held a leadership role.” Watkins and Harrelson had pleaded not guilty.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- A lawsuit from TikTok users is set to unfold in Montana federal court, offering an early glimpse of a legal challenge as states and the U.S. government weigh actions against the popular Chinese-owned video app. Critics of the app have raised national security concerns over its widespread use. Enforcement of the geography-based ban will pose practical challenges for the state. Lawyers from Davis Wright Tremaine — including Ambika Kumar, co-chair of the firm’s media law practice — represent the plaintiffs. (Reuters)
- U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said he will decide by the end of the month whether to give the go-ahead to JPMorgan’s lawsuit against its former head of private banking, Jes Staley, over his ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. JPMorgan wants Staley, who has expressed regret for befriending Epstein but denied knowing about his alleged crimes, to cover damages it might face in lawsuits brought by Epstein’s accusers and the U.S. Virgin Islands over its ties to the late financier. (Reuters)
- In Illinois federal court, U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston dismissed a lawsuit accusing Mondelez International of deceiving consumers into believing its Trident “Original Flavor” gum contained real mint, saying it was “fanciful” to believe reasonable consumers would expect the gum to contain mint or peppermint because its packaging featured an “unnaturally blue” leaf with condensation bubbles. “The packaging doesn’t even use the word ‘mint.’ Further, mint leaves in a garden are green,” the judge said. (Reuters)
- Federal Magistrate Judge David Hennessy ordered Jack Douglas Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking military secrets, to remain in jail as he awaits trial on charges that he violated the Espionage Act. “Who did he put at risk? You could make a list as long as a phone book,” Hennessy said. (Reuters)
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- National grocery retailer Albertsons named Tom Moriarty as general counsel. He was previously general counsel to CVS. (Albertsons)
- Venable added New York-based IP litigation partner David Barr from Stroock. (Venable)
- Alston & Bird picked up Bryan Cave partners Jim Kousoulas and James Litwinovich for the firm’s real estate practice, based in Los Angeles. (Alston & Bird)
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Last year, the Uniform Law Commission adopted new amendments to the model Uniform Commercial Code to cover cryptocurrency transactions, including secured lending involving digital assets. These amendments, which have been enacted by at least five states so far, could bring stability to digital asset business if adopted more broadly, write Joseph Cioffi, Adam Levy and Christine DeVito.
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