 //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591700&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591701&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591702&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591703&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591704&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
|
|
|
| //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=874768&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31019087&stpe=static” border=”0″ style=”max-height:12px;” /> |
 |
|
|
|
Good morning. Donald Trump is the first US president to face criminal charges — but the sealed indictment means we don’t know what the charges are yet. Plus, Google gets sanctioned for the second time in days, and a federal court clerk from New York is accused of pushing clients to a criminal defense attorney in exchange for a cut of fees. We’ve got a lot of news – let’s go.
Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here.
|
|
|
-
The U.S. Senate on a voice vote unanimously approved elevating U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Brookman to a U.S. district court judgeship in the Southern District of Indiana, a state with two Republican senators. The unanimous vote approving a Biden administration judicial nominee was rare. (Reuters)
-
A federal court employee referred criminal defendants in New York to a private defense lawyer for more than a decade in exchange for a cut of legal fees, prosecutors said. A Southern District of New York court clerk encouraged criminal defendants, most of whom had free, court-appointed lawyers, to switch counsel and instead hire a private lawyer. Attorneys for the clerk and attorney, who was also charged, declined to comment. (Reuters)
- Wigdor says the firm was fired from representing Guzel Ganieva, a former Russian model who accused Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black of raping her. Ganieva, who accused Black in a lawsuit of defaming her by falsely claiming she tried to extort him after accusing him of rape, plans to represent herself going forward. Black has denied Ganieva’s claims. (Reuters)
- New York law firm Rivkin Radler said it has expanded out of the northeast for the first time and has opened an office in Jacksonville, Florida, with 20 new attorneys. The new lawyers are largely from Atlanta firm Smith Gambrell Russell. (Reuters)
|
That’s how many polar bears live near Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and could be impacted by oil development and exploration in the area, according to environmental groups that sued to challenge a Biden administration decision allowing the fossil fuel industry to injure a limited number of polar bears and walruses. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the suit, upholding a 2021 U.S. Fish and Wildlife decision that authorized nonlethal and unintentional harms to polar bears and Pacific walruses during fossil fuel development for five years.
|
Losing comes with the territory for securities class action lawyers. It’s not easy, it turns out, to offer plausible arguments that companies lied to their investors. But you don’t often see judges go after plaintiffs lawyers for making the effort — which is why a new decision tossing a shareholder class action against biopharma company Biogen caught Alison Frankel’s eye. Judge William Young said that none of the allegedly false statements by Biogen executives about the company’s rollout of a controversial Alzheimer’s drug was false. He also said shareholder lawyers at Block & Leviton had repeatedly mischaracterized what Biogen executives actually said. “A securities fraud complaint cannot rest on a house of cards made of mischaracterized statements,” the judge wrote. That’s more than a dismissal, Frankel said. It’s an accusation.
|
“Phhhoto has failed in its 69-page amended complaint of 222 paragraphs to allege sufficient facts that cure the untimeliness of all of its federal claims.“
|
-
U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson in Youngstown, Ohio, will weigh proposals from rival groups of plaintiffs lawyers competing for lead roles in nearly two dozen lawsuits against railway company Norfolk Southern over last month’s train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The two groups have presented bids to Pearson, who is presiding over the cases. One plan proposed a coalition of non-Ohio class-action firms to take the lead, while the other would split leadership between national and Ohio-based attorneys. Norfolk Southern has said it is working toward creating three long-term funds to benefit East Palestine.
-
Grammy Award-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of The Fugees hip hop group will return to trial today in D.C. federal court, where he is accused of taking tens of millions of dollars to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of a Malaysian financier and the Chinese government. Michel, who has pleaded not guilty, is being tried on 11 criminal counts for what prosecutors said were three separate lobbying schemes to influence the administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Michel’s lawyers are expected to argue that Michel did not know he was acting as a foreign agent and believed he was furthering American interests.
-
Elon Musk is expected to file papers in Manhattan federal court seeking the dismissal of a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Tesla, SpaceX and Musk’s tunnel construction business Boring are also defendants. Tesla in 2021 said it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and for a short time accepted it as payment for vehicles. Lawyers from Quinn Emanuel are defending Musk.
-
Lawyers for Google will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson in the DOJ’s online advertising technology antitrust lawsuit in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court. Anderson at a hearing last week in the case set an accelerated schedule — faster than a proposal from Google and the DOJ — that could mean a trial early in 2024. Google’s legal team includes Eric Mahr of Freshfields, who is a former DOJ antitrust lawyer. The government’s team includes Julia Wood, who jumped to the antitrust division from Paul Weiss this year. Google has denied the government’s claims of abusing its dominance in digital advertising.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
What to catch up on this weekend
|
- Walmart was sued by the EEOC for the second time this week over claims it discriminated against workers with disabilities. In the latest lawsuit, the EEOC said Walmart illegally demoted Calvin Hagan for missing too much work at a Raleigh, North Carolina, store because of seizures caused by his generalized convulsive epilepsy and then illegally fired him for violating its attendance policy. (Reuters)
- A Federal Circuit panel ruled for Apple in a decision upholding a patent tribunal’s decision that could imperil a $502 million verdict for patent licensing company VirnetX in the two companies’ long-running fight over privacy-software technology. The appeals court affirmed a decision from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that invalidated the two patents VirnetX had accused Apple of infringing. (Reuters)
-
The Biden administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a patent appeal over drug labels involving Teva Pharmaceuticals USA and GlaxoSmithKline that could have significant ramifications for the generic drug industry. The administration is backing Teva’s use of a “skinny label” on its generic version of GSK’s heart drug Coreg, which avoids mentioning a patented method of using the drug in order to avoid liability for infringing GSK’s patent. (Reuters)
-
Google in the span of just days was hit with court sanctions in two separate cases. In the latest order, a U.S. magistrate judge said Google must pay expert fees and a fine for its delay in complying with a prior sanction order in the case. Google had opposed the plaintiffs’ bid for sanctions in both cases, contending that it had complied with orders. (Reuters)
|
-
Fenwick added corporate and regulatory partner Heidi Lawson, who is based out of New York. She was previously the global chair of the insurance practice group at Cooley. (Reuters)
-
Latham added Simon Pritchard as a London-based antitrust and competition partner. He arrives at the firm from Linklaters. (Reuters)
-
Barnes & Thornburg brought on Wali Rushdan in Delaware as a real estate partner. He joins the firm from Fox Rothschild. (Barnes & Thornburg)
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
