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Good morning. Federal prosecutors and defenders for indicted former plaintiffs attorney Tom Girardi are due in court to wrestle over his mental competency to stand trial. Plus, a conservative activist’s group is suing two major U.S. law firms over their diversity fellowships; McDonald’s and its chief executive must face claims in a race-bias lawsuit; and Google got hit with a subpoena for info about its deal to carry the NFL’s Sunday Ticket. Let’s kick off Wednesday.
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Defense lawyers for embattled former plaintiffs lawyer Tom Girardi are set to face off with U.S. prosecutors today in Los Angeles federal court over whether the disbarred California attorney is mentally competent to stand trial for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from his clients, our colleague David Thomas reports.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton will weigh arguments based on dueling expert findings. A ruling on Girardi’s competency could determine whether the government’s case can move forward. Girardi’s lawyers said in court papers that three neurologists and other professionals said Girardi suffers from dementia.
Prosecutors have expressed doubt, saying Girardi was placed in a conservatorship “mere weeks” after he was accused of stealing millions of dollars in settlement funds from the families of the victims of the 2018 Boeing 737 MAX Lion Air Flight 610 crash in Indonesia. Girardi has pleaded not guilty.
The Girardi saga put the California state bar under new scrutiny, as it faced pressure to bolster attorney oversight in the wake of the scandal and a longstanding backlog in attorney discipline cases. Girardi, founder of now-defunct law firm Girardi Keese, was the subject of 205 attorney ethics complaints beginning in 1982 with more than half accusing him of misusing client funds, according to a state bar investigation.
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- A free-speech attorney-advocate contends that the 3rd Circuit’s recent decision in a gun case does not apply to a challenge to Pennsylvania’s adoption of an anti-harassment and anti-discrimination professional rule for lawyers. Pennsylvania bar officials on Monday said Zachary Greenberg’s lawsuit should be dismissed following the appeals court’s ruling that a challenge to a novel New Jersey law was premature. (Reuters)
- The FTC named former Covington litigation and antitrust partner Henry Liu to serve as the head of the competition bureau, succeeding Holly Vedova. Liu at Covington represented clients including JPMorgan, Procter & Gamble and ChemGen. (Reuters)
- Former federal prosecutor and Chicago lawyer Ed Siskel was named as the Biden White House’s top lawyer, succeeding Stuart Delery in the counsel’s office. Siskel served in the White House Counsel’s office for nearly four years when Biden was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including as deputy counsel. He also formerly was an associate at WilmerHale. (Reuters)
- Office Depot’s lawyers at Hogan Lovells, DLA Piper and Husch Blackwell are seeking more than $2 million in legal fees after defeating a copyright infringement suit from a data analysis company. Infogroup had alleged Office Depot misused proprietary data Infogroup had gathered to map out where it should open new stores. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in West Palm Beach, Florida, dismissed Infogroup’s lawsuit in June. (Reuters)
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REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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That’s the number of confidential documents that Sigma Lithium alleged were illegally accessed and downloaded from a data room operated and managed by the company’s New York financial adviser. Sigma, which produces metal used in electric vehicle batteries, sued former co-chief executive officer Calvyn Gardner and his daughter-in-law Luiza Valim for alleged trade secret theft. The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, filed by Quinn Emanuel, accused Valim of downloading and sharing with Gardner confidential documents. Gardner’s law firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Valim could not immediately be reached. Sigma, which operates mainly in Brazil, has a market value of $3.74 billion.
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Last year, when a Maryland trial judge certified class actions by about 20 million Marriott guests whose private data was exposed in a years-long hack of the hotel’s reservations database, he dealt with myriad complex ascertainability and damages-modeling issues. But none of that painstaking analysis ended up mattering to the 4th Circuit, which decertified several statewide classes in an Aug. 18 decision. Instead, the appeals court homed in on unresolved questions about a class action waiver in class members’ hotel membership contracts. Alison Frankel explains why the appellate court decided that the threshold waiver issue must be decided by the trial court before any class can be certified.
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“Though the prosecution bears a heavy burden of proof, we will not let it cut corners.“
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—3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel that overturned the 20-year prison sentence of a former Delaware doctor convicted of running a pill mill. The judges found that the trial court improperly relied on a sample of just 24 prescriptions, of which a prosecution expert said 18 were illegal, out of thousands written by Patrick Titus in order to determine his sentence. The panel did not instruct the lower court about what the sentence should be.
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- A 9th Circuit panel will consider whether to reinstate a California state law requiring new semi-automatic handguns to have certain safety features. In March, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in Santa Ana, California, blocked the state from enforcing its law after finding it violated the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. Carney’s ruling was part of a line of decisions striking down state gun laws following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year expanding gun rights.
- A regulatory hearing that began this week resumes in Iowa, where residents living along the route of the country’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage pipeline are testifying about land rights and safety concerns. The hearing, which could last weeks, will determine the fate of the $5.5 billion pipeline proposed by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, and for carbon capture and storage, which the Biden administration sees as a key tool in fighting climate change, Leah Douglas reports.
- The SEC is scheduled to vote on proposals that would require greater transparency from the $20 trillion private investment fund industry and also require more broker-dealers to register with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Lawmakers and regulators have sought to increase oversight of the private asset management sector, citing risks to financial stability and insufficient investor protections in an industry that according to SEC figures has more than doubled in size over the last decade.
- In Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein will hold a status conference in the prosecution of entrepreneur Charlie Javice’s criminal case on charges of defrauding JPMorgan into buying her now-shuttered college financial aid startup Frank. Javice, whose legal team includes Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, has pleaded not guilty.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Newspaper publisher Gannett is facing a lawsuit in Virginia federal court claiming its efforts to diversify newsrooms led to discrimination against white workers. The proposed class action from law firms Thomas & Solomon and DimuroGinsberg was filed by five current and former Gannett employees who say they were fired or passed over for promotions to make room for less-qualified women and minorities. (Reuters)
- A 9th Circuit panel partially revived a class action by UnitedHealth beneficiaries accusing the insurer of wrongly denying claims for mental health coverage. The court ruled that some beneficiaries may be entitled to have their claims reprocessed, reversing its own earlier finding. It sent the case back to San Francisco federal court, where the plaintiffs had won a sweeping order requiring UnitedHealth to reprocess more than 50,000 denied claims. (Reuters)
- The employee union for Trader Joe’s fired back against the grocery chain’s lawsuit against it for selling unauthorized merchandise with Trader Joe’s trademarks, calling the complaint retaliation for unionizing. Trader Joe’s United told a Los Angeles federal court that Trader Joe’s lawsuit should be dismissed because the union’s use of the company’s branding was unlikely to cause consumer confusion. (Reuters)
- Marlboro maker Altria Group said its subsidiary e-cigarette firm NJOY filed a complaint against rival Juul Labs with the U.S. International Trade Commission, seeking a ban on the import and sale of Juul products. The move escalates a dispute between the two e-cigarette makers after Juul filed a similar patent infringement case against NJOY at the ITC in June. (Reuters)
- Google was hit with a lawsuit in San Jose federal court seeking information about its deal with the NFL to exclusively hold the broadcast rights for the “Sunday Ticket” package. The plaintiffs suing the NFL in a $6 billion antitrust case want to learn more about Google’s negotiations with the league for the rights to carry Sunday Ticket. Google, represented by Wilson Sonsini, isn’t a party in the underlying litigation. The NFL has denied liability. (Reuters)
- Kraft, Kellogg and other major food processors represented by Jenner & Block can use export data at an upcoming antitrust trial to argue that egg producers schemed to reduce U.S. supply in order to drive up prices here. The egg producers have denied any wrongdoing. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $110 million in damages. (Reuters)
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