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Good morning. The new year’s trial season is kicking off with a bang this week as several major cases begin, including allegations of corruption at the NRA and a former associate’s retaliation lawsuit against Davis Polk. Plus, more people of color are applying to law school than ever before, legal jobs are booming, and the U.S. Supreme Court adds some notable cases to its docket. Let’s go.
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2024’s trial season begins with major cases
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Several major trials are slated to begin this week, marking the start of the new year’s highly newsworthy trial season.
In state court in Manhattan, today is the first day of a corruption trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James over claims the NRA diverted millions of dollars to fund luxuries for top officials, gave associates no-show contracts and retaliated against whistleblowers. As part of the lawsuit, James was seeking the ouster of the group’s longtime leader, Wayne LaPierre, who resigned on Friday. James said the trial is still going forward.
In a federal courtroom in Manhattan, law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell faces a jury trial in a lawsuit by a former corporate lawyer at the firm who claims he was fired after he complained of racial bias. Kaloma Cardwell, who is Black, is seeking between $16 million and $30 million in compensatory and punitive damages and attorney’s fees. The firm, represented by a team of lawyers from Paul Weiss including former U.S. Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson, has said Cardwell was fired for poor performance.
And on Tuesday in federal court in Georgia, a trial is set to begin involving a group of activists who want to force the state to overhaul its electronic voting system, operated by Dominion Voting Systems. In the long-running lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg will decide whether the voting system is constitutional after the activists said several security vulnerabilities affect their constitutional right to vote.
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- The 5th Circuit upheld a law allowing Mississippi to create a state-run court in its majority-Black capital of Jackson over the objections of the NAACP to the adoption of a “politically insulated justice system” for a “white enclave” in the city. A law that took effect Jan. 1 established a new court whose judge and prosecutors would be appointed at the state level rather than by locally elected officials, a move the NAACP said infringed Black residents’ rights.
- Former Crowell partner Matthew Melville, who allegedly maintained a side practice while at the firm and underreported the money he made from it, was suspended by New York attorney regulators for six months from practicing in the state. Melville, who is based in San Francisco and founded Melville Law, declined to comment on the reprimand.
- Cravath and partner Joseph Buretta retroactively registered their work for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which once included Hunter Biden on its board. The firm said it submitted a filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act after discussions with the DOJ. Cravath said it received about $350,000 in 2016 and 2017.
- The U.S. legal services sector is projected to break its record high employment level after adding 4,500 jobs in December, according to Labor Department data. Legal sector jobs totaled 1,190,500 last month, the data show.
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That’s roughly the percentage of this year’s law school applicants who are people of color — the highest percentage on record, according to the Law School Admission Council. It’s evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ban on affirmative action in college admissions hasn’t discouraged minority aspiring attorneys from applying to law school, as some legal academics had feared, Karen Sloan reports.
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- Today, attorneys for Media Matters at Gibson Dunn will ask a Maryland federal court for a temporary restraining order blocking a probe of the watchdog group by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas announced its investigation after Elon Musk’s X social media company sued Media Matters in November over its reporting that ads for major brands had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.
- On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s lawyers will try to convince a D.C. Circuit panel that the former president cannot face criminal charges for seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the prosecution, said creating such a legal shield would place presidents above the law. D.C. Circuit Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan will hear arguments.
- On Wednesday, the U.S. International Trade Commission faces a deadline to respond to Apple’s bid to extend the hold on an agency order that would ban imports of the tech company’s smartwatches. The ITC found Apple had infringed patents of Masimo, but the Federal Circuit in late December paused ITC’s import ban order and allowed Apple to resume sales of its flagship watches. The patent dispute involves medical monitoring technology.
- On Thursday, closing arguments are expected in the civil fraud trial in New York accusing Donald Trump of lying about his net worth to dupe lenders. The lawsuit by the New York attorney general seeks to fine Trump at least $250 million and sharply curtail his ability to do business in New York, home to several of his iconic properties. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the case a “scam.”
- On Friday, defense lawyers for Alex Mashinsky, founder of crypto lender Celsius, face a deadline in Manhattan federal court to file motions in the criminal fraud case against him. Mashinsky has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges that he misled customers and artificially inflated the value of his company’s proprietary crypto token.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Amazon’s lawyers at Perkins Coie say a federal law that shields internet platforms from claims over third-party content on their websites should block a new consumer lawsuit accusing the company of profiting from unlawful casino-style apps. Amazon has asked a federal judge in Seattle to freeze the consumers’ case while an appeals court weighs whether to allow similar lawsuits against Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Meta’s Facebook.
- The 2nd Circuit rejected claims by restaurant trade groups that a novel New York City law requiring fast food businesses to have just cause to fire workers amounts to a forced unionization scheme. The court said the city’s 2021 law merely sets minimum labor standards designed to promote job stability for fast food workers and is not preempted by U.S. labor law.
- A 2nd Circuit panel expressed sympathy with arguments by Michael Avenatti’s lawyer as to whether the trial judge improperly pushed jurors to find Avenatti guilty. Avenatti is appealing his conviction and four-year prison sentence on charges he defrauded his former client Stormy Daniels.
- Sarepta Therapeutics convinced a Delaware federal court to end a patent lawsuit filed by biotech company Regenxbio and the University of Pennsylvania over Sarepta’s treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews determined that the patent Sarepta was accused of infringing, related to Regenxbio’s competing gene-therapy technology, was invalid.
- OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft were sued by a pair of nonfiction authors who say the companies misused their work to train the artificial-intelligence models behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT and other AI-based services. The lawsuit follows several others filed by fiction and nonfiction writers ranging from comedian Sarah Silverman to “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin against tech companies over the alleged use of their work to train AI programs.
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