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Bankruptcy may become a less attractive way to resolve sprawling lawsuits after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling scuttled OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s Chapter 11 settlement and scaled back a court’s ability to wipe away legal claims against entities that have not filed for bankruptcy themselves, our colleague Dietrich Knauth reports. The Purdue deal would have protected the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, from lawsuits alleging they and their company created an opioid addiction crisis through their misleading marketing of the painkiller OxyContin.
Bankruptcy courts offer several tools for companies and other organizations to settle mass tort litigation. A bankruptcy proceeding automatically stops litigation from moving forward, giving debtors time to allow for a reorganization or global settlement. It can bind holdout claimants who won’t consent to a settlement offer, and even allows debtors to permanently resolve similar claims that might arise in the future.
Until the Purdue decision, bankruptcy also provided “non-debtor releases” that granted civil immunity to companies and others that have not filed for bankruptcy themselves. Outside parties often contributed funding for a bankruptcy settlement in exchange for that legal shield. The Supreme Court’s Purdue decision took that option off the table, ruling that nothing in U.S. bankruptcy law allows courts to release legal claims against non-debtors without the consent of the people who sued them. Members of the Sackler family have denied wrongdoing but expressed regret that OxyContin “unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis.”
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- A prominent former partner at Gibson Dunn earned $60 million over his long career there before leaving for rival Weil Gotshal, according to new court records in a lawsuit that could soon reveal more internal details about one of the country’s most prominent law firms. Mark Perry, who left Gibson Dunn after nearly 28 years there, won a key ruling in his lawsuit when a judge said Gibson must make future retirement payments and hand over $557,000 to Perry.
- Law firm Freedman Normand Friedland – formerly known as Roche Cyrulnik Freedman – and former founding partner Jason Cyrulnik are ending a bitter legal battle involving allegations of stolen crypto tokens and bullying less than two weeks before trial in the case. Randy Mastro of King & Spalding, who represented the Freedman firm, said the parties reached a confidential settlement.
- California lawmakers approved major changes to a unique law that allows workers to enforce labor laws on behalf of the state, staving off a ballot proposal that could have wiped out the law altogether. The pair of bills unanimously passed by the state Assembly and Senate mark the most significant amendments to California’s Private Attorney General Act since it was adopted two decades ago.
- Some students and alumni of Golden Gate University sought a court injunction to keep the embattled San Francisco school open for the coming academic year as part of their wider lawsuit that aims to prevent it from closing this summer as planned. An injunction would prevent the plaintiffs from having to transfer to other schools to finish out their legal studies, they said in a court filing.
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That’s at least how many hours Sullivan & Cromwell litigation partner Brian Glueckstein has billed as one of the lead lawyers in the FTX bankruptcy, the most of any partner at his firm, according to a Reuters analysis of monthly fee statements. The hours have helped Sullivan & Cromwell amass close to $200 million in billings as debtor’s counsel in the sprawling case so far, our colleague David Thomas reports. Glueckstein, at a current hourly rate of $2,375, is one of hundreds of lawyers and staffers from his firm who have billed more than 168,000 hours in the case altogether. Read more in the first installment of a new weekly feature, Legal Fee Tracker.
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“The constitutionality of hundreds of statutes may now be in peril, and dozens of agencies could be stripped of their power to enforce laws enacted by Congress.“
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—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent to the high court’s majority opinion that rejected the SEC’s in-house enforcement of laws protecting investors against securities fraud, dealing a blow to the agency’s powers in a ruling that could reverberate through other federal regulators. The 6-3 decision sided with George Jarkesy, a Texas-based hedge fund manager who contested the legality of the SEC’s actions against him after the agency determined he had committed securities fraud. Sotomayor called the decision “a massive sea change.”
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- The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to issue at least one opinion today in argued cases as the term moves toward its end. Decisions are due in major cases including one that involves Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity from prosecution and another that focuses on the doctrine called “Chevron deference“ that long has bolstered federal regulations against legal challenges. The justices also are weighing anti-camping laws used against the homeless.
- The Internet Archive in a closely watched copyright dispute will try to convince the 2nd Circuit to overturn a decision that its digital book-lending program violated the rights of Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Bertelsmann SE & Co’s Penguin Random House. The Internet Archive said in a blog post that the fight was “far from over,” and founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement that “we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision.”
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- The 9th Circuit revived a software engineer’s proposed class action claiming Meta refused to hire him because it preferred to give jobs to foreign workers who are paid lower wages. The appeals court in a 2-1 ruling said that a Civil War-era law barring discrimination in contracts based on “alienage” extends to bias against U.S. citizens.
- Uber and Lyft will pay $175 million and implement a $32.50 hourly minimum wage for drivers in Massachusetts to settle the state’s lawsuit accusing them of improperly treating drivers as independent contractors rather than more expensive employees, the state’s attorney general said. The announcement came hours after the state’s highest court cleared the way for voters to decide in November whether to approve a ballot initiative that would cement app-based drivers’ status as contractors, along with a dueling proposal to allow drivers to unionize.
- The U.S. Supreme Court blocked an EPA regulation aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighboring states, handing a victory to three Republican-led states and the steel and fossil-fuel industries that had challenged the rule. The 5-4 decision granted requests by Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, as well as U.S. Steel Corp pipeline operator Kinder Morgan and industry groups, to halt enforcement of the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” plan restricting ozone pollution from upwind states, while they contest the rule’s legality in a lower court.
- The DOJ’s lawsuit seeking to break up entertainment industry giant Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit could go to trial in early 2026. At the first hearing in the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian called the timeline “appropriate” given the scope of the case but did not set a firm date. Live Nation said it would push to transfer the case to Washington, D.C., where a judge weighed and approved a consent decree in 2010 letting the merger take effect.
- Ten large banks will pay $46 million to settle a long-running antitrust lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to rig the market for interest rate swaps, now worth $465.9 trillion. Lawyers at Quinn Emanuel and Cohen Milstein for investors filed a preliminary settlement to end the eight-year-old nationwide case in Manhattan federal court. The settlement requires approval by U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken.
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- Venable added real estate finance partner Gillian Deutch in New York. She previously was at Nelson Mullins. (Venable)
- Freshfields hired partner Steven Matays in New York from Skadden, where he was head of its New York tax practice. (Freshfields)
- Proskauer brought on D.C.-based litigation partner Kevin Abikoff, who will lead the firm’s corporate investigations and compliance practice. He arrives from Hughes Hubbard. (Proskauer)
- Bradley added partner Lauren Black to the litigation practice in its Houston office. She previously was at BoyarMiller. (Bradley)
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In today’s politically charged environment, companies need to maintain operations while respecting employees’ rights to express their views, writes Gina Rubel of Furia Rubel Communications. Here are some strategies to adopt.
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