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Good morning. A new lawsuit against AstraZeneca claims the company unlawfully cut an employee’s bonus for not following return-to-office rules. Plus, several plaintiffs’ firms are seeking $229 million in fees for their work in a shareholder lawsuit against Tesla; Kirkland will defend a Covington client’s bid to remain unknown to the SEC; and 96-year-old Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman vows to appeal an order suspending her, in a deepening clash over her fitness to serve. Coming up: the 4th Circuit is going en banc today to hear a pair of transgender rights cases. Good Thursday to all, and thanks for reading.
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Through a new lawsuit, we’re learning what could happen if you disregard your employer’s requirement that you come into the office: a slashed bonus.
Daniel Wiessner reports on a lawsuit filed by a former senior director at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals who claims the company refused to pay her $130,000 in promised bonuses and stock options because she did not come into the office three days a week. Instead, AstraZeneca earlier this year cut her payout in half and refused to grant any stock options, her lawsuit alleges.
AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit in South Carolina claims AstraZeneca gave no prior notice that it would condition bonuses on whether employees reported to the office.
It’s a new fight stemming from the explosion of remote work that began during the COVID-19 pandemic, though most of the lawsuits so far involve claims that companies refused to cover expenses related to working from home or that workers with disabilities were unable to return to the office. Law firms are increasingly calling workers back in, with several implementing return-to-office policies this month.
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- Lawyers from Bleichmar Fonti & Auld; Fields Kupka & Shukurov; McCarter & English; and Clark Hill want a judge to approve $229 million in fees, or $10,690 an hour, for their work on a case that forced Tesla directors to return hundreds of millions in compensation. The proposed fee award, if approved in the Delaware Court of Chancery, would be among the largest ever to result from a shareholder lawsuit filed against a board. (Reuters)
- The New York State Bar Association is offering a legal industry blueprint for maintaining and increasing the ranks of law students, judges and attorneys from groups that have traditionally been underrepresented within the legal profession while staying within the bounds of the law. The bar association’s recommendations come after two major law firms were sued over their diversity fellowship programs, part of the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling barring race-conscious college admissions. (Reuters)
- Kirkland will represent an unnamed Covington client that is fighting the SEC to keep its identity from being revealed to regulators. The SEC sued Covington last year for client records after the firm acknowledged being caught up in a data breach. Covington agreed to turn over to the SEC the names of six of the seven clients a federal judge required the firm to identify. Kirkland plans to ask the D.C. Circuit to block the court’s order compelling disclosure of the seventh client. (Reuters)
- Gibson Dunn’s Eugene Scalia, whose father was the late Justice Antonin Scalia, is set to make his argument debut before the justices on Oct. 10 in a whistleblower case. Eugene Scalia, who was a Trump-era U.S. Labor Department head, represents UBS. The high court will weigh how difficult it should be for financial whistleblowers to win retaliation lawsuits against their employers. (National Law Journal)
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That’s the maximum percentage of fees that attorneys can collect in Camp Lejeune litigation, according to the DOJ and the U.S. Navy. The government says the fees are capped by the Federal Tort Claims Act, which sets limits in cases against the U.S. government over claims of negligence or wrongdoing by a federal employee. Edward Bell, lead counsel in the litigation, said the government “should not insert itself unnecessarily into private business.”
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Even the apex doctrine — the controversial judge-made principle that says high-ranking corporate officials deserve special protection from abusive or harassing discovery demands — has its limits. Just ask Uber’s CEO, CFO and board members. Alison Frankel has the details on why a federal magistrate ruled that their job titles don’t shield them from being deposed in an investor class action stemming from Uber’s IPO — and why one plaintiffs firm seems to be on a mission to end the apex doctrine for once and for all.
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“We are acutely aware that this is not a fitting capstone to Judge Newman’s exemplary and storied career.“
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—A council of judges on the Federal Circuit, in an order suspending Judge Pauline Newman from hearing new cases amid a deepening clash over the
96-year-old jurist’s mental competence to serve on the bench.
The council unanimously said Newman had failed to cooperate with an investigation into her fitness and barred her from hearing new cases for at least one year or until she sits for court-ordered medical examinations. Newman has defended her fitness, citing the opinions of two doctors, and she filed a lawsuit to move or halt the investigation. A lawyer for Newman said she would challenge
the suspension order.
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- The 4th Circuit will hear arguments as a full court in a pair of cases testing the scope of transgender rights. The Richmond, Virginia-based court in April set the cases from West Virginia and North Carolina for “en banc” argument after three-judge panels had taken up the disputes but had not yet ruled. The appeals court will look at whether North Carolina’s state health insurance plan can bar coverage for treatments commonly sought by transgender people, including gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. The court will hear a similar case from West Virginia involving the state’s Medicaid program.
- Chief Judge Catherine Eagles in Greensboro, N.C., federal court will hear arguments over whether to block portions of the state’s recently enacted 12-week ban on abortions. One provision is a requirement that abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy take place at a hospital. That provision takes effect on Oct. 1. Abortions in North Carolina rose by 37%, more than any other state, in the first two months after the Supreme Court revoked federal abortion rights in June 2022, according to a study by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization that promotes abortion rights and research.
- Lawyers at Arent Fox for former University of Kansas professor Feng “Franklin” Tao will ask the 10th Circuit to overturn his conviction for making a false statement in a case that stemmed from a since-abandoned Trump-era DOJ crackdown on Chinese influence within American academia. A jury convicted Tao of concealing work he did in China while conducting U.S. government-funded research. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in Kansas City, Kansas, last year dismissed most of his convictions after finding that prosecutors hadn’t presented enough evidence to support the jury’s findings.
- Cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its chief executive Changpeng Zhao face a deadline to submit a court filing asking U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in D.C. to dismiss the SEC’s case accusing them of operating an unlicensed securities exchange and misleading investors. Gibson Dunn is representing Binance, and lawyers from WilmerHale and Milbank represent BAM Trading Services, the operator behind Binance.US. Binance has said it will “defend our platform vigorously.”
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Netflix must face a defamation lawsuit by best-selling author and former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein over her portrayal in a 2019 crime drama about the Central Park Five case. U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel said in a ruling that Fairstein plausibly alleged that Netflix, director Ava DuVernay and writer-producer Attica Locke acted with actual malice as to five scenes in “When They See Us.” (Reuters)
- The 4th Circuit seemed poised to decide whether a gay Catholic school teacher had religious duties that bar him from suing a North Carolina school over his firing, even though the school had been pushing to have the case tossed on alternate legal theories. Circuit Judges Paul Niemeyer and Pamela Harris said they were concerned that instead of relying on the so-called “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws, the school was pushing broader arguments that could apply to employees who do not perform religious functions. (Reuters)
- The Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups sued the U.S. Forest Service over its approval for logging on federal land bordering Yellowstone National Park, which they said will damage grizzly bear and lynx habitats, and exacerbate climate change. The lawsuit in Montana federal court challenged the service’s authorization of commercial logging on more than 12 square miles of forest land northwest of Yellowstone and bulldozing more than 56 miles of new roads in the area. (Reuters)
- Kraft and other food producers can’t show jurors “shocking” and “explosive” videos from inside hen houses at an upcoming egg-price antitrust trial in Chicago federal court. U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger said in a pretrial ruling that any probative value of the videos was minimal and outweighed by their potential harm. (Reuters)
- Roche subsidiary Genentech and its attorney Eric Stone of Groombridge Wu Baughman & Stone convinced the Federal Circuit to affirm that its blockbuster hemophilia treatment Hemlibra does not infringe a patent owned by pharmaceutical rival Takeda’s Baxalta unit. The court upheld a ruling that the relevant parts of Baxalta’s patent covering blood-clotting antibodies are invalid. (Reuters)
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Commercial real estate lenders are facing some turbulence, with high interest rates and a shift in workplace culture likely to impact borrowers’ ability to make their payments. Loan workouts — where lenders work with their borrowers to stave off foreclosure — could be an option for properties that run into trouble, write Jason Grinnell, Thomas Hanley and Gabriel Kiss of Glaser Weil.
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