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Good morning. A rare impeachment trial in the Texas Senate for state Attorney General Ken Paxton kicks off today. Plus, a study reveals which law students benefit from AI – and which don’t, and the details on a wave of robocall lawsuits against plaintiffs’ firms vying for Camp Lejeune clients. Summer is officially over – let’s get to it.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s top law-enforcement official and an ally of former President Donald Trump, could lose his job in an impeachment trial on corruption charges led by his fellow Republicans that begins today, reports Brad Brooks.
The trial, which is likely to last several weeks, could expose a split among the state’s Republicans that echoes the national party’s divisions over Trump.
The Texas House voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton on 20 articles that accuse him of improperly aiding a wealthy political donor, conducting a sham investigation against the whistleblowers in his office, and covering up wrongdoing in a separate federal securities fraud case, among other offenses. He was temporarily suspended from his duties pending the impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, where Paxton’s wife Angela is a senator.
Paxton, who is under investigation by the FBI, has denied any wrongdoing and says the impeachment drive is a political witch hunt.
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- Judges on the Federal Circuit who are investigating their 96-year-old colleague Pauline Newman asked a D.C. federal judge to dismiss Newman’s lawsuit challenging the unusual probe. The three-judge investigative panel and the Federal Circuit’s judicial council said the lower court had no jurisdiction over the appeals court’s internal affairs, and that Newman was improperly challenging statutory mechanisms “that have long enabled the judiciary to effectively govern itself.” (Reuters)
- A Chicago federal judge will weigh arguments from Gibson Dunn that Chicago’s work with plaintiffs’ firm Cohen Milstein should doom the city’s consumer-protection case against DoorDash. The city is defending its hiring of outside counsel, saying such relationships “help level the playing field against massive corporations like defendants.” (Reuters)
- Low-performing law students scored higher on final exams when given access to artificial intelligence, while their high-performing classmates performed worse when using the technology, a new study at the University of Minnesota found. (Reuters)
- The U.S. legal services sector lost 4,200 jobs in August, new Labor Department data showed, reaching its lowest level so far this year. (Reuters)
- Five trial lawyers, including former Colorado solicitor general Eric Olson, have opened a Denver-based plaintiffs’ litigation firm.The firm is named Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray. (Reuters)
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That’s how many Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits Reuters found were filed against plaintiffs’ law firms and marketing agencies over allegations they used robocalls and texts to recruit clients to bring claims in the Camp Lejeune litigation. Plaintiffs’ firms including Watts Guerra and Keller Postman are facing lawsuits. The firms have denied violating the law. Camp Lejeune has spurred an unprecedented marketing push as firms compete for clients.
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There’s nothing quite like a record-setting $3.7 billion regulatory settlement to bring out the shareholder lawyers. After Wells Fargo’s deal with the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last December – the latest in a years-long string of regulatory setbacks for the bank – three big plaintiffs firms set out to litigate breach-of-duty claims against Wells Fargo board members. The firms – Robbins Geller, Scott + Scott and Kessler Topaz – all chose different strategies. Now, as Alison Frankel explains, they’re trying to persuade an Oakland federal judge to put them in charge.
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“That appears to be more of a gripe than a legal objection.“
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—U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr, who rejected Southwest Airlines’ request that he stay his unusual order directing the company’s lawyers to attend “religious liberty training” by conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom. Starr said Southwest didn’t make any legal argument why the training is unconstitutional or otherwise against the law. Starr is currently facing a complaint filed by a judicial reform advocacy group that accuses him of engaging in misconduct by taking the “strange” step of ordering the training.
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- Former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro will go on trial in D.C. federal court to face contempt of Congress charges after he defied subpoenas seeking documents and testimony from the Democratically-led U.S. House panel probing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Navarro has pleaded not guilty. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will preside at the trial. Mehta oversaw the trial of members of the far-right Oath Keepers group accused of seditious conspiracy.
- British billionaire Joe Lewis is due in Manhattan federal court for a status conference after being charged in July with insider trading. Prosecutors said Lewis, whose family trust controls a majority of the Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, passed tips about companies in which he invested to friends, personal assistants, private pilots and romantic partners. Lewis has pleaded not guilty. His defense lawyer, Skadden’s David Zornow, has said prosecutors made an “egregious error” in bringing charges.
- In Brooklyn, former George Santos campaign aide Samuel Miele has a status conference in the U.S. criminal case accusing him of identity theft and wire fraud for allegedly impersonating a top congressional aide. The indictment said Miele created an email account bearing the name of “a high-ranking aide” to a U.S. representative in a leadership role. Santos, a Republican member of the House, is charged in a separate case with fraud and money laundering. He has said he will “take care of clearing my name.” Santos has a hearing in his case on Thursday.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco will take up Altria Group’s plan to pay $235 million to settle at least 6,000 lawsuits accusing it of fueling a teen vaping epidemic through its former investment in e-cigarette maker Juul Labs. The deal would end nearly all of the litigation brought against the tobacco giant over Juul by local government bodies and individuals across the United States. It came shortly after San Francisco’s public school district finished presenting its case against the company in a jury trial, which will now be cut short.
- On Thursday, a status conference is scheduled in Massachusetts’ lawsuit accusing Exxon Mobil of misleading consumers and investors about climate change and the dangers of using fossil fuels. Last year, the top state court in Massachusetts unanimously rejected Exxon’s bid to dismiss the suit. The court said Attorney General Maura Healey could pursue what Exxon called a politically motivated case that it claimed violated a state law protecting defendants from lawsuits designed to silence them.
- On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments over a 15-week abortion ban that was passed months before Roe v. Wade was overturned. The measure makes exceptions to the 15-week restriction only in cases when the mother is at risk of death or “irreversible physical impairment,” or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. Republican state senators defeated an amendment that would have made exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Just days after the Biden administration released its list of 10 medicines subject to Medicare price negotiations, Swiss drugmaker Novartis and its attorneys at Latham sued the U.S. government in an attempt to halt the price negotiation program, which includes its top-selling heart-failure medicine Entresto. Novartis is the first drug company to sue since the list became public, although six other drugmakers, including Bristol Myers Squibb, J&J and Merck, have already sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over the program. (Reuters)
- The DOJ sued Southern California Edison, accusing the Edison International unit of negligence that contributed to the 2020 Bobcat wildfire in Los Angeles County, California, that burned more than 114,000 acres. The government is seeking more than $121 million to recoup losses and costs of fighting the fire, saying the fire was caused by the failure of the utility and a contractor to properly maintain trees that came into contact with power lines. The company declined to comment. (Reuters)
- Gibson Dunn’s Gene Scalia and Helgi Walker are representing six private equity and hedge fund trade groups suing the SEC in the 5th Circuit, arguing the agency overstepped its statutory authority when adopting sweeping new expenses and fees rules last week. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said the rules will increase transparency and competition in the private funds industry. (Reuters)
- Humana hired an O’Melveny team to litigate the insurer’s suit in Texas federal court seeking to block a Biden administration policy allowing Medicare to claw back billions of dollars from insurers for overcharges. The lawsuit said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “did not even try” to justify its more aggressive approach toward determining whether private Medicare Advantage plans for people aged 65 and older were overpaid. (Reuters)
- An Amazon shareholder sued company founder Jeff Bezos and the Amazon board alleging directors failed to fully vet a decision to award launch contracts for the company’s Project Kuiper satellite project to Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company. The lawsuit filed by Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund claims the Amazon board awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to Blue Origin and did not consider rival Elon Musk-owned SpaceX as an alternative. (Reuters)
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- McDermott hired New York-based partner Ron Hauben to lead its accounting defense practice. Hauben, a former general counsel to accounting firm EY, was previously at Gibson Dunn. (Reuters)
- Kirkland added Adam Shapiro as a debt finance partner in New York. Shapiro was previously at Simpson Thacher. (Kirkland)
- Eversheds hired San Francisco-based tax partner Michael Lebovitz from Mayer Brown, where he was co-leader of the firm’s international tax and transfer pricing group. (Eversheds)
- K&L Gates added Theodore Paradise in Boston as an energy, infrastructure and resources partner. He was previously at Hexicon USA. (K&L Gates)
- Dentons added Matt Nickel as a Dallas-based commercial litigation partner from DLA Piper. (Dentons)
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