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Elon Musk’s pledge to cover legal costs for X users facing reprisals over their posts is bringing a high-profile case to a small law firm known for constitutional legal battles and conservative causes, our colleague David Thomas reports. Musk’s X referred former “The Mandalorian” actor Gina Carano to 30-lawyer Schaerr Jaffe, according to the D.C.-based firm, which this week filed a wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuit against Disney on Carano’s behalf.
Musk, the billionaire X CEO and self-styled free speech champion, posted in August that his company would cover legal bills for people who “were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform,” and recently promised legal support for anyone discriminated against by Disney. Musk lashed out at Disney last year after the company and others pulled advertising from X over antisemitic content.
Gene Schaerr, who co-founded Schaerr Jaffe in 2014 after he left Winston & Strawn, said X last year also hired the firm in another matter involving a student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Schaerr Jaffe has represented a range of conservative clients including Republican U.S. senators, gun rights groups and the state of Florida. Schaerr said the firm has also represented non-conservative causes, including convicted environmental lawyer and Chevron foe Steven Donziger and the ACLU.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment. X and other companies he owns, including Tesla and SpaceX, have been hit with several discrimination lawsuits of their own.
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- Republican U.S. Senators John Kennedy and Ted Cruz requested information about policies adopted by three federal judges in Illinois that aim to give young women and minority lawyers more opportunities to argue cases in court. The lawmakers called the policies “unethical” and “discriminatory” in a letter to 7th Circuit chief judge Diane Sykes. The appeals court’s circuit executive declined to comment but said Sykes will respond to the letter “in due course.”
- Schnader Harrison, a Philadelphia-based law firm that closed last year, is facing a new lawsuit claiming it unlawfully used pension contributions to help run the firm and pay its shareholding partners, harming other partners and employees. The proposed class action was filed by former non-ownership partner Jo Bennett, who now leads the labor and employment team at Culhane Meadows. Firm representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
- Calls made with AI-generated voices are illegal, the FCC said, after a fake robocall imitating President Joe Biden sought to dissuade people from voting for him in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary election.
- The U.S Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey, an emerging hot spot for large Chapter 11 cases like Rite Aid and WeWork, said that it will continue to randomly assign cases among its judges rather than directing large cases to just one or two members of the bench.
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That’s how much former Manatt client Leonard Schrage said the firm cost him when it used the wrong legal theory in litigation against his brothers over their management of their deceased father’s car dealership empire, according to a new lawsuit. Schrage and Manatt won a $30.9 million verdict in 2019 following a bench trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, but an appellate court reversed the verdict in 2021 after finding Schrage had no standing because he had not asserted a derivative claim. A spokesperson for Manatt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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A Delaware judge refused on Wednesday to award fees to shareholder lawyers who failed after a 10-day trial last year to prove that Oracle founder Larry Ellison pushed the company to overpay for software company NetSuite in a $9.3 billion deal in 2016. Yes, you read that right: The shareholder firms, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Friedlander & Gorris asked for $5 million in fees even though they lost the case. Alison Frankel explains why the request wasn’t as audacious as it might first appear – but why the shareholder firms ultimately couldn’t sway the judge.
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“The Constitution is not a ‘suicide pact.’“
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—Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, who wrote the court’s unanimous opinion upholding the state’s laws that generally prohibit carrying a firearm in public without a license–and in the process criticized the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings that have expanded gun rights. Eddins called the high court’s recent ruling directing courts to evaluate state gun laws by determining whether they would have existed when the country was founded as “dangerous.”
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- U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor in Boston will hold a hearing after the 1st Circuit revived a $10 billion lawsuit by Mexico seeking to hold American gun manufacturers responsible for facilitating the trafficking of weapons to drug cartels across the U.S.-Mexico border. The country’s U.S. lawyer in the case, Steve Shadowen, called the appeals court decision “an important step forward in holding the gun industry accountable.”
- U.S. prosecutors face a deadline to ask a New York federal judge for permission to sell a $300 million yacht named the “Amadea” seized in 2022 from Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov as part of a push to pressure Vladimir Putin to halt Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The yacht is currently in San Diego after it was seized in Fiji, according to court records.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- First Citizens claims in a new court filing that executives at HSBC, including CEO Noel Quinn, condoned a plan to steal employees and confidential information from Silicon Valley Bank after it collapsed and was acquired by First Citizens. First Citizens said in an amended lawsuit that David Sabow, who led SVB’s technology and healthcare banking segment before moving to HSBC, met with Quinn and other top executives numerous times and shared plans to poach workers in order to launch a competing venture capital business. HSBC said it will continue to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
- A former top marketing executive at TikTok sued the social media company and its China-based parent ByteDance, claiming she had been forced out of her job after she complained about sex, age and disability discrimination. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
- A federal judge temporarily barred a former DraftKings executive from using the company’s trade secrets or soliciting its clients or employees after he joined sports betting rival Fanatics just days before the Super Bowl. But, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick in Boston declined at a hearing to bar Michael Hermalyn, who had been a senior vice president with DraftKings, from working at Fanatics, at least for now.
- A federal judge in Texas has rejected the Biden administration’s bid to dismiss the Republican-led state’s challenge to a rule meant to speed up asylum processing and deportations at the U.S.-Mexico border. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is “tremendously important” because it allows the state to pursue claims that the federal government cannot shift the power of immigration judges to officers who conduct interviews with asylum applicants, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.
- Judges on a 1st Circuit panel appeared skeptical that a Massachusetts middle school violated a student’s right to free speech by requiring him to stop wearing a t-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.” The judges questioned why the school’s actions were not justified to ensure a safe educational environment for non-binary students and deter disruptions the shirt would prompt.
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- Baker Botts added patent litigation partners Robert Benson in San Francisco and Jeffrey Johnson in Houston. They arrive from Orrick. (Baker Botts)
- Thompson Hine hired Michael Samuels in New York as a partner. He arrives from Moses Singer, where he chaired the real estate practice. (Thompson Hine)
- Frost Brown Todd added Michael Stegman in Cincinnati to its tax, benefits and estates group. He joins from Kohnen & Patton. (Frost Brown Todd)
- Steptoe expanded its government affairs and public policy practices with D.C.-based partner Ben Saul. He most recently was at Greenberg Traurig. (Steptoe)
- Armstrong Teasdale brought on corporate services partner Craig Spenner, who will join its employee benefits and executive compensation practice in St. Louis. He was previously at Linklaters. (Armstrong Teasdale)
- Lathrop GPM added four IP lawyers in Dallas, including partner Robert Lord, from Ferguson Braswell Fraser Kubasta. (Lathrop GPM)
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