 //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591700&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591701&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591702&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591703&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591704&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
|
|
|
| //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=874768&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33035747&stpe=static” border=”0″ style=”max-height:12px;” /> |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones resigned effective November 15. REUTERS/Staff
|
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in Houston resigned after the 5th Circuit opened an ethics probe spurred by the recent revelation that he had been in a romantic relationship with a bankruptcy attorney, ending Jones’ tenure as the country’s busiest bankruptcy judge, report Dietrich Knauth and Nate Raymond.
Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane of the Southern District of Texas told Reuters on Sunday that Jones resigned, effective Nov. 15. Jones had already stepped back from overseeing large bankruptcy cases and began reassigning them to two other judges on the court. Neither Jones nor his courtroom deputy immediately responded to requests for comment.
The 5th Circuit issued a formal misconduct complaint against Jones on Friday, after the judge revealed he has been in a years-long romantic relationship and shared a home with bankruptcy attorney Elizabeth Freeman. Until December 2022, Freeman had been a partner at Jackson Walker, a law firm that filed many cases in Jones’ Houston courthouse.
|
|
|
- Tesla urged a Delaware judge to reject $230 million in legal fees requested by a team of shareholder attorneys who won a settlement in a dispute over director pay, and the company recommended a fee of $64 million instead. The maker of electric vehicles called the fee request an “unwarranted windfall” that works out to an hourly rate of $10,690, among the highest fee requests ever in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. (Reuters)
- The partnerships at Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling voted to merge the two law firms, their leaders said, clearing the way for one of the biggest legal industry combinations in decades and marking the end of an era for one of New York’s most prominent independent firms. The merger between London-founded Allen & Overy and its smaller Manhattan-founded counterpart Shearman would create a firm with nearly 4,000 lawyers, including about 800 partners, across 48 global offices. (Reuters)
- Paul Weiss defeated a bid from Yelp and another former client to disqualify the law firm from serving as lead defense counsel to Google in the DOJ’s ad tech antitrust case in Virginia federal court. Yelp and News/Media Alliance had argued Paul Weiss represented them on related matters and should not be allowed to switch sides. Yelp and the media group are not parties in the DOJ lawsuit, but Google had hit them with subpoenas. Paul Weiss had denied any conflict. (Reuters)
|
Daniel Sturridge is fighting a bid for the $30,000 reward he offered for his missing dog. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff
|
That’s the reward for a missing dog at the center of a nascent legal dispute involving former England soccer player Daniel Sturridge, who denies he owes that amount after his stolen Pomeranian named Lucci was returned, British media reported. Lucci was stolen from a Los Angeles house in 2019 and the former Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool striker offered the reward to help find his pet. American rapper Foster Washington sued Sturridge claiming he was owed the money. Sturridge, however, said he already paid the person who found Lucci. Sturridge has hired lawyers to resolve what he called a “speculative claim” in the lawsuit.
|
There was a time, not so very long ago, when FTX crypto exchange founder and erstwhile billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried might have regarded $5 million or $10 million as a pittance. But now that amount is the subject of a hot dispute between Bankman-Fried, former FTX general counsel Daniel Friedberg and the insurance companies that wrote policies to cover defense costs for FTX directors and officers. Alison Frankel has the story.
|
|
|
|
- In D.C. federal court, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hold a hearing on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a court order limiting Donald Trump’s public statements about people involved in the federal election case against him. Trump’s criminal defense lawyers have called Smith’s move a “desperate effort at censorship.” Trump’s broadsides against state and federal judges have put courts in a bind. Allowing Trump’s statements to continue risks undermining the judicial process, legal experts told our colleague Andrew Goudsward, but any efforts to constrain Trump could fuel his claims that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him.
- In the 9th Circuit, conceptual artist Ryder Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen will try to convince a panel to dismiss a lawsuit from “Bored Ape Yacht Club” non-fungible token maker Yuga Labs over their alleged counterfeits of its NFTs. Ripps said the copies were “appropriation art” criticizing the NFTs’ alleged racist and anti-Semitic dog whistles, and argued they were protected from the lawsuit by the First Amendment and California’s anti-SLAPP law. A California federal judge ruled for Yuga in April.
|
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
- On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Chun in Seattle will hold the first hearing in the FTC’s landmark lawsuit accusing Amazon of violating competition laws. Amazon has denied that its policies run afoul of U.S. antitrust law, and legal experts said the agency’s case could face hurdles. Amazon is represented by attorneys from Williams & Connolly and Covington, firms that have long defended the e-commerce giant. Susan Musser and Edward Takashima are leading the FTC’s case.
- On Wednesday, Donald Trump faces a deadline to file a brief asking the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan to throw out or reduce damages in a $5 million verdict that former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll won against him for sexual assault and defamation. The verdict arose from Trump’s denial of Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
- On Friday, Deutsche Bank’s $75 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit by women who accused the German bank of facilitating the sex trafficking of late financier Jeffrey Epstein will go before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan federal court for a fairness hearing. Deutsche Bank was accused of missing red flags in Epstein’s accounts that he was engaged in wrongdoing. The bank has acknowledged its error in making Epstein a client and said it has made investments to bolster controls, processes and training, and hired more people to fight financial crime. The victims’ lawyers include litigator David Boies, whose hourly rate of $2,110 was shown in a filing in the case.
- Also Friday, the Ninth Circuit is slated to hear arguments in a medical researcher’s appeal of the DEA’s rejection of his petition to reschedule psilocybin so it can be prescribed and studied. Dr. Sunil Aggarwal and his attorneys from Yetter Coleman, the National Psychedelics Association, Perkins Coie and Porter Wright have been locked in a lengthy fight with the DEA over the drug, better known as “magic mushrooms,” arguing that the FDA has recognized multiple medical uses for it, but because of the drug’s Schedule 1 status it is entirely illegal. The DOJ has countered that there is no reason to reschedule the drug because it has no “currently accepted medical use.”
|
- A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the SEC will not appeal a recent court ruling that found it was wrong to reject an application from Grayscale Investments to create a spot bitcoin ETF, likely paving the way for the agency to review the application. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals in August ruled that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale’s proposed bitcoin ETF, in a case that has been closely watched by the industry that has been trying for a decade to advance such products. (Reuters)
- Tesla won a California federal court order sending a privacy lawsuit to arbitration, a setback for plaintiffs’ lawyers who accused the company of improperly accessing and sharing video images from drivers’ cars. The lawsuit followed a Reuters special report about Tesla workers who had shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars. (Reuters)
- A Florida doctor has a reached a confidential settlement with federal prosecutors over civil claims that he took kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics to prescribe its fentanyl spray Subsys, just four days before the case was set to go to trial. In a rare civil False Claims Act case, government lawyers alleged that from 2013 to 2017, Edward Lubin took nearly $160,000 in kickbacks from Insys through a sham speaker program in which he purportedly gave presentations educating other medical providers about Subsys. (Reuters)
- Cybersecurity company IronNet, founded by a former director of the U.S. National Security Agency, has filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware, seeking to sell its assets. IronNet, which owes about $35 million to its creditors, was founded in 2014 by former NSA director Keith Alexander, along with former top officials of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (Reuters)
- Television provider Dish Network and its Sling TV streaming service have sued streaming service BritBox in Manhattan federal court, accusing it of infringing eight patents related to video-streaming technology. Dish has previously sued other streaming services and fitness companies including iFit, Peloton and Lululemon for infringing related patents. (Reuters)
|
|
|
Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletter or other Reuters news content.
Get Reuters News App
Want to stop receiving this newsletter? Unsubscribe here.
To manage which newsletters you’re subscribed to, click here.
|
|
|
|
