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Good morning. Former President Donald Trump’s attacks on judges, court staff and prosecutors are posing a problem for courts, with no easy fix at hand. Plus, Tesla is in court today fighting a $230 million fee sought by lawyers who sued over compensation for the car company’s board members, and anti-affirmative action activist Ed Blum told three law firms that he’s poised to file lawsuits against them over fellowships. Welcome to Friday.
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Donald Trump’s attacks on judges, court staff and the judicial system as a whole are a problem that five U.S. state and federal judges are wrestling with as the former president faces four upcoming criminal trials and a civil fraud case. Allowing them to continue risks undermining the judicial process, but any efforts to constrain Trump could fuel his claims that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him, legal experts told Andrew Goudsward.
Trump, who has denied all the charges and said the prosecutions are politically motivated, has called U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan “highly partisan” and New York state Justice Arthur Engoron “deranged.” Trump called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg an “animal,” Special Counsel Jack Smith a “thug” and New York Attorney General Letitia James a “monster.”
The comments are at the center of a Monday hearing before Chutkan as Smith asks for new limits on Trump’s public comments about the 2020 election interference case. But Lawrence Stengel, a former chief federal trial judge in Pennsylvania, said it would be difficult to balance Trump’s free speech rights against the need for a fair legal process.
New York University law professor Rebecca Roiphe said the situation is complicated. “It is acceptable to limit the speech of individuals like this when there’s a potential for it to interfere with an ongoing case,” she said. “But at the same time, the speech here is such core political speech.”
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- A prominent anti-affirmative action activist, whose lawsuits pushed two major law firms to recently alter the fellowships they offered to law students to help bolster diversity in their ranks, told three more law firms that he was poised to sue them unless they did the same. Ed Blum said he was considering taking similar action against Winston & Strawn, Hunton Andrews Kurth and Adams and Reese. The firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reuters)
- Washington state has become the latest jurisdiction to consider allowing law graduates to practice without taking the bar exam. The Washington Bar Licensure Task Force briefed the state’s supreme court on two new options meant to address the racial disparities in bar exam pass rates. (Reuters)
- U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Massachusetts sharply narrowed a legal-fee award for two law firms representing whistleblowers in a healthcare fraud case, ruling that they can only be paid for their work tied to a single claim that the DOJ settled. Stearns said Cohen Milstein and Arrowood were entitled to 12.5%, or about $150,000, of their fee request for more than $1.2 million. (Reuters)
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill requiring attorneys to inform the state bar if they know of attorneys in the state who engaged or conspired to engage in seditious conspiracy, treason, rebellion or insurrection, as defined by federal law. (Reuters)
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REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustrations
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That’s how much bankrupt digital asset platform Voyager owes to U.S. customers, according to figures in a lawsuit that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought against the company’s former chief executive. The agency in federal court in New York accused Stephen Ehrlich, who helped launch Voyager in 2018, of committing fraud from February to July 2022. Ehrlich said he was “outraged and deeply dismayed” by the allegations.
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It’s one of the great truisms in life: You always remember your first time. Especially when you’re standing in front of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices saying, “May it please the court.” Jenna Greene in her latest column caught up with three lawyers — Easha Anand, Eugene Scalia and Howard Bashman — who made their debuts before the high court this week to get their take on the experience.
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“Everybody on TikTok voluntarily gives their personal data.“
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—U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Montana, hearing arguments over a first-of-its-kind state ban on the use of short video-sharing app TikTok. TikTok and its users have asked Molloy to block a new state law that would bar the popular app inside the state on Jan. 1. Montana moved to ban TikTok as a check against alleged intelligence gathering from China. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, accused the state of violating First Amendment free speech rights of the company and users. Molloy questioned whether Montana was being “paternalistic.”
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What to catch up on this weekend
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- Tesla’s directors and lawyers for shareholders will seek court approval of a $919 million settlement that includes returning $735 million in compensation to the company to resolve a lawsuit alleging the electric vehicle company’s directors overpaid themselves. The lawyers who secured the settlement said they want the court to approve $229 million in fees, or $10,690 an hour, according to filing in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. The proposed fee award, if approved, would be among the largest ever to result from a shareholder lawsuit filed against a board. Plaintiffs lawyers from Bleichmar Fonti & Auld, Fields Kupka & Shukurov and McCarter & English have defended their fee bid.
- U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, a 96-year-old judge on the Federal Circuit who is the subject of a rare internal investigation into her mental and physical fitness to serve, will give keynote remarks at a virtual American Bar Association program on intellectual property law. The circuit’s judicial council, made up of the court’s other active judges, voted to suspend Newman last month for failing to cooperate with their investigation. Newman has defended her fitness and challenged the suspension.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Texas and an anonymous anti-abortion activist are urging a federal judge to uphold federal and state whistleblowers laws against a challenge by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has called the laws unconstitutional as it fends off a $1.8 billion fraud lawsuit filed by the activist and the state, arguing the federal False Claims Act and a similar Texas law improperly allow private individuals to act as prosecutors. The countered that whistleblower lawsuits had been allowed under common law even before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. (Reuters)
- Dozens of Filipino workers who helped build stadiums that hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar filed a lawsuit in Colorado federal court claiming U.S. construction firm Jacobs Solutions subjected them to dangerous and inhumane conditions. The nearly 40 plaintiffs said Jacobs and several subsidiaries that oversaw the construction projects forced workers to live in cramped, dirty barracks and work up to 72 hours straight in blistering heat without food and water. Dallas, Texas-based Jacobs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reuters)
- The Washington Post has asked a judge to sanction Donald Trump ally and former California U.S. congressman Devin Nunes for allegedly failing to preserve and share evidence in his lawsuit claiming the news media organization defamed him in a 2020 article. In a filing in Washington, D.C., federal court, attorneys for the Post said Nunes had acted “intentionally” to deprive the media outlet of communications and other records that could have buttressed the media outlet’s defense in the defamation case. (Reuters)
- A unanimous 5th Circuit panel ruled that a Texas state university must face a Malaysian political science professor’s race discrimination lawsuit after the court recently made it easier to prove workplace bias. The panel said that a judge was wrong to toss out Sugumaran Narayanan’s lawsuit against Midwestern State University because it did not involve an “ultimate employment decision” such as hiring, firing and setting pay, citing its August ruling that overruled that standard. (Reuters)
- Google said that it will defend users of generative artificial-intelligence systems in its Google Cloud and Workspace platforms if they are accused of intellectual property violations, joining Microsoft, Adobe and other companies that have made similar pledges. Prominent writers, illustrators and other copyright owners have said in several lawsuits that both the use of their work to train the AI systems and the content the systems create violate their rights. Google said it would defend against both types of claims. (Reuters)
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