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Bond deadline, hush money hearing collide for Trump
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REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid (L) REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
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Former President Donald Trump faces a high stakes schedule today.
In New York state civil court, he faces a deadline to post a bond to cover a $454 million civil fraud judgment for having deceived bankers by manipulating the valuations of his real estate holdings or face the risk of New York seizing some of his marquee properties.
To avoid a seizure, Trump must either pay the sum out of his own pocket or post a bond while he appeals Justice Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 judgment against him for manipulating his net worth and his family real estate company’s property values to dupe lenders and insurers. If Trump fails to pay up or post bond, seizing his properties likely will be a long process.
And in New York state criminal court today, a judge will hear arguments as Trump’s lawyers try to push off his criminal trial on charges tied to hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump is arguing that his team needs more time after prosecutors turned over thousands of pages of potential evidence about star witness Michael Cohen just weeks ago.
He has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases.
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- Three federal judges in Illinois have rescinded policies giving women and minority lawyers early in their careers more opportunities to argue cases in court that had become the subject of misconduct complaints by two conservative legal groups.
- Orrick said it will consolidate its Chinese operations in Beijing after the lease on its Shanghai office expires in July. Orrick’s pullback comes as some U.S. and other international law firms have retreated from the Chinese market.
- Litigation funder Burford can be named as the plaintiff in lawsuits brought by its financing client Sysco, a federal judge in Chicago has ruled, rejecting a challenge from chicken producers to block the move. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin in an order granted a request from Sysco and Burford, which had financed the company’s antitrust claims, to let Sysco withdraw as the plaintiff and allow a Burford subsidiary to carry on the antitrust litigation.
- State Bar of California trustees voted to pursue a $125 increase in the mandatory fees attorneys will pay in 2025—lower than the $150 jump they indicated they would seek earlier this month. California’s current mandatory annual fees for lawyers is $463, and the state bar’s upcoming fee request to California lawmakers also includes increases in subsequent years. Bar officials have said increases are necessary to plug a projected $24 million deficit in 2025 and beyond.
- A lawyer who represented Rodney King after he was beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, setting the stage for the L.A. riots a year later, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for tax evasion and willfully failing to pay more than $2.4 million in taxes, according to prosecutors.
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“Such reliance on AI is a disservice to clients who rely on their attorney’s competence and legal abilities.“
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—U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in a footnote in an ERISA ruling, in which she chided the plaintiff’s lawyer for using AI in research for the case and citing in a brief a prompt inserted into ChatGPT. The Chicago federal judge said the court has a standing order that lawyers can’t use AI when litigating, but because “it is not plaintiff’s fault that her attorney violated this court’s order, it will not assume ChatGPT drafted all her briefing.” Courts nationally have adopted AI rules as the technology proliferates.
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- Today, a New Jersey federal judge will hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Beasley Allen’s Andy Birchfield should be disqualified from the Johnson & Johnson talcum powder litigation. J&J, which has maintained its talc products are safe, has asked the judge to either disqualify Birchfield and Beasley Allen or remove them from the plaintiffs’ steering committee, arguing that Birchfield has formed an alliance with a former attorney for the company aimed at defeating J&J’s bankruptcy strategy, relying on confidential information the former lawyer learned during his work for the company. Birchfield has countered that the company is just trying to remove him as an obstacle to its bankruptcy plans.
- On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear oral argument in the high-stakes cases over the FDA’s approval of abortion drug mifepristone. In December the justices took up the administration’s appeal of an August decision by the 5th Circuit that would curb how the pill is delivered and distributed, barring telemedicine prescriptions and shipments by mail of the drug. The high court also agreed to hear an appeal by the drug’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories.
- Also on Tuesday, Jeffrey Clark, a former senior DOJ official, is scheduled to face an attorney ethics trial over charges that he attempted to use the DOJ to aid Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary arm is bringing the case, which could cause Clark to be stripped of his law license.
- On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Marc Scarsi in Los Angeles will hold a hearing as Hunter Biden moves to dismiss federal tax fraud charges. Biden is charged with three felony and six misdemeanor tax offenses after prosecutors said he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019 while spending millions of dollars on drugs, escorts, exotic cars and other high-ticket items.
- On Thursday, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is meeting in Charleston, North Carolina. It will consider consolidating cases accusing hotel chains of profiting off of human trafficking and lawsuits over baby food allegedly tainted with heavy metals, among others.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Aerospace giant Boeing has sued space tourism startup Virgin Galactic in U.S. court, accusing it of stealing trade secrets and failing to pay $25 million for work on building a new “mothership” designed to carry and release a sightseeing vessel into space. Boeing and subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences asked a federal judge in Virginia to force Virgin Galactic to destroy proprietary information it acquired through its work with Aurora to build a new mothership.
- Ex-Lordstown Motors Corp Chief Executive Stephen Burns agreed to pay $175,000 to settle an SEC lawsuit over claims he made misleading statements about demand for the electric vehicle maker’s flagship truck, the Endurance. The SEC sought to hold Burns liable for misrepresenting preorders that Lordstown had received for its full-size electric pickup truck around the time it went public in the fall of 2020.
- Home brokerage Compass agreed to pay nearly $58 million as part of a settlement to resolve claims that it conspired to overcharge U.S. home sellers by billions of dollars on the commissions they pay to agents for home buyers. The nationwide agreement with Compass, which did not admit wrongdoing, comes after the National Association of Realtors and other large residential real estate brokerages agreed this month to collectively pay more than $626 million in related home-seller litigation over commissions.
- The 5th Circuit vacated two EPA orders prohibiting a Texas plastics treatment company from manufacturing toxic “forever chemicals” in its process for reinforcing plastic containers used to hold things like pesticides and household cleaners. A unanimous three-judge panel agreed with Inhance Technology’s argument that the agency overstepped its authority by issuing the orders, since they were rooted in a section of the federal toxic chemical law reserved for regulating “new” chemicals.
- A federal judge temporarily blocked a land swap needed before developers can build a major clean-energy transmission line through a Mississippi River wildlife refuge, according to attorneys involved in the case. U.S. District Judge William Conley issued a preliminary injunction suspending U.S. government approvals for the land swap during a hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, in a challenge brought by three environmental groups to the nearly complete $649 million Cardinal-Hickory Creek high-voltage line.
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