California

  • March 10, 2025

    Menendez Brothers 'Shouldn't Get Out Of Jail,' LA DA Says

    Erik and Lyle Menendez should remain imprisoned for the 1989 murder of their parents "in cold blood," since they haven't admitted their self-defense claims were "phony," and the only possible "pathway" to freedom is if they "completely" accept responsibility for their crimes, Los Angeles County's new district attorney said Monday.

  • March 10, 2025

    Meta Can't Ditch Authors' Copyright Claim In AI Tool Fight

    A California federal judge has refused to throw out group of authors' claim that Meta Platforms Inc. violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim with its large language model product, ruling that they've adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed copyright notice information to conceal infringement.

  • March 10, 2025

    Realtek's Antitrust Claims Against MediaTek Pared Back

    A California federal judge on Friday dismissed Realtek Semiconductor's claims that MediaTek and two other companies conspired to restrain trade through a series of sham patent suits, while keeping claims tied to two 2021 federal cases in Texas that he said Realtek plausibly alleged to be baseless.

  • March 10, 2025

    Alsup Refuses To Vacate Hearing Into OPM Mass Firings

    U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Monday denied the Trump administration's request to vacate an upcoming evidentiary hearing into the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's mass firings of probationary federal employees, and required OPM director Charles Ezell to appear in person or else be deposed.

  • March 10, 2025

    Starbucks Owes Up To $125M For Hot Water Burns, Jury Told

    Starbucks should pay as much as $125 million for permanent disfigurement to a takeout driver that "changed who he is as a person," a jury heard Monday, after finding last week that the coffee giant was to blame for the spill of scalding water.

  • March 10, 2025

    Calif. Pharma Exec Pleads Guilty To Insider Trading

    A California medical doctor has pled guilty to insider trading in the securities of biopharmaceutical company Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. while serving on Acadia's drug safety team, admitting to trading on confidential information that helped him avoid $1.3 million in losses.

  • March 10, 2025

    Latham-Led Physical Therapy Startup Hinge Health Files IPO

    Artificial intelligence-focused physical therapy startup Hinge Health Inc. on Monday filed plans for an initial public offering, represented by Latham & Watkins LLP and underwriters counsel Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, joining a growing number of IPO prospects.

  • March 10, 2025

    DOJ Wants In On Invisalign Monopoly Arguments At 9th Circ.

    The U.S. Department of Justice wants to be there when orthodontists and consumers who purchased clear teeth aligners face off with the company behind Invisalign at the Ninth Circuit next month, so it can tell the appellate judges where the lower court went wrong in killing their monopoly suits.

  • March 10, 2025

    Miley Cyrus Says 'Glee' Ruling Wilts 'Flowers' Copyright Suit

    An attorney for Miley Cyrus and co-writers of her hit "Flowers" urged a California federal judge Monday to toss a music investment company's complaint alleging they ripped off a Bruno Mars song, arguing that a Ninth Circuit ruling clearing the school that inspired the show "Glee" of infringement supports the move.

  • March 10, 2025

    Ex-NFL Player Gets 2½ Years For $5.3M Ponzi Scheme

    A former NFL linebacker was sentenced to two and a half years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to running a Ponzi scheme in which he bilked $5.3 million from investors who believed they were buying into luxury real estate and gold mines in Alaska and Ghana.

  • March 10, 2025

    Adidas Seeks Injunction In Fashion Nova Trademark Row

    Adidas is seeking a preliminary injunction against Fashion Nova, accusing the popular fast-fashion brand in a California federal lawsuit of infringing on its iconic three-stripe trademark and noting that the company has "a penchant for overlooking" intellectual property rights.

  • March 10, 2025

    Judge May Pause Trump Admin's Cuts To Teacher Training

    A Massachusetts federal judge hinted Monday it would be reasonable to order the U.S. Department of Education to temporarily reinstate $250 million in teacher-training grants targeted for cuts by the Trump administration over their ties to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

  • March 10, 2025

    DOJ Defends Musk's Influence Against States' Challenge

    The U.S. Department of Justice is defending Elon Musk's influence in the federal government against a constitutional challenge brought by 14 states, telling D.C. federal court that the "special government employee" does not occupy an official office that would be subject to the Constitution's appointments clause.

  • March 10, 2025

    Tribe Says BNSF Can't Derail $400M Trespass Judgment

    A Washington tribe is urging the Ninth Circuit to uphold a lower court's finding that BNSF Railway Co. must pay nearly $400 million for years of illegally running oil cars across tribal territory, saying the railroad's claim that it strips away lawfully earned profits "makes little sense."

  • March 10, 2025

    Disney Unit Wins Copyright Trial Over 'Moana' Film

    A Los Angeles federal jury handed a win Monday to a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co. in a copyright infringement trial over the 2016 blockbuster "Moana," rejecting a claim that the movie ripped off another animation artist's Polynesian adventure epic.

  • March 10, 2025

    Trump Tells 9th Circ. To Undo Birthright Citizenship Injunction

    President Donald Trump urged the Ninth Circuit to undo a Washington federal court's injunction on his executive order limiting birthright citizenship, saying children born to noncitizens in the United States do not fall within the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause.

  • March 10, 2025

    Perkins Coie Adds 2 Finnegan IP Attys In Calif.

    Perkins Coie LLP is growing its West Coast team, announcing Monday it is bringing in two Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP intellectual property attorneys as partners in its Silicon Valley office in Palo Alto, California.

  • March 10, 2025

    Davis Polk Adds Debevoise M&A Co-Leader In Calif.

    Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP announced Monday the firm bolstered its mergers and acquisitions practice by hiring an attorney who most recently co-chaired the M&A group at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.

  • March 10, 2025

    Judge Who Shot Wife Gets Mistrial As Jury Hangs On Murder

    A California judge declared a mistrial Monday in the murder trial of Orange County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, who shot and killed his wife in their Anaheim Hills home in 2023, after jurors said they remained at an impasse over whether he was guilty of second-degree murder.

  • March 10, 2025

    ServiceNow Makes AI Push With $2.85B Moveworks Buy

    Santa Clara, California-based software company ServiceNow said Monday it has agreed to acquire Moveworks for $2.85 billion, in a move that ServiceNow said will expand its existing artificial intelligence offerings to include more automated options for front-end employees. 

  • March 10, 2025

    Pot Shop Receiver Says Brand Licensor Diverted Product

    A receiver overseeing the possible sale or liquidation of a Massachusetts cannabis retailer asked a judge to order the return of more than 900 packages of product taken from its cultivation facility days before the receivership began.

  • March 10, 2025

    Nonbinary Ex-Workers Ask To Intervene In Dropped EEOC Suit

    Two nonbinary former Lush Cosmetics workers asked a California judge to let them intervene in a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suit claiming the business let a manager sexually harass them, after the agency dropped the case following an executive order from President Donald Trump.

  • March 10, 2025

    Business Telecom Co. Mitel Files $1.1B Prepack Ch. 11

    Communications software company Mitel Networks filed for Chapter 11 protection Monday in a Texas bankruptcy court with a prepackaged equity-swap plan it says will cut $1.15 billion from its more than $1.3 billion in secured debt.

  • March 10, 2025

    Justices Reject Red-State Bid To End State Climate Torts

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a request from red states to stop climate change torts against fossil fuel companies brought by blue-state governments.

  • March 10, 2025

    High Court Turns Down Firefighter's Religious Bias Case

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a religious discrimination case from a Christian fire chief who said he was fired for his beliefs, leaving in place a Ninth Circuit decision that sided with the city that employed him as well as a long-standing legal framework that the justices had been asked to reconsider.

Expert Analysis

  • A Look At Sweepstakes Casinos' Legal Issues In Fla., Beyond

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    Scheduled for trial in Florida federal court this fall, the VGW sweepstakes case underscores the growing urgency for gambling states to clarify and enforce their laws in response to emerging online gaming models, as the expansion of sweepstakes casinos challenges traditional interpretations of gambling regulations, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.

  • FTC Privacy Enforcement Takeaways From 2024

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    In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission distinguished three prominent trends in its privacy-related enforcement actions: geolocation data protections, data minimization practices, and artificial intelligence use and marketing, say Cobun Zweifel-Keegan at IAPP and James Smith at Dechert.

  • The Fed. Circ. In 2024: 5 Major Rulings To Know

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    In 2024, the Federal Circuit provided a number of important clarifications to distinct areas of patent law – including design patent obviousness, expert testimony admissions and patent term adjustments – all of which are poised to have an influence going forward, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

  • Rethinking Litigation Risk And What It Really Means To Win

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    Attorneys have a tendency to overestimate litigation risk before summary judgment and underestimate risk after it, but an eight-stage litigation framework can clarify risk at different points and help litigators reassess what true success looks like in any particular case, says Joshua Libling at Arcadia Finance.

  • Mass Arbitration Procedures After Faulty Live Nation Ruling

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    Despite the Ninth Circuit's flawed reasoning in Heckman v. Live Nation, the exceptional allegations of collusive conduct shouldn't be read to restrict arbitration providers that have adopted good faith procedures to ensure that consumer mass arbitrations can be efficiently resolved on the merits, says Collin Vierra at Eimer Stahl.

  • Public Corruption Enforcement In 2024 Has Clues For 2025

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    If 2024 activity is any indication, the U.S. Supreme Court will likely continue to rein in expansive prosecutorial theories of fraud in the year to come, but it’s harder to predict what the new administration will mean for public corruption prosecutions in 2025, says Cathy Fleming at Offit Kurman.

  • Roundup

    Banking Brief: State Law Recaps From Each Quarter Of 2024

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    In this Expert Analysis series, throughout 2024 attorneys provided quarterly recaps discussing the biggest developments in banking regulation, litigation and policymaking in various states, including New York, California and Illinois.

  • Calif. Justices' Options In Insurance Exhaustion Case

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    Fox Paine v. Twin City Fire Insurance may serve as the California Supreme Court's opportunity to firmly establish precedent with respect to a strict adherence to excess insurance policies' exhaustion provisions when the language is clear and explicit, says Aiden Spencer at Langsam Stevens.

  • Considering The Status Of The US Doctrine Of Patent Misuse

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    A recent Ninth Circuit decision and a U.K. Court of Appeal decision demonstrate the impact that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment has had on the principle that post-patent-expiration royalty payments amount to patent misuse, not only in the U.S. but in English courts as well, say attorneys at Covington.

  • Series

    Playing Rugby Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My experience playing rugby, including a near-fatal accident, has influenced my legal practice on a professional, organizational and personal level by showing me the importance of maintaining empathy, fostering team empowerment and embracing the art of preparation, says James Gillenwater at Greenberg Traurig.

  • Looking Back At 2024's Noteworthy State AG Litigation

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    State attorneys general across the U.S. took bold steps in 2024 to address unlawful activities by corporations in several areas, including privacy and data security, financial transparency, children's internet safety, and other overall consumer protection claims, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.

  • Opinion

    A Federal Insurance Mandate For Private Aviation Is Overdue

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    A recent private plane crash in California that killed two people and injured 19 others spotlights the dangers of such occurrences — and serves as a reminder that because there is no federal requirement for general aviation pilots to carry insurance, the victims of these accidents are often unable to obtain fair compensation, says Timothy Loranger at Wisner Baum.

  • Reviewing 2024's Evolving EdTech Privacy Regulations

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    Lawmakers are trying to keep up with the privacy and security risks of the increasingly prevalent education technology, with last year's developments including the Federal Trade Commission's proposed amendments to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and the U.S. Senate passing two new children's privacy acts, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • Opinion

    No, Litigation Funders Are Not 'Fleeing' The District Of Del.

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    A recent study claimed that litigation funders have “fled” Delaware federal court due to a standing order requiring disclosure of third-party financing, but responsible funders have no problem litigating in this jurisdiction, and many other factors could explain the decline in filings, say Will Freeman and Sarah Tsou at Omni Bridgeway.

  • Series

    Calif. Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q4

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    Douglas Thompson at Snell & Wilmer highlights a number of recent and pending issues, actions and potentially pivotal federal regulatory and legislative developments on deck that will affect California banks and financial institutions.

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