California

  • March 05, 2025

    Defense Biz Epirus Clinches $250M Funding Round

    National security-focused technology company Epirus announced Wednesday it closed an oversubscribed Series D fundraising round after securing $250 million from investors, bringing the startup's total venture funding to more than $550 million.

  • March 05, 2025

    Revived Bill To Add Judges Teed Up For Another House Vote

    The House Judiciary Committee voted out of committee three bills on Wednesday along party lines, including legislation to add more federal judgeships that the federal judiciary says are needed desperately but has become subject to partisan fighting.

  • March 05, 2025

    Seyfarth Names Real Estate Atty As Co-Lead In San Francisco

    Seyfarth Shaw LLP has named a longtime real estate attorney to be the new co-managing partner of its San Francisco office, the firm announced Wednesday.

  • March 05, 2025

    Biotech Co. Maravai Hit With Investor's Internal Controls Suit

    Health research tools company Maravai LifeSciences Holdings Inc. has been hit with a proposed shareholder class action alleging it failed to report that it had issues with its internal reporting controls ahead of its announcement that an inaccurate report led to the misallocation of $3.9 million.

  • March 05, 2025

    UK Clears $35B Synopsys, Ansys Merger

    The Competition and Markets Authority said Wednesday it has cleared Synopsys' planned $35 billion acquisition of fellow U.S. software company Ansys under certain divestiture and monitoring conditions.

  • March 05, 2025

    Senators Press Trump's NIH Nominee On Grant Cuts, Vaccines

    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya vowed to support research into chronic diseases but repeatedly refused Wednesday to express an opinion on cost-cutting efforts at the National Institutes of Health, sidestepping bipartisan questions during a hearing on his nomination to run the biomedical research agency.

  • March 05, 2025

    Trump's NIH Cost-Cutting Measure Blocked By Judge

    A Massachusetts federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot cap indirect costs for research grants at the National Institutes of Health, rejecting the move as a rushed cost-saving measure that violates federal law governing the expenses.

  • March 05, 2025

    Pot Co. Hit With Class Action Over Unwanted Mass Texts

    A California man is suing a dispensary and cannabis delivery service in federal court, alleging that it has violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by repeatedly sending unsolicited marketing text messages.

  • March 05, 2025

    Ex-Girlfriend Of $36M Crypto Schemer Admits Hiding Profits

    The ex-girlfriend of a cryptocurrency founder who evaded taxes on a $36 million hacking scheme admitted to hiding profits from the IRS and participating in the ploy by heading shell companies and paying Los Angeles sheriff's deputies to target his enemies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • March 05, 2025

    Davis Wright Adds K&L Gates Energy Ace In San Francisco

    Davis Wright Tremaine LLP has added a former K&L Gates LLP attorney in San Francisco who brings over two decades of private practice and in-house experience to the firm's expanding national energy practice.

  • March 05, 2025

    Skin Care Tech Co. Files Ch. 11 With $400M Prepackaged Plan

    Skin care and beauty technology company Cutera Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection in a Texas bankruptcy court Wednesday with over $429 million in debt and a prepackaged debt-swap plan to cut that number by nearly $400 million.

  • March 04, 2025

    Avalara Investor Asks 9th Circ. To Revive $8B PE Buyout Suit

    An Avalara shareholder urged the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday to revive a proposed securities class action alleging the tax software company duped investors into approving a "deficient" $8.4 billion private equity buyout, arguing the trial court erred in finding Avalara's statements tied to "numerically specific metrics" weren't false or misleading.

  • March 04, 2025

    Musk Fails To Block OpenAI From Turning Into For-Profit Entity

    A California federal judge on Tuesday denied Elon Musk's bid to preliminarily bar OpenAI Inc. from converting into a for-profit entity, saying that a threshold question of whether Musk's over $44 million in donations created a charitable trust was a "toss-up."

  • March 04, 2025

    Banks To Face New Defenders Of CFPB Overdraft Rule

    A Mississippi federal judge said Tuesday that he will allow two outside nonprofits to step into litigation over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's $5 overdraft fee rule and defend the Biden-era regulation against a banking industry-backed legal challenge.

  • March 04, 2025

    Chinese Theme Park Co. Can't Nix Investors' 'Hellscapes' Suit

    A California federal judge will allow investors' securities fraud claims against a Chinese amusement park operator to proceed, finding they plausibly claimed that the company inflated visitor numbers and financials for its park, causing an 89% stock price decline when the truth was eventually revealed.

  • March 04, 2025

    3 Takeaways From The High Court's SF Water Permit Ruling

    The U.S. Supreme Court's Tuesday ruling siding with San Francisco to strike down parts of a federal water pollution permit demonstrated a majority of justices' reluctance to force permit holders to interpret gray areas that could get them in trouble.

  • March 04, 2025

    Semiconductor Co. Faces Suit Over Apple Biz Loss, AI Hype

    Semiconductor maker Skyworks Solutions Inc. was hit Tuesday with a proposed investor class action alleging it hurt investors by downplaying the risks posed by the loss of business from iPhone maker Apple, a major customer, and overplaying the strength of artificial intelligence to its business.

  • March 04, 2025

    Blockchain Org. Wins $3.5M Fees From Trader's Seized Assets

    Crypto project the ICON Foundation is set to receive $3.5 million in attorney fees and costs after it successfully turned the tables on a user who sued the project after it took action to freeze millions of tokens he created by exploiting a bug in the project's software.

  • March 04, 2025

    Gov't Says 2 Lab Owners Billed $40M In COVID Test Scheme

    Federal prosecutors opened their case Tuesday against two laboratory owners, telling jurors in Florida that they ran a more than $40 million scheme to submit medically unnecessary COVID-19 testing claims to healthcare benefit programs.

  • March 04, 2025

    PTAB Orders Mostly Backing Apple, Others Upheld On Appeal

    The Federal Circuit on Tuesday affirmed Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions that Apple and others had shown most claims of a patent on using cameras to sense gestures by users are invalid, but said the board correctly upheld two claims.

  • March 04, 2025

    Phillips 66 'Trickery' Merits $1.2B More Damages, Judge Told

    A startup that won a $605 million trade secrets verdict against oil giant Phillips 66 argued Tuesday in California state court that its would-have-been acquirer owes an additional $1.2 billion for reprehensible conduct, including by in-house counsel who supposedly made "efforts to cover up" information theft.

  • March 04, 2025

    Intel Beats Investor Suit Over 'Foundry' Losses, For Now

    Intel Corp. has beaten a proposed securities class action accusing it of misleading investors about the financial health of its so-called foundry segment, with the court finding Intel made all required disclosures regarding the segment's performance.

  • March 04, 2025

    Albright Rejects Transfer Bid In Another Apple Patent Feud

    U.S. District Judge Alan Albright rejected Apple and Qualcomm Inc.'s bid to transfer Red Rock Analytics' patent suit against them from the Western District of Texas to the Northern District of California, saying in a redacted order made public Tuesday that the tech companies have not established the case "would be clearly more convenient" in the preferred venue.

  • March 04, 2025

    Disney Animator Tells Jury 'Moana' Was His Original Idea

    A longtime animation director for The Walt Disney Co. testified in California federal court Tuesday that his blockbuster movie "Moana" was inspired by Polynesian mythology and extensive research into the region and its culture, not the work of another artist now suing for copyright infringement.

  • March 04, 2025

    Anthropic CEO Must Sit For Depo In Authors' OpenAI Suit

    A California federal magistrate judge overseeing discovery in authors' high-stakes copyright suit against OpenAI ruled Tuesday that the CEO of AI startup Anthropic must sit for a six-hour deposition, after the authors argued that he previously worked at OpenAI and was responsible for the datasets used to train its machine-learning model.

Expert Analysis

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Rulings On Custodian Selection

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    Several recent rulings make clear that the proportionality of additional proposed custodians will depend on whether the custodians have unique relevant documents, and producing parties should consider whether information already in the record will show that they have relevant documents that otherwise might not be produced, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Opinion

    Section 230 Debates Will Continue, With Or Without TikTok

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    Regardless of whether TikTok is forced to shut down in the U.S. in the coming weeks, legal disputes will continue over social media platforms' responsibility under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for harms allegedly caused by content shared on their apps, says Carla Varriale-Barker at Segal McCambridge.

  • Religious Accommodation Lessons From $12.7M Vax Verdict

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    A Michigan federal jury’s recent $12.7 million verdict against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan starkly reminds employers of the risks they face when assessing employees’ religious accommodation requests, highlighting pitfalls to avoid and raising the opportunity to consider best practices to follow, say attorneys at Williams & Connolly.

  • 5 Privacy Law Trends That Will Continue In 2025

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    While preparing privacy programs for the year, companies should keep in mind several developments from 2024 that will carry over — namely, in the realm of artificial intelligence, passive data collection, combining data from multiple sources, privacy program expectations and managing vendors, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.

  • When Judging Product Label Claims, Follow The Asterisk

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    A recurring question in false advertising class actions is whether misleading or ambiguous statements on a product's front label can be cured by information on the back label — but recent decisions from the Ninth Circuit suggest that a front-label asterisk can help alert consumers to seek further clarification, say attorneys at Hunton.

  • 2 Cases May Enlighten UK Funds' Securities Litigation Path

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    Following recent nine-figure settlements in securities class actions against Apple and Under Armour, U.K. pension funds may increasingly lead U.S. shareholder derivative suits, advocating for transparency, better risk management and stronger governance practices, say lawyers at Labaton Keller.

  • Series

    Exercising On My Peloton Bike Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    While I originally came to the Peloton bike for exercise, one cycling instructor’s teachings have come to serve as a road map for practicing law thoughtfully and mindfully, which has opened opportunities for growth and change in my career, says Andrea Kirshenbaum at Littler.

  • 5 Drug And Device Developments That Shaped 2024

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    The last year saw significant legal developments affecting drug and device manufacturers, with landmark decisions and regulatory changes that require vigilance and agility from the industry, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

  • Takeaways From SEC's Mixed Results In '24 Crypto Litigation

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    Though the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new leadership seems likely to create a more favorable cryptocurrency regulatory environment, it must also confront the consequences of, and lingering questions raised by, the SEC's 2024 policy of investigating and charging cryptocurrency trading platforms for operating unregistered exchanges, say attorneys at Dechert.

  • Lessons From United's Axed Win In Firing Over Online Pics

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    In Wawrzenski v. United Airlines, a California state appeals court revived a flight attendant’s suit over her termination for linking photos of herself in uniform to her OnlyFans account, providing a cautionary tale for employers navigating the complexities of workplace policy enforcement in the digital age, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

  • Mich. Ruling Offers View On 'Occurrence' Coverage Definition

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    As demonstrated by a Michigan state court in its recent decision finding per-wound insurance coverage for a school shooting, the amount of coverage available under occurrence-based policies often depends on how courts interpret "occurrence," say attorneys at Hunton.

  • Exploring Venue Strategy For Trump-Era Regulatory Litigation

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    Litigation will likely play a prominent role in shaping policy outcomes during the second Trump administration, and stakeholders have several tools at their disposal to steer regulatory litigation toward more favorable venues, say attorneys at Covington.

  • What 2024's Noncompete Turmoil Means For Banks In 2025

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    A look back at the most significant legal challenges to the enforceability of various restrictive covenants like noncompete and nonsolicitation agreements in 2024 can help financial institutions address the use of these critical tools this year, say attorneys at Maynard Nexsen.

  • How The UPC, ITC Complement Each Other In Patent Law

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    Attorneys at Ropes & Gray discuss the similarities and differences between the Unified Patent Court and the International Trade Commission, as well as recent matters litigated in both venues and why parties choose to file at these forums.

  • Lessons Learned From 2024's Top FMLA Decisions

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    Last year's major litigation related to the Family and Medical Leave Act underscores why it is critical for employers to understand the basics of when leave and accommodations are required, say attorneys at Dechert.

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