California

  • February 24, 2025

    Trump Birthright Citizenship EO Must Stay Paused, States Say

    A coalition of states on Monday urged a Massachusetts federal judge to leave in place his preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship while the government appeals, arguing that the injunction merely maintains a centurylong status quo recognizing those citizenship rights.

  • February 24, 2025

    Union Pacific Says Pedestrian Was In The Wrong In Crash Suit

    Lawyers for a pedestrian allegedly hit by a Union Pacific train told a jury in closing arguments Monday that the engineer wasn't paying enough attention to the tracks ahead, while the rail giant's lawyers said the man should not have been there.

  • February 24, 2025

    'Yellowjackets' Makers Omit Overlaps With Film, Court Told

    Showtime, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and the makers of the TV show "Yellowjackets" use "self-serving descriptions" and "omit similarities" between the show and the 2015 film "Eden" in their bid to toss a suit alleging the hit series ripped off the movie, the filmmakers told a California federal court judge on Monday.

  • February 24, 2025

    Bigelow Says Class Trial Is On 'Road To Nowhere'

    Counsel for R.C. Bigelow Inc. urged a California federal judge Monday to call off an upcoming class action damages trial over the tea-maker's "manufactured in the USA" labels, saying the proceeding would be a "road to nowhere" because of fatally flawed sales data.

  • February 24, 2025

    Baby Bottle Cos. Get Parts Of Microplastics Suit Tossed

    Parents who sued Philips over allegations that microplastics leach from its "BPA free" baby bottles and sippy cups saw their lawsuit partially trimmed, after a California federal judge said that the company's label isn't misleading because it doesn't promise the products are "devoid of all harmful plastic."

  • February 24, 2025

    Unions, Groups Say Fed. Employees '5 Things' Email Illegal

    A group of unions challenging the federal layoff order said the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's controversial request for federal employees to include in a weekly email five things they accomplished flouts federal law, amending their lawsuit in California federal court.

  • February 24, 2025

    Judge Finds No Reason To Recuse From Trans Athlete Case

    A Colorado federal judge refused to step down from a lawsuit seeking to block a transgender woman from competing on a collegiate women's volleyball team, writing in an order Monday that he has given the plaintiffs "free reign" to make their arguments without requiring use of specific pronouns.

  • February 24, 2025

    'Varsity Blues' Suit Against USC An 'Uphill Battle,' Judge Says

    A Los Angeles judge said Monday that while a private equity investor's fraud suit against USC over his prosecution in the "Varsity Blues" case will likely make it past the pleading stage, he will later face an "uphill battle" given how much time has passed since the high-profile college admissions scandal.

  • February 24, 2025

    Filmmaker Seeks New IP Trial Against Shyamalan, Others

    A filmmaker has asked for a new copyright infringement trial against writer-director M. Night Shyamalan and his co-defendants Friday after a jury found that they did not have access to the film she claimed they infringed, arguing that the court failed to answer a crucial question from the jury before the verdict was delivered.

  • February 24, 2025

    Venable Litigator Jumps To Steptoe In California

    Steptoe LLP continues growing its West Coast team, announcing Monday it is bringing in a Venable LLP commercial trial lawyer as a partner in its Los Angeles and San Francisco offices.

  • February 24, 2025

    Apple Antitrust Ace Returns To Latham In Bay Area

    Latham & Watkins LLP announced Monday that it has welcomed back an attorney who was working as in-house counsel for Apple to bolster its antitrust and competition practice and enhance its efforts to handle monopolization cases.

  • February 24, 2025

    Ex-Sheppard Mullin Media Atty Joins O'Melveny In Calif.

    An entertainment attorney with expertise representing stakeholders on all sides of deal negotiations has moved his practice recently to O'Melveny & Myers LLP's office in the Los Angeles area after more than six years with Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP.

  • February 24, 2025

    Apple To Invest $500B In US Over 4 Years As Tariffs Mount

    Apple said Monday that it would invest $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, weeks after President Donald Trump placed a 10% tariff on goods from China, where the company sources components for its products, and threatened tariffs on semiconductors.

  • February 24, 2025

    Museum Cleared To Fire Hurt Worker After 4 Leave Extensions

    A California appeals court declined to revive a former HVAC technician's suit claiming the J. Paul Getty Trust illegally fired him while recovering from an on-the-job leg fracture, saying terminating him instead of granting a fifth request for indefinite medical leave was reasonable.

  • February 24, 2025

    Skadden, Ropes & Gray Advising On 23andMe Buyout Bid

    The CEO of 23andMe has teamed up with private equity firm New Mountain Capital on an offer to purchase and take the genetic testing company private at an equity value of approximately $74.7 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • February 24, 2025

    Calif. City Gets Suit Over Pot License Application Tossed

    A California federal judge has thrown out a retailer's suit that in part alleges the city of Chula Vista ignored a court order and delayed scoring its application for cannabis licenses, saying the complaint fails to establish that the city violated its constitutional rights.

  • February 24, 2025

    Elizabeth Holmes Loses 9th Circ. Appeal Over Theranos Fraud

    A Ninth Circuit panel on Monday affirmed the criminal fraud convictions of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former Theranos executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani along with their respective 11-year and nearly 13-year prison sentences, rejecting arguments that the lower court made multiple evidentiary errors that unfairly swayed jurors.

  • February 24, 2025

    Prior Deal Bars Wage Suit Against Manufacturer, Panel Says

    A California appeals court declined to reinstate a wage and hour suit against a flavor manufacturing company, saying the case is blocked by a prior settlement resolving identical claims against the staffing firm that placed workers with the company.

  • February 22, 2025

    NY Judge Extends Block On DOGE's Treasury Access

    A New York federal judge on Friday barred Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing U.S. Treasury Department data, handing a win to 19 state attorneys general who claimed giving the new entity access to citizens' personal information posed a massive cybersecurity risk.

  • February 21, 2025

    Quinn Emanuel-Backed Clients Join Eaton Fire Litigation Fray

    Southern California Edison on Friday was hit with yet another lawsuit over the destructive Eaton Fire, this time by an Altadena family represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, the largest firm yet to get involved in the litigation.

  • February 21, 2025

    'I Shot Her To Death:' Video Shown Of Judge After Killing Wife

    Prosecutors showed a video to jurors Friday of a California judge at the police station following his arrest for shooting his wife, where he's seen sobbing, cursing and saying, "My son is going to hate me forever, and she's dead. I shot her to death."

  • February 21, 2025

    FTC's Holyoak Has Her Eyes On DeepSeek

    Federal Trade Commission member Melissa Holyoak suggested Friday that DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup whose rise has roiled AI markets, could have competed unfairly if it really trained its model using ChatGPT in violation of OpenAI's policies, as has been suggested.

  • February 21, 2025

    Pepperdine Says Netflix, WB Series Rips Off 'Waves' Athletics

    Netflix and Warner Bros. Entertainment ripped off Pepperdine University's intellectual property, including the colors and branding of its basketball team, to create their forthcoming comedy series "Running Point" and create a false sense of affiliation, the university alleges in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed Thursday in California federal court.

  • February 21, 2025

    Trump-Targeted CFPB Drops Suit Against Online Lender

    The embattled Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told a California federal judge Friday that it has dropped litigation it filed against online lending platform SoLo Funds, which the watchdog agency had accused of deceiving borrowers about the total cost of loans.

  • February 21, 2025

    Real Estate Recap: 'Park Ave' Effect, Federal Leases, Atty Hires

    Catch up on this past week's key developments by state from Law360 Real Estate Authority — including a fourth-quarter "Park Avenue Phenomenon" seen by top brokerages, industry reaction to the potential federal lease slimdown, and a senior analyst's projection for family office investment in commercial real estate.

Expert Analysis

  • Calif. Ruling Offers Hope For Mitigated Negative Declarations

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    In Upland Community First v. City of Upland, a California appeals court upheld a warehouse development's mitigated negative declaration over its greenhouse gas emissions thresholds — a rare victory against this type of challenge providing reassurance that such declarations can be upheld, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.

  • A Look At Calif. Biz Code And The Fight Over Customer Lists

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    To ensure Uniform Trade Secret Act security, California staffing agencies and their attorneys should review Section 16607 of the state Business Code, which prohibits contracts that restrain employees from engaging in other lawful types of business, to understand the process for determining whether a customer list constitutes a trade secret, says Skye Daley at Buchalter.

  • Nvidia Case's Potential Impact On Securities Class Actions

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    In Nvidia v. Ohman Fonder, the U.S. Supreme Court could strip lower courts of their long-standing ability and obligation to holistically weigh all relevant facts supporting plaintiffs' allegations of securities fraud, which would have a wide-ranging impact on securities fraud class actions in the U.S., say attorneys at Labaton Keller.

  • How Attorneys Can Break Free From Career Enmeshment

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    Ambitious attorneys can sometimes experience career enmeshment — when your sense of self-worth becomes unhealthily tangled up in your legal vocation — but taking the time to discover and realign with your core personal values can help you recover your identity, says Janna Koretz at Azimuth Psychological.

  • Where Can Privacy Plaintiffs Sue When Injury Is Online?

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    Website owners need to understand wiretapping laws to understand whether they may be sued for activity tracking in California or Pennsylvania courts, where the statutory damages for violations of half-century-old laws can be substantial — and a recent Third Circuit decision suggests establishing specific jurisdiction is not as easy as 1-2-3, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Lawyers With Disabilities Are Seeking Equity, Not Pity

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    Attorneys living with disabilities face extra challenges — including the need for special accommodations, the fear of stigmatization and the risk of being tokenized — but if given equitable opportunities, they can still rise to the top of their field, says Kate Reder Sheikh, a former attorney and legal recruiter at Major Lindsey & Africa.

  • Opinion

    Judicial Committee Best Venue For Litigation Funding Rules

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    The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules' recent decision to consider developing a rule for litigation funding disclosure is a welcome development, ensuring that the result will be the product of a thorough, inclusive and deliberative process that appropriately balances all interests, says Stewart Ackerly at Statera Capital.

  • Fluoride Ruling Charts Path To Bypass EPA Risk Evaluations

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    A California federal court's recent ruling in Food and Water Watch v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ordering the agency to address the public health risks of fluoridated drinking water, establishes a road map for other citizen petitioners to bypass the EPA's formal risk evaluation process, say attorneys at Wiley.

  • The Strategic Advantages Of Appointing A Law Firm CEO

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    The impact on law firms of the recent CrowdStrike outage underscores that the business of law is no longer merely about providing supplemental support for legal practice — and helps explain why some law firms are appointing dedicated, full-time CEOs to navigate the challenges of the modern legal landscape, says Jennifer Johnson at Calibrate Strategies.

  • Insights From Calif. Public Labor Board's Strike Rights Ruling

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    The California Public Employment Relations Board's recent rejection of a school district's claim that public employees have no right to conduct unfair labor practice strikes signals its interest in fortifying this central labor right — and warns employers to approach potentially protected behavior with caution, say attorneys at Atkinson Andelson.

  • Series

    Beekeeping Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The practice of patent law and beekeeping are not typically associated, but taking care of honeybees has enriched my legal practice by highlighting the importance of hands-on experience, continuous learning, mentorship and more, says David Longo at Oblon McClelland.

  • Useful Product Doctrine May Not Shield Against PFAS Liability

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    Courts have recognized that companies transferring hazardous recycled materials can defeat liability under environmental laws by showing they were selling a useful product — but new laws in California and elsewhere restricting the sale of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances may change the legal landscape, says Kyle Girouard at Dickinson Wright.

  • Challenges Of Insuring An NIL Collective

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    Sarah Abrams at Baleen Specialty examines the emergence of name, image and likeness collectives for student-athletes, the current litigation landscape that has created a favorable environment for these organizations, and considerations for director and officer insurers looking to underwrite NIL collectives.

  • Unpacking State AG Approaches To Digital Asset Enforcement

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    Attorneys at Cozen O'Connor survey recent digital asset enforcement by attorneys general nationwide driven by concerns over regulatory gaps where technological developments and market changes have outpaced legislation.

  • Opinion

    Legal Institutions Must Warn Against Phony Election Suits

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    With two weeks until the election, bar associations and courts have an urgent responsibility to warn lawyers about the consequences of filing unsubstantiated lawsuits claiming election fraud, says Elise Bean at the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy.

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