California

  • 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.

  • March 04, 2025

    Volkswagen Settling Drivers' Suit Over Turbocharger

    Volkswagen and Audi drivers who claim their cars contained defective turbochargers have asked a New Jersey federal judge to preliminarily approve a proposed class settlement that would have the automaker cover as much as half of certain out-of-pocket expenses the vehicle owners paid during the first 85,000 miles.

  • March 04, 2025

    Calif. PBM Opioid Suit Belongs In Federal Court, 9th Circ. Told

    Pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts Inc. and OptumRx Inc. urged the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday to require California to litigate its public nuisance claims over their opioid dispensing practices in federal court, arguing that allowing the state to litigate in state court would create a circuit split.

  • March 04, 2025

    Special Master Recommends Win For UnitedHealth In FCA Suit

    A massive False Claims Act case targeting Medicare Advantage plans operated by UnitedHealth relies on "speculation and assumptions," according to a special master's report that recommends ruling in the company's favor and ending the lawsuit.

  • March 04, 2025

    9th Circ. Questions UPS' Teamster Election Challenge

    A Ninth Circuit panel appeared skeptical Tuesday of UPS' argument that Teamsters representatives tainted a union representation election by chatting with workers in a warehouse parking lot while a union vote went on inside.

  • March 04, 2025

    FCC Dismisses Bid To Revisit Local Unbundling Rules

    The Federal Communications Commission has dismissed a petition to restore local telecom unbundling rules, reiterating the agency's 2020 reasons for lifting a number of restrictions on local incumbents and restating that those limitations are no longer necessary.

  • March 04, 2025

    Athletes 'Overwhelmingly' Support NCAA NIL Deal, Attys Say

    The response by the class of college athletes to the NCAA's settlement providing name, image and likeness compensation and revenue sharing has been "overwhelmingly positive,'' the attorneys for the athletes told a California federal judge as part of their bid for final approval of the $2.78 billion settlement next month.

  • March 04, 2025

    Calif. Bar Staff Asks Board To Ditch Meazure's July Exam

    The State Bar of California recommended to its board of trustees to forgo its current partnership with bar exam administer ProctorU Inc., doing business as Meazure Learning, ahead of the July 2025 test following the disastrous rollout of its February exam, which prompted a nationwide class action filed in California federal court last week.

Expert Analysis

  • 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.

  • Top 10 Noncompete Developments Of 2024

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    Following an eventful year in noncompete law at both state and federal levels, employers can no longer rely on a court's willingness to blue-pencil overbroad agreements and are proceeding at their own peril if they do not thoughtfully review and carefully enforce such agreements, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

  • 5 Advertising Law Trends To Watch In 2025

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    Although advertisers are encouraged by the incoming Trump administration's focus on deregulation, this year could feel like wading through uncharted waters, and decreased federal government regulation may mean increased state regulation, say attorneys at Reed Smith.

  • 5 E-Discovery Predictions For 2025 And Beyond

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    In the year to come, e-discovery will be shaped by new and emerging trends, from the adoption of artificial intelligence provisions in protective orders, to the proliferation of emojis as a source of evidence in contemporary litigation, say attorneys at Littler.

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