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Consumer Protection
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October 22, 2024
Ex-Atty Charged With Stealing Settlement Funds From Clients
A former attorney who practiced in Oklahoma and gave up his law license in 2020 amid a disciplinary investigation has been charged in federal court with stealing money his then-clients were owed from settlements between 2015 and 2020.
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October 22, 2024
Hagens Berman Tells Amazon, Apple: Sure, Sanction Client
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is fine with a Washington federal court sanctioning the firm's client — formerly the lead plaintiff — in a putative antitrust class action against Apple and Amazon, saying it shares their goal of compelling document production after the plaintiff ghosted his attorneys.
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October 22, 2024
11th Circ. Knocks Class Cert. In Emory COVID Refund Suit
An Eleventh Circuit panel vacated and remanded a Georgia federal judge's certification of a proposed class of tuition payers in a parent's lawsuit seeking refunds for Emory University's switch to remote learning during the pandemic.
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October 22, 2024
EchoStar Blasts SpaceX 12 GHz Study As 'Deeply Flawed'
Dish owner EchoStar hit back at SpaceX in a new filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, calling a SpaceX study claiming that Dish's proposed fixed 5G service in the 12 gigahertz band would interfere with existing satellite broadband and broadcast service "deeply flawed" and based on "imaginary interference."
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October 22, 2024
FCC Expands FirstNet Spectrum Use In 4.9 GHz Band
The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday unveiled a controversial plan to expand spectrum rights for AT&T's FirstNet emergency response network in the 4.9 gigahertz airwaves set aside for a wide range of public safety uses.
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October 22, 2024
The 2024 Prestige Leaders
Check out our Prestige Leaders ranking, analysis and interactive graphics to see which firms stand out for their financial performance, attractiveness to attorneys and law students, ability to secure accolades and positive legal news media representation.
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October 22, 2024
How Law Firms Get And Keep Elite Status
For decades, a handful of New York-based law firms thoroughly dominated the national consciousness when it came to power, profitability and prestige. But in today's legal market, increased movement of partners and clients from one firm to the next has begun to shake things up and create opportunities for go-getters to ascend the ranks.
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October 22, 2024
CFPB's Open Banking Rule Flops With Industry, Lands In Court
Banks will face new requirements to make account data freely available for consumers to share with fintech firms and other competitors under a long-awaited rule that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled Tuesday, drawing an immediate industry legal challenge seeking to block it.
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October 21, 2024
Rocket Mortgage Faces DOJ Suit Alleging Refi Race Bias
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday sued Rocket Mortgage and two appraisal companies in Colorado federal court for allegedly undervaluing a woman's Denver home because she was Black, asserting that the mortgage company then canceled her refinancing application when she reported the alleged discrimination.
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October 21, 2024
Mazda Buyers Ask 9th Circ. To Revive Water Pump Defect Suit
Counsel for a group of Mazda vehicle owners urged the Ninth Circuit on Monday to reinstate their putative class action alleging that Mazda sedans and SUVs contain a design defect that results in leaky water pumps, saying a district court judge wrongly found fault with their engineering expert's report and tossed the case.
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October 21, 2024
Target Wants Sanctions For 'Bogus' BIPA Suit
An Illinois federal judge should sanction a group of Target customers and their lawyers for pursuing a facial recognition privacy case even though the plaintiffs had seen evidence their legal theory was "bogus," the retail giant says.
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October 21, 2024
John Deere's Tractor Brake Recall Is Also Defective, Suit Says
John Deere sold utility tractors with a brake defect that can cause them to crash, and the company's recent recall doesn't guarantee a permanent fix but rather appears to simply "replace defective systems with even more defective systems," according to a proposed class action in South Carolina federal court.
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October 21, 2024
Nissan Fights Uphill To Undo Cert. In Sunroof Defect Fight
Ninth Circuit judges on Monday doubted Nissan's bid to undo an order certification of a class of drivers who allege the Japanese carmaker sold vehicles with panoramic sunroofs that are prone to shattering, telling Nissan's counsel the appeal appears to challenge the claims' merits, and not whether they could be resolved classwide.
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October 21, 2024
FDA Tells Court Menthol Cigarette Ban Is Still Under Review
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it's still evaluating whether to finalize a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, urging a California federal court to throw out a lawsuit that's attempting a "judicial end-run" around the ongoing review.
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October 21, 2024
X Corp. 'Sabotaging' Discovery Process, Media Matters Says
Left-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America says that X Corp. is "jamming the wheels of discovery" by refusing to answer questions or provide documents relating to Elon Musk's role in the site's content moderation, asking a Texas federal court Friday to order X to comply.
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October 21, 2024
PBMs Keep Door Open To Constitutional Riposte Against FTC
Attorneys for Caremark Rx, Express Scripts and OptumRx kept the door open Monday to challenging the Federal Trade Commission's constitutionality as they face an in-house case accusing the country's three largest pharmacy benefit managers of artificially inflating insulin prices by relying on unfair rebate schemes.
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October 21, 2024
Court Kicks Cannabis Consumer Case Back To Conn. State
Smoke and vape wholesalers accused of illegally selling intoxicating hemp products have lost a bid to keep an unfair trade lawsuit brought against them by the Connecticut attorney general out of state court after a district court judge ruled it doesn't matter if the THC in the vapes was derived from federally legal hemp.
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October 21, 2024
CFPB Funding No Reason To Ax SoLo Suit, Calif. Judge Says
Another federal judge has refused to dismiss a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawsuit on the grounds that the agency lacks valid funding, and has found that the agency has pled plausible deceptive advertising, state violations and other counts against fintech lender SoLo Funds Inc.
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October 21, 2024
Google, Meta Want Out Of GoodRx Health Data Sharing Suit
Google, Meta Platforms and Criteo have asked a California federal court to cut them loose from litigation alleging that GoodRx improperly shared patients' protected health information with the tech companies, saying the claims are "fundamentally flawed."
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October 21, 2024
Colo. Tenants Facing Eviction Are Entitled To Jury Trials
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that tenants in the state have a right to jury trials in eviction actions filed by their landlords if factual disputes exist in the case.
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October 21, 2024
Kroger Beats Class Cert. Bid In Pain Patch False Ad Suit
An Illinois federal judge on Monday denied class certification to consumers who sued Kroger over lidocaine patches they asserted could not stay on long enough to provide up to eight hours of relief as advertised, saying neither of two proposed class representatives purchased the allegedly misleading patches.
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October 21, 2024
Judge Hints 'Contract' Key To Utility Cleanup Enforcement
An Avangrid Inc. unit's responsibility or lack thereof for cleaning up a contaminated former power plant hinges on whether a partial consent order from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, or DEEP, is legally a contract, a state court judge signaled Monday.
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October 21, 2024
Belgium Joins French Courts In Telegram CEO Criminal Probe
Belgian investigators have joined French law enforcement in the criminal investigation of Pavel Durov, the CEO of encrypted messaging-platform Telegram, who is charged in France with aiding illegal child pornography, fraud and other crimes, the Paris prosecutor's office announced.
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October 21, 2024
3M Asks 2nd Circ. To Keep Vermont PFAS Case In Fed Court
3M Co. is asking the Second Circuit to reverse an order remanding a suit by the state of Vermont over "forever chemical" contamination back to state court, saying that it filed for removal as soon as it learned that the claims involved products from a facility that made products for the military.
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October 21, 2024
Truist Bank To Pay $9.1M Over 'Unwise' Trust Administration
Charlotte-based Truist Bank has agreed to pay the federal government $9.1 million to resolve claims that its predecessor SunTrust Bank ran afoul of the law by approving unwise disbursements for beneficiaries of a lead poisoning settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.
Expert Analysis
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.
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How Attorneys Can Reduce Bad Behavior At Deposition
To minimize unprofessional behavior by opposing counsel and witnesses, and take charge of the room at deposition, attorneys should lay out some key ground rules at the outset — and be sure to model good behavior themselves, says John Farrell at Fish & Richardson.
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Best Text Practices In Light Of Terraform's $4.5B Fraud Deal
Text messages were extremely important in a recent civil trial against Terraform Labs, leading to a $4.5 billion settlement, so litigants in securities fraud cases need to have robust mobile data policies that address the content and retention of messages, and the obligations of employees to allow for collection, say Josh Sohn and Alicia Clausen at Crowell & Moring.
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Series
Solving Puzzles Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Tackling daily puzzles — like Wordle, KenKen and Connections — has bolstered my intellectual property litigation practice by helping me to exercise different mental skills, acknowledge minor but important details, and build and reinforce good habits, says Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer.
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CFPB's New Registration Rule Will Intensify Nonbank Scrutiny
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recently finalized nonbank registration rule aimed at cracking down on repeat offenders poses significant compliance challenges and enforcement risks for nonbank financial firms, and may be particularly onerous for smaller firms, say Ketan Bhirud and Emily Yu at Cozen O'Connor.
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Series
After Chevron: FCC And Industry Must Prepare For Change
The Chevron doctrine was especially significant in the communications sector because of the indeterminacy of federal communications statutes, so the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of the doctrine could have big implications for those regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, bringing both opportunities and risks for companies, say Thomas Johnson and Michael Showalter at Wiley.
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Series
After Chevron: Environmental Law May Face Hurdles
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning Chevron deference could prove to be as influential as the original 1984 decision, with far-reaching implications for U.S. environmental laws, including rendering recently promulgated regulations more vulnerable to challenges, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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Texas Ethics Opinion Flags Hazards Of Unauthorized Practice
The Texas Professional Ethics Committee's recently issued proposed opinion finding that in-house counsel providing legal services to the company's clients constitutes the unauthorized practice of law is a valuable clarification given that a UPL violation — a misdemeanor in most states — carries high stakes, say Hilary Gerzhoy and Julienne Pasichow at HWG.
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6 Lessons From DOJ's 1st Controlled Drug Case In Telehealth
Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s first-ever criminal prosecution over telehealth-prescribed controlled substances in U.S. v. Ruthia He, healthcare providers should be mindful of the risks associated with restricting the physician-patient relationship when crafting new business models, says Jonathan Porter at Husch Blackwell.
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Series
After Chevron: Scale Tips Favor Away From HHS Agencies
The loss of Chevron deference may indirectly aid parties in challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' interpretations of regulations and could immediately influence several pending cases challenging HHS on technical questions and agency authority, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.
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Realtor Settlement May Create New Antitrust Pitfalls
Following a recent antitrust settlement between the National Association of Realtors and home sellers, practices are set to change and the increased competition may benefit both brokers and homebuyers, but the loss of the customary method of buyer broker compensation could lead to new antitrust concerns, says Colin Ahler at Snell & Wilmer.
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Navigating The New Rise Of Greenwashing Litigation
As greenwashing lawsuits continue to gain momentum with a shift in focus to carbon-neutrality claims, businesses must exercise caution and ensure transparency in their environmental marketing practices, taking cues from recent legal challenges in the airline industry, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.
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In Memoriam: The Modern Administrative State
On June 28, the modern administrative state, where courts deferred to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, died when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — but it is survived by many cases decided under the Chevron framework, say Joseph Schaeffer and Jessica Deyoe at Babst Calland.
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Preparing For CFPB 'Junk Fee' Push Into Mortgage Industry
As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau considers expanding its "junk fee" initiative into mortgage closing costs, mortgage lenders and third parties must develop plans now that anticipate potential rulemaking or enforcement activity in this space, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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How High Court Approached Time Limit On Reg Challenges
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Corner Post v. Federal Reserve Board effectively gives new entities their own personal statute of limitations to challenge rules and regulations, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence may portend the court's view that those entities do not need to be directly regulated, say attorneys at Snell & Wilmer.