Expert Analysis


Structuring Space Nuclear Deals For Regulatory Risk

With the White House's recent focus on space nuclear power, a highly important question for companies that want to build orbital reactors, lunar surface systems or critical components is whether the transaction documents can handle foreign investment constraints, export controls and treaty-linked liability, says Kristie Blase at Frazer + Blase.


A New Defense For Medicaid Fraud Cases In Texas

The Texas Supreme Court decision in LabCorp v. Texas last month, finding that the state's False Claims Act requires proof that an omission is material, is among the first to establish that the government's lack of reaction to the defendant's disclosures rendered alleged omissions immaterial, say attorneys at Sheppard.


Fighting The Evidentiary Risks Of Deepfakes In Court

Though courts and federal rules are only slowly developing frameworks for assessing digital evidence that could have been created or generated by artificial intelligence, litigators should understand what steps they'll likely need to take to successfully challenge potentially deepfaked exhibits — and fight questions about the authenticity of their own, say attorneys at MoFo.


Pregnancy Bias Suits Highlight EEOC's Expanding Reach

Recent U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suits show that enactment of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act has drawn scrutiny to a wider range of employment decisions and an increasing focus on individual decisions as indicators of whether an employer's policies comply with evolving federal requirements, say attorneys at Krevolin Horst.


Justices' Cuba Ruling Narrowly Recasts Sovereign Immunity

The U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed Exxon Mobil's bid for $1 billion in damages for Cuban-seized property to proceed, but the ruling's doctrinal significance is in treating the Helms-Burton Act as a later, specific and self-contained statutory displacement of the default jurisdictional immunity regime, says Josep Galvez at 4-5 Gray's Inn.


Proof, Not Just Timing, Will Decide Clean Energy Credits

For wind and solar projects that sprinted to begin construction before the accelerated placed-in-service deadline of July 4, project owners must now assemble and maintain documentation to qualify the project and defend against a potential clean energy credit audit, says Peter Lowy at Nelson Mullins.


Coordinating Life Sciences IP Strategies In The US And EU

As postgrant practice for life sciences patents is restructured in the U.S. and European Union simultaneously, patent owners will need to implement transatlantic coordination that treats international proceedings as components of a single intellectual property risk architecture, says Paul Calvo at Sterne Kessler.


What Durnell Ruling Means For Mo. Roundup Settlement

While the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Monsanto v. Durnell forecloses the failure-to-warn theory that carried most of the claims against Monsanto in a pending class action in Missouri state court, it leaves untouched the question of whether the class was assembled merely to contain the defendant's liability, says attorney Gregg Goldfarb.


Texas Business Court Rulings Show Deal Terms Paramount

As the courts within the Texas Business Court system have begun reaching the substantive merits of the cases before them, they are persuasively demonstrating they will not only enforce the terms of transactions as written, but will also embrace a holistic approach to complex transaction documentation interpretation, says Christopher Pace at Winston Taylor.


Agentic AI And Securities Law: Who Is The Adviser?

Securities regulation has always been actor-based, but as agentic artificial intelligence becomes more common, it will push the law toward a partially system-based framework in which systems themselves, and the relationships between them and their deployers, are the focus of regulatory attention, says Joseph A. Hall at Davis Polk.


Series

Calif. Banking Brief: All The Notable Legal Updates In Q2

The year's second quarter brought several noteworthy financial services developments to California, including activity around a commercial finance oversight bill, the former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head's appointment to lead a new consumer agency, and a ruling reinforcing viable bank-fintech partnerships, say attorneys at Manatt.


Generative AI Is Reshaping The Defense Of Complex Litigation

Generative artificial intelligence is lowering the barriers to filing new cases, meaning that the defense bar must respond to an increased wave of litigation — but generative AI is also helping defense teams with legal research and drafting, fact witness development, and expert witness strategy, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.


Trademark Law As A Tool To Bolster NIL Rights Against AI

The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes is prompting high-profile celebrities to protect their name, image and likeness rights using federal trademark law — a powerful yet limited supplement to traditional NIL claims, says Susan Natland at BakerHostetler.


'Tiger King' Funeral Clip Ruling Offers Fair Use Road Map

The Tenth Circuit's decision in Whyte Monkee v. Netflix that the streaming service's use of another party's funeral footage in the docuseries "Tiger King" constituted fair use lays out a framework for producers to apply the four statutory fair use factors to their own projects, says Frank D’Angelo at Loeb & Loeb.


Excerpt from Practical Guidance

Mitigating Employer Risk In Immigration Compliance Visits

As Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate site visits become an increasingly important tool to verify that the details in employment-based immigration petitions match the reality of the workplace, employers can reduce their risk by treating preparedness as part of their immigration compliance program, says Morgan Bailey at Mayer Brown.


Quantum Readiness May Paradoxically Raise Contractor Risk

The organizations best positioned for the cryptographic system migration deadlines and other requirements under President Donald Trump’s recent quantum executive orders will be those able to inventory their cryptographic dependencies while protecting their vulnerability road map from adversaries, says Jesse Lemon at The Beckage Firm.


What Ex-CFPB Head's Calif. Role May Foretell For Oversight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's selection of former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra to lead a new consumer agency signals tougher state financial services oversight, especially for fintechs, as well as heightened enforcement activity and larger penalties, say attorneys at WilmerHale.


Why SEC Climate Rule Rescission Wouldn't End Disclosure

If the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent proposal to rescind its 2024 climate-related disclosure rules is adopted, companies would no longer need to prepare for the rules' specific governance, emissions, attestation, financial statement and tagging requirements, but several important constraints would remain, say attorneys at Venable.


Have Private Suits Filled Gap Left By SEC's Crypto Pullback?

In the wake of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's regulatory retreat in the crypto space, private litigants have pursued claims across different types of crypto-related activities and market participants, but whether private lawsuits have replaced SEC enforcement remains unclear, says Simona Mola at NERA.


New Colo. Retainage Bonds Shift Construction Power Balance

A new Colorado law that can force property owners and developers to accept bonds from contractors in lieu of traditional cash retainage means owners’ practical leverage now derives from administering a risk-transfer mechanism, not from controlling cash, but key questions remain about who may assert a claim and how enforcing a bond actually works, say attorneys at Akerman.



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Special Series


My Hobby Makes Me A Better Lawyer

From quilting to clowning to raising miniature livestock, attorneys share how their unusual extracurricular activities enhance professional development.




Judges On AI

Do artificial intelligence tools have any practical judicial applications? In this Expert Analysis series, state and federal judges explore potential use cases for AI in adjudication and beyond.




Opinion


Congress Must Resolve Growing Subchapter V Uncertainty

Congress must pass a bill to permanently restore the Subchapter V debt limit and clarify several other key points of the law to prevent a practical restructuring tool from becoming a costly procedural morass, says Ted Gavin at Gavin Solmonese.

Exxon Shareholders Were Right To Save New Voting Program

Following Exxon shareholders’ recent vote that rejected a bid to dismantle the company’s new retail voting program, other companies should replicate it as a way to lower the friction for shareholders who already vote with the board to keep doing so without wrestling a ballot every spring, says J.W. Verret at the Antonin Scalia Law School.



Access to Justice Perspectives


Justices Stand On Statutory Specifics In Cisco And Landor

With its June 23 decisions in Cisco Systems Inc. v. Doe and Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, the U.S. Supreme Court doubled down on the critical point that the statute invoked in a federal claim must authorize a private lawsuit and the remedy sought, says Patrick Judd at Phelps Dunbar.