Josh Cellars President Denied Early Win In $4M Royalty Feud

By Aaron Keller

The former president of the company that produces Josh Cellars wines has been denied an early win in a $4 million trademark royalties lawsuit because a judge said she cannot resolve whether the parties orally amended an LLC agreement or whether a clause requiring written alterations is controlling.

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Judge Certifies Conn. Sushi Chef's Raw Deal Paycheck Suit

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut Asian fusion restaurant must face a class action employment case led by a sushi chef who claimed he and others worked close to 80 hours some weeks at a flat rate, without overtime pay.

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OpenAI, Microsoft Sued Over Mother's Murder By Son

By Y. Peter Kang

A wrongful death suit accusing OpenAI's artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT of causing the murder-suicide of a mother and son was filed Thursday in California state court, with additional allegations that equity stakeholder Microsoft approved an unsafe, updated version of the chatbot.

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FEMA's Freeze On Disaster Mitigation Funds Ruled Unlawful

By Lauren Berg

The Trump administration unlawfully terminated Federal Emergency Management Agency funds intended to pay for disaster mitigating projects, a Massachusetts federal judge ruled Thursday, describing the case as an "unlawful executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds" for specific purposes.

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State AGs Call For AI Chatbot Safeguards

By Emily Field

More than 40 attorneys general have pushed Big Tech companies like Meta and Microsoft to adopt safety measures on AI chatbots, writing a letter that pointed to recent news of children and vulnerable people whose chatbot conversations ended in violence.

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CSX Seeks Rehearing In Conductor's Retaliation Suit

By Mike Curley

CSX Transportation Inc. is asking the Second Circuit to reconsider its recent decision reviving a former conductor's suit alleging he was fired in retaliation for reporting a hostile work environment, saying the panel wrongly overturned the circuit's own precedent.

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Series

Knitting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Stretching my skills as a knitter makes me a better antitrust attorney by challenging me to recalibrate after wrong turns, not rush outcomes, and trust that I can teach myself the skills to tackle new and difficult projects — even when I don’t have a pattern to work from, says Kara Kuritz at V&E.

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Wash. Justices Retroactively Lower Bar Exam's Passing Score

By Ben Adlin

As Washington state is preparing to transition to a new bar exam, its Supreme Court has ordered a retroactive adjustment to the current exam's minimum passing score, making an estimated hundred-plus law school graduates who narrowly failed in recent years newly eligible for admission to practice law.

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Dems Demand Release Of 2nd Jack Smith Report

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday demanding she release the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office the first time.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Shell hit with a climate change claim from 100 survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines, London Stock Exchange-listed Oxford Nanopore bring legal action against its co-founder, and the editors of Pink News sue the BBC for defamation following its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the news site.

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Higgs Fletcher Forms White Collar, Regs Enforcement Team

By Andrea Keckley

San Diego-based law firm Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP has launched a white collar crime and regulatory enforcement defense practice group, citing heightened regulatory scrutiny in the financial and healthcare sectors and rising enforcement risks for licensed professionals and institutions.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to review the influence that proxy adviser firms have, and law firms saw a 9.8% increase in compensation expenses along with a similar increase in billable rates. ​These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Watchdog Sues White House For Records On Law Firm Deals

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington-based nonprofit watchdog has sued the Trump administration, seeking records related to deals BigLaw firms struck to provide an estimated nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to further the administration's priorities, following the president's executive orders to withhold security clearances and investigate the firms.

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Ex-NJ Municipal Court Admin Says COVID Got Her Fired

By George Woolston

The former municipal court administrator for West Windsor Township, New Jersey, has alleged that the town failed to accommodate her disability when it fired her instead of giving her a short medical leave of absence after she contracted COVID-19.

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US Atty Nominee For Wyo. Was Outside Capitol On Jan. 6

By Courtney Bublé

One of President Donald Trump's U.S. attorney nominees, who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently told senators he still thinks "there were imperfections" in the 2020 election process, has been advanced toward Senate confirmation.

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Del. US Atty Resigns Citing 'Politics,' Successor Appointed

By Rose Krebs

The acting U.S. Attorney for Delaware said Friday that she is resigning, citing "a highly politicized, flawed blue-slip tradition" for nominees and saying she "fully" supports her first assistant, who has been appointed by a federal judge to succeed her.

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Bonus Spotlight

Axinn Veltrop's Bonuses Reach Up To $240K

By Andrea Keckley

Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP is giving out bonuses of up to $240,000 for its associates, according to an in-house memo seen by Law360 Pulse.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Ninth Circuit handed Epic Games Inc. a partial win by mostly affirming an injunction blocking Apple Inc. from charging developers "prohibitive" commissions on iPhone app purchases made outside its systems.

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