Texas' Naive Witness 'Unacceptable' In Google Ad Tech Suit

By Catherine Marfin

A judge overseeing a Texas-led lawsuit accusing Google of anti-competitive conduct in the display advertising market has ordered the attorneys general bringing the litigation to provide an adequate witness who can speak to certain facts about the investigation, calling their failure to do so "puzzling and unacceptable."

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FTC Says Albertsons Execs Deleted Texts In Kroger Case

By Nadia Dreid

Kroger and the Federal Trade Commission are at each other's throats over discovery in the agency's in-house challenge to the grocery giant's $25 billion merger with Albertsons and in district court, with the grocers accusing the agency of "running out the clock" and the FTC accusing the grocers of deleting text messages.

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Colo. Gov. Voices 'Reservations' In Signing AI Bias Bill

By Allison Grande

Colorado's governor has approved the nation's first framework to clamp down on algorithmic discrimination in certain artificial intelligence technologies, although he expressed several "reservations" about the measure that he urged the Legislature to address before the law takes effect in 2026. 

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Texas Atty Chided For 'Crappy Strategy' Of Ducking Subpoena

By Catherine Marfin

A transplant surgeon at Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center accused of tampering with patients' donor acceptance criteria failed to show up to a Houston court hearing — partly thanks to his attorney — in three families' wrongful death case after being subpoenaed, in what a Harris County judge told his attorney was "a crappy strategy."

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Bungie Takes Aim At Cheat Code Sellers In Copyright Trial

By Rachel Riley

Video game studio Bungie kicked off a Seattle copyright trial on Monday by telling federal jurors a group of cheat code sellers deleted financial records and other data and even fabricated a fake press release about the sale of their website to throw Bungie and its attorneys off their scent.

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T-Mobile Deals Threaten Mobile Network Operators, FCC Told

By Jared Foretek

A mobile virtual network operator is telling the Federal Communications Commission to better protect competition in the MVNO market, claiming in a new filing with the agency that T-Mobile has been using its newfound market power to bully its brands' competitors.

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Senate Report Ties Automakers To Uyghur Forced Labor

By Courtney Buble

BMW, Jaguar Land Rover and Volkswagen imported cars and their parts that were manufactured by a Chinese company sanctioned for using forced labor, according to a congressional report released Monday raising concerns about compliance with recent measures to crack down on labor violations.

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FDIC's Gruenberg To Resign In Workplace Report Aftermath

By Jon Hill

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg committed Monday to resigning from his post amid continuing fallout from his agency's toxic workplace scandal, bending to mounting pressure for his exit.

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FCC Told Ad Disclosure Rule Would Violate APA, Free Speech

By Jared Foretek

Broadcasters are continuing their push to get the Federal Communications Commission to drop the potential inclusion of some political ads and public service announcements from proposed foreign disclosure rules, this time saying that the rule would violate the First Amendment.

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Kepler Backs SpaceX Push To Revamp 'Big LEO' Band

By Christopher Cole

Satellite tech company Kepler Communications Inc. has urged the Federal Communications Commission to move forward with a potential new sharing framework for the "Big LEO" band as recently proposed by SpaceX.

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CFPB Fines Debt Relief Co. $400K For Charging Illegal Fees

By Katryna Perera

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday ordered Western Benefits Group to pay a $400,000 civil money penalty and permanently cease operations after finding that the company charged illegal advanced fees for student loan debt relief services and falsely told consumers the advanced fees would be applied toward paying down their debt.

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Agri Stats Can't Pause DOJ Antitrust Suit Discovery

By Nadia Dreid

Agri Stats can't press pause on discovery while the Minnesota federal court overseeing the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust case against it decides whether to toss the enforcement action accusing the data compiler of helping meat processors swap sensitive business information.

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Alaska Airlines Rips Antitrust Suit Over $1.9B Hawaiian Merger

By Linda Chiem

Alaska Airlines has told a federal judge that its proposed merger with Hawaiian Airlines would enhance consumer choice and lower fares, rejecting allegations in an antitrust lawsuit that it would diminish service, cut jobs and erase a legacy brand in the Aloha State.

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CoStar, Hotel Giants Defend Benchmarking In Price-Fixing Suit

By Ali Sullivan

CoStar Group Inc. and a contingent of big-name hotels have asked a Washington federal judge to toss an antitrust lawsuit claiming the hotel operators share industry analytics to inflate luxury hotel room prices, arguing the proposed class action is riddled with legal defects.

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Calif. Atty Denies Role In Flint Water PR Stunt

By Danielle Ferguson

A California attorney representing a public relations firm told a Michigan federal judge on Monday that she had nothing to do with the firm's campaign attacking a lawyer suing one of its clients connected to the Flint water crisis. 

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DOJ Says Google Ad Tech Case About Coercion, Not Dealing

By Bryan Koenig

The U.S. Department of Justice urged a Virginia federal judge Friday to preserve its case accusing Google of monopolizing key digital advertising technology, arguing the search giant is misconstruing a case that is really about forcing customers to use its ad exchanges, not about who the company does business with.

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Landlords Bring Another NY Rent Law Challenge To Top Court

By Grace Dixon

A coalition of landlords and advocacy groups brought yet another U.S. Supreme Court petition challenging 2019 changes to New York's rent stabilization laws, arguing that a Second Circuit's March decision in the state's favor misapplied several key high court decisions.

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Snap Hit With Wrongful Death Suit Over 13-Year-Old's Suicide

By Henrik Nilsson

The mother of a 13-year-old boy hit Snapchat's parent company Snap Inc. with a wrongful death suit in South Carolina federal court on Friday, alleging that her son died by suicide after a predator extorted him by posing under a fake name on the social media company's platform.

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Ultragenyx Must Face Suit Over Use Of Henrietta Lacks' Cells

By Lauren Berg

The family of the late Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cells were harvested without her knowledge to create the first immortalized human cell line, can pursue their suit alleging Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical "made a fortune" using her stolen cells to develop gene therapy treatments, a Maryland federal judge ruled Monday.

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Kraft Hit With False Ad Suit Over Citric Acid In Mac & Cheese

By Henrik Nilsson

The Kraft Heinz Food Co. was hit with a proposed class action by a customer who alleges that the company falsely labels its Kraft Mac & Cheese products as containing no preservatives despite citric acid being part of the ingredients list.

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DC Says Vegas Hotels' Win Doesn't Negate RealPage Suit

By Isaac Monterose

The District of Columbia has urged the D.C. Superior Court to not use a federal judge's recent decision in an antitrust case as the basis for dismissing its claims against two real estate companies embroiled in a larger price-fixing suit against software company RealPage Inc.

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Ga. Court Sends Fatal Restaurant Shooting Suit To Trial

By Chart Riggall

The Georgia Court of Appeals on Monday said a lawsuit against an Atlanta-area restaurant and its security company over a 2016 shooting on the premises should proceed to trial.

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Brief

TD Bank Customers' $32.2M Overdraft Fee Deal Gets Initial OK

By Katryna Perera

A New Jersey federal judge has given the first green light to a nearly $22 million settlement, plus more than $10 million in overdraft forgiveness, in a suit alleging TD Bank charged improper overdraft fees in debit card transactions.

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Ga. Judge OKs $5M Atty Fees In $41M Acella Thyroid Deal

By Chart Riggall

A Georgia federal judge has signed off on a nearly $41.5 million class action settlement with Acella Pharmaceuticals LLC over faulty thyroid medication, while awarding the class attorneys another $5 million in legal fees courtesy of the pharma company.

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Latham Hires 2 Skadden Healthcare Partners In DC

By Rachel Rippetoe

Latham & Watkins LLP has picked up two healthcare and life sciences partners from Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Monday.

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Tiny Tweaks To Bank Merger Forms May Have Big Impact

The impact of proposed changes to the Federal Reserve Board's and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s bank merger review forms would be significant, resulting in hundreds of additional burden hours for bank merger applicants and signaling a further shift by the prudential bank regulators toward more rigorous scrutiny of mergers, say attorneys at Debevoise.

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The Law360 400: Tracking The Largest US Law Firms

By Sam Bell and Pamela Wilkinson

The legal market expanded more tentatively in 2023 than in previous years amid a slowdown in demand for legal services, especially in transactions, an area that has been sluggish but is expected to quicken in the near future.

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Strategic Hiring Was The New Normal For BigLaw In 2023

By Emma Cueto

The 400 largest law firms by headcount in the U.S. grew more slowly in 2023 than in the previous two years, while Kirkland & Ellis LLP surpassed the 3,000-attorney threshold, according to the latest Law360 ranking.

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Attys With AI Skills Command Pay Bumps In The US, UK

By Steven Lerner

Lawyer job listings that require artificial intelligence skills carry a wage premium of up to 49% higher in some markets, according to a report released Tuesday.

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ABA Faces Racial Bias Complaint Over Diversity Programs

By Ryan Boysen

A conservative nonprofit on Tuesday hit the American Bar Association with a Title VI complaint, claiming a handful of "nefarious" ABA-led programs meant to connect minority law school students with judges are "racially discriminatory."

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Trump Rests In NY Hush Money Trial, Declining To Testify

By Frank Runyeon and Stewart Bishop

Donald Trump rested his defense Tuesday in the Manhattan district attorney's criminal hush money case, closing out the testimony and setting the stage for deliberations next week after the former president opted not to take the witness stand.

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Coverage Recap: Day 16 Of Trump's NY Hush Money Trial

By Stewart Bishop

Law360 reporters are providing live updates from the Manhattan criminal courthouse as Donald Trump goes on trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election. Here's a recap from Tuesday, day 16 of the trial.

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More Classified Docs Were Found After Mar-A-Lago Raid

By Carolina Bolado

Additional classified documents were found at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, including in Trump's bedroom, after the FBI's August 2022 search of the Florida property, according to a filing unsealed Tuesday in the criminal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.

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Willis And Judge In Ga. Election Case Win Their Elections

By Kelcey Caulder

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, two key figures in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, won their elections Tuesday night.

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Senate Backs Federal Prosecutor For Ariz. District Judgeship

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 66-26 on Tuesday to confirm Assistant U.S. Attorney Krissa M. Lanham to the District of Arizona.

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High Court Ethics Bill In 'High Consideration,' Schumer Says

By Courtney Bublé

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday that a bill to institute an ethics code for the U.S. Supreme Court was in "high consideration" to come before the full Senate for a vote, following the report last week that an upside-down flag, which has become a symbol for former President Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen, was flown outside Justice Samuel Alito's house after the attack on the U.S. Capitol a month later.

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$93M Lipitor Antitrust Deal Sparks Dispute Over Fee Division

By Carla Baranauckas

Attorneys representing a class of buyers in antitrust litigation against Pfizer over the cholesterol medication Lipitor are squabbling over how to divide up to $31 million in attorney fees before a New Jersey federal judge even approves the total, according to court documents.

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Ex-LA DA Sues State Farm Over Gun Incident Legal Fees

By Elizabeth Daley

Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey sued her insurer in California state court Tuesday, alleging State Farm cost her more than $2.1 million by failing to cover legal fees when she and her late husband were sued because he brandished a gun against protesters at their home.

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Barrier-Breaking Conn. Chief Justice To Retire In September

By Aaron Keller

Saying it's "time for a change" after a career in government service, Connecticut Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson, the first Black chief justice in state history, announced he will retire from the bench effective Sept. 6, according to statements from the Connecticut Judicial Branch and Gov. Ned Lamont.

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