Sens. Say AI Fuels Need For Data Privacy Law But Fail To Act

By Allison Grande

Members of a key U.S. Senate committee Thursday largely agreed that companies' growing efforts to amass private information to fuel artificial intelligence technologies are accelerating the need for a federal data privacy framework, but they failed to make progress on a bipartisan proposal opposed by the committee's top Republican.

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Attys Say Milberg Must Pay For Fraud In Visa, Mastercard MDL

By Emily Sawicki

Class counsel representing plaintiffs in long-running multidistrict litigation accusing Visa and Mastercard of charging improper merchant fees have called for sanctions against Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman LLC, laying out arguments for a fee reimbursement after the firm admitted to mistakenly registering fraudulent clients.

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FERC 'Waiting For Me To Die' With Late Order, Utility Atty Says

By Spencer Brewer

Counsel for the Louisiana Public Service Commission told the Fifth Circuit on Thursday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is "waiting for me to die" as it delays issuing a compliance order to System Energy Resources Inc., saying the agency was doing irreparable harm to consumers.

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Apple Ducks iPhone Web App Antitrust Suit, For Now

By Bryan Koenig

Consumers will have to rejigger their proposed antitrust class action alleging Apple anticompetitively prevents iPhones from running web-based apps that don't need to be downloaded, after a California federal judge said Thursday that they've failed to show a conspiracy or connect the dots from company rules to customer injury.

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Kroger Asks To Delay At Least Part Of FTC Challenge

By Jared Foretek

Kroger and Albertsons are asking an administrative law judge from the Federal Trade Commission to pause the evidentiary portion of the agency's in-house case against the supermarket giants' merger, saying the companies are facing too many overlapping cases in different venues to adequately prepare and present their case.

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Legal Foundation Urges Justices To Limit RICO's Civil Scope

By Mike Curley

The Washington Legal Foundation on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Second Circuit decision allowing a trucker to sue three CBD companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, saying the circuit court ignored RICO's structure and purpose.

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Oil Giants Defeat City Of Baltimore's Climate Change Claims

By Hailey Konnath

A Maryland judge has dismissed Baltimore's suit seeking climate change-related damages from oil companies including Chevron, Exxon and BP, ruling that the city's claims stem from a global phenomenon and thus are "beyond the limits of Maryland state law."

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House Vote Fails To Quash Veto Of SEC Crypto Accounting Bill

By Aislinn Keely

The U.S. House on Thursday failed to override President Joe Biden's veto of a bill that sought to roll back controversial crypto accounting guidance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after Democrats urged members to stick by the president.

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TikTok's Bid For Users' Device Data Found Overbroad

By Dorothy Atkins

A California federal magistrate judge overseeing discovery in multidistrict litigation over claims that social media is addictive denied TikTok's request Thursday for "full" forensic images of all personal devices bellwether plaintiffs used to access its platform, telling defense counsel that he's concerned about the "overbreadth" of the request and privacy issues.

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Sens. Pitch COPIED Act To Fight AI-Content, Empower Artists

By Gina Kim

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation dubbed the COPIED Act on Thursday to fight the growth of AI-generated "deepfakes," proposing a framework that would give journalists and artists control over their work via a watermarking process and allow them to sue those who use their work without permission.

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Media Matters Fights Texas AG's Bid To Revive X Probe

By Ali Sullivan

Media Matters for America is urging the D.C. Circuit to keep intact a court order prohibiting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from investigating the media watchdog over its reporting about the social media platform X, asserting that the D.C. courts are the correct place to litigate the "retaliatory" probe.

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Tempur Sealy, Mattress Firm Blast FTC's Merger Challenge

By Ali Sullivan

Tempur Sealy and Mattress Firm fired back at the Federal Trade Commission's bid to block a proposed merger between the mattress companies, contending in separate filings that the FTC's ambiguous allegations require tossing the agency's administrative complaint.

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ISP Group Says FCC Remote Learning Plan On Shaky Ground

By Christopher Cole

Internet service providers say the Federal Communications Commision needs to revisit a proposal to fund Wi-Fi hot spots for students after the U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned the Chevron doctrine, which gave wide judicial deference to agencies.

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Brief

Feds Seek Input On 37 GHz Sharing Plans

By Christopher Cole

Federal regulators intend to ask for the public's input in August about a possible revamp of the lower 37 gigahertz airwaves, the U.S. Department of Commerce said.

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Brief

EPA Grants Petition On Plastic Container PFAS

By Tom Lotshaw

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday granted a petition asking it to address several so-called forever chemicals formed during the fluorination of plastic containers for a variety of household and industrial uses.

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Calif. Nabs $50M Deal With Oil Traders In Gas Price-Rigging Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

California secured a $50 million settlement with oil trading companies Vitol and SK Energy, resolving allegations that the companies schemed to artificially inflate gas prices in the Golden State after an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery exploded in 2015, California's attorney general announced Wednesday.

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GM's $50M Faulty Fuel Pump Deal Gets Early OK

By Danielle Ferguson

A Michigan federal judge on Thursday indicated he would give the initial approval to a $50 million settlement to end class claims that General Motors LLC sold trucks with faulty fuel pumps, clearing the way for GM to drop a Sixth Circuit appeal. 

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Frontier Communications Fined $2.5M Over Quality Standards

By Brian Steele

Connecticut's utility regulator has ordered Frontier Communications to pay nearly $2.5 million in penalties after finding that the company repeatedly violated mandates for maintenance, repair of service problems and filing reports with the state dating back to 2015.

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Paxos Says SEC Won't Bring Case Over Binance Stablecoin

By Aislinn Keely

Crypto trust company Paxos said Thursday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told the firm it won't face an enforcement action over its issuance of crypto exchange Binance's stablecoin, BUSD.

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Coca-Cola Faces Revised Suit Over PFAS In Juice Products

By Tom Lotshaw

A New York man has hit Coca-Cola and its Simply Orange Juice Co. subsidiary with a revised proposed class action alleging they deceptively market juices as pure, healthy and all-natural when they actually contain harmful, man-made forever chemicals.

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Premium Baby Bottles Leach Microplastics, Suit Says

By Chart Riggall

A proposed class action filed against Newell Brands Inc. this week alleges that the company's Nuk brand of baby bottles, advertised as BPA-free, are, in fact, prone to leaching millions of particles of microplastics through routine use.

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Calif. Customers Sue Toyota Over Hydrogen Fuel Scarcity

By Madeline Lyskawa

Toyota customers in California have slapped the automaker with a proposed class action complaint, saying the scarcity of hydrogen fuel available for their Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles has rendered them "unsafe, unreliable and inoperable."

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7th Circ. Revives CFPB's Lender Redlining Suit

By Lauraann Wood

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be allowed to pursue claims that a mortgage lender illegally disparaged majority-Black neighborhoods, the Seventh Circuit said Thursday, finding the agency was empowered to enforce violations against prospective borrowers.

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Disney Beats Suit Over Post-Pandemic Park Pass Restrictions

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Florida federal judge Thursday tossed a lawsuit accusing Disney World of cheating customers who held pricey "Platinum" passes for its Sunshine State parks by imposing new restrictions on their use after the pandemic hit, saying the two women who sued could have canceled their passes and received a refund.

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Hershey, Walgreens Sued For 'One Chip Challenge' Death

By Brian Dowling

The Hershey Co. and its businesses that created and negligently marketed the "One Chip Challenge" to eat an ultra-spicy tortilla chip are responsible for the wrongful death of a Massachusetts 14-year-old, whose death coincided with the product being pulled from the shelves, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the boy's mother.

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Engineering Co. Seeks Coverage Of Deal In $80M Suit

By Jennifer Mandato

An engineering and design firm said its insurer must reimburse it for a settlement reached in an $80 million unfair business practice lawsuit, telling a Nebraska federal court the insurer wrongfully denied coverage, forcing the firm to defend itself.

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Customers Want Domino's Kept In BIPA Voiceprint Suit

By Celeste Bott

Domino's Pizza customers told an Illinois federal judge Wednesday that the chain's corporate parent should face their lawsuit over the state's biometric privacy law, saying Domino's can't shield itself given the "unusually high degree of control" it has over the subsidiaries that ultimately own the restaurants they ordered from.

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California Adds A Novel Twist To State Suits Against Big Oil

California’s suit against Exxon Mobil Corp., one of several state suits that seek to hold oil and gas companies accountable for climate-related harms, is unique both in the magnitude of the alleged claims and its use of a consumer protection statute to seek disgorgement of industry profits, says Julia Stein at UCLA School of Law.

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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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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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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Cuomo Beats Retaliation Claims In NY Trooper's Suit

By Gina Kim

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo defeated retaliation claims in a state trooper's lawsuit alleging she was sexually harassed while serving in Cuomo's security detail, after a federal judge said Friday that no employment relationship existed because Cuomo resigned months before his purported threat to seek prosecution of his alleged victims.

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Whistleblower's Attys Get $5.9M After Losing $11.5M Fee Ask

By Dorothy Atkins

A Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday awarded a whistleblower's counsel $5.9 million in fees plus $651,845 in costs and expenses after slashing their prior "exorbitant" $11.5 million fee request in May in a decade-old False Claims Act lawsuit alleging Fresenius Medical Care billed Medicare for unnecessary hepatitis tests.

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

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen the owner of the Lambretta scooter brand Innocenti SA embroiled in a trademark dispute with a property developer, a clash between two art dealers over a collection of tapestries, Telecom Italia pursue a debt claim against a competing telecommunications company, and performing arts trade union Equity hit a casting directory for charging unfair subscription fees on actors. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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Ex-Magellan Execs Waive Conflicts Over Past Shared Counsel

By Julie Manganis

Two former Magellan Diagnostics executives charged with conspiring to hide defects in the company's lead testing devices agreed on Friday to waive any potential conflict created by their prior joint representation by a Donnelly Conroy & Gelhaar LLP attorney.

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Brief

Former Colorado Court Workers Settle Sexism Claims

By Daniel Ducassi

The Colorado State Courts Administrator's Office said in a joint notice that it has settled a lawsuit in Denver District Court with two former workers who said they were laid off as part of a broader pattern of gender discrimination against female employees.

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Conn.'s Child Advocate Departs For Top Role At Nonprofit

By Christine DeRosa

The attorney who led Connecticut's Office of the Child Advocate for more than a decade is stepping down this fall to return to a legal nonprofit as its executive director.

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Analysis

Biggest Colorado Decisions Of 2024: A Midyear Report

By Daniel Ducassi

The U.S. Supreme Court's quick reversal of Colorado justices' decision removing former President Donald Trump from the state's ballots and a Boulder County judge's ruling clearing the way for landmark climate litigation about major oil companies rank among the most important decisions affecting Colorado so far this year.

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Paul Weiss Hopes To Stem Exits With New Partner Structure

By Matt Perez

Brad Karp, chairman of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, shared in a podcast published Thursday that the firm has followed a new two-track partnership compensation model as a means to combat retention issues plaguing similar firms.

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Litigation Funding 'Abuses' Targeted By Federal Lawmakers

By Bonnie Eslinger

Federal lawmakers are seeking to put the reins on third-party investors bankrolling litigation, with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., introducing legislation that would require disclosure of third-party financing deals in civil lawsuits, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., asking Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday to have the Judicial Conference review the practice.

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Lin Wood Wants Judge Disqualified In Ga. Defamation Case

By Emily Johnson

Controversial retired Georgia attorney L. Lin Wood has asked that a Georgia federal judge be disqualified from presiding over a defamation case he's facing from his former law partners, arguing that the case involved two witnesses from Alston & Bird LLP, where the judge previously worked.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

General counsel at companies involved in environmental litigation scored victories and suffered some setbacks this week, including the dismissal of a Baltimore city suit seeking climate damages as well as Marathon Oil's record-setting $241.5 million Clean Air Act settlement.

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Guo Trial Juror Booted For Googling Fugitive Co-Defendant

By Rachel Scharf

The jury in Chinese dissident Miles Guo's $1 billion fraud and racketeering case was forced to restart its verdict deliberations on Friday after a juror was cut loose for Google-searching Guo's fugitive financial adviser and co-defendant William Je.

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