Analysis

Companies Risk White House Wrath By Keeping DEI Programs

By Sarah Jarvis

For companies pushing forward with their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives amid a torrent of attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies, there are myriad potential risks ahead — and murky questions about the legal parameters of Trump's anti-DEI agenda.

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Roundup

Employment Authority: Inside Trump's DEI Takedown

Law360 Employment Authority covers the biggest employment cases and trends. Catch up this week with coverage rounding up President Donald Trump's orders rolling back diversity programs and LGBTQ rights, how employers need to comply with New York's new prenatal leave law, and why a Starbucks' union contract has lost momentum. 

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Analysis

Trump Treads Into Murky Waters With TikTok Gambit

By Alex Lawson

Nearly five years after he sought to kill the social media platform TikTok, President Donald Trump has opened his second term with a legally questionable bid to save it, cloaking the app's future in the U.S. market in even more uncertainty.

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'Secret Plot' Drove Perella Weinberg Split, Judge Hears

By Frank G. Runyeon

A New York state judge heard dueling claims of deception on Friday as counsel for investment banking firm Perella Weinberg and a group of former partners each accused the other of a "secret plot" that violated their partnership agreement, kicking off a trial centering on a sudden split in the firm a decade ago.

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Intuitive Doesn't Owe 'Free-Riding' Firm $140M, Expert Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

Robotic surgery pioneer Intuitive Surgical isn't a monopolist since it competes with other surgery options and a "free-riding" surgical repair company isn't due up to $140 million in profits allegedly lost due to Intuitive blocking its unauthorized part-refurbishment service, an economist testified Friday in a California antitrust trial.

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Lutnick Settles Chancery Suit Ahead Of Commerce Hearing

By Jeff Montgomery

Billionaire Howard L. Lutnick, President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of commerce, has settled a Delaware Court of Chancery derivative suit accusing the Newmark Inc. principal executive officer of "blowing smoke" around his part in a $500 million stock-value gain in order to receive a $50 million bonus.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

A new Law360 Pulse survey shows that more than 90% of in-house counsel have no regrets about their decisions to join companies. In litigation stemming from Purdue Pharma's sales of OxyContin that fueled the opioid crisis, the Sackler family would lose control of Purdue and pay $6.5 billion in the latest proposed settlement. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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FTC Says Noncompete Ban Defense Is Its Job, Not Intervenor's

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission is urging the Fifth and Eleventh circuits not to permit an entrepreneurs group to intervene in support of the FTC's currently blocked noncompete ban in case the commission opts to abandon its defense, arguing Congress left it up to government agencies to defend their own regulations.

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Pfizer To Pay $59M Over Unit's Migraine Drug Kickbacks

By Lauren Berg

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that Pfizer has agreed in New York federal court to pay $59.7 million to resolve allegations that one of its subsidiaries caused false Medicare claims by paying kickbacks to physicians to induce prescriptions of migraine drug Nurtec ODT.

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Tech Co. Founder Gets 2.5 Years In $14M Payroll Tax Case

By Anna Scott Farrell

A New Hampshire federal judge sentenced the founder of a technology startup to two and a half years in prison for failing to pay more than $14 million in employment and personal taxes, granting a request from prosecutors who said incarceration was the only meaningful sentence.

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Feds' Madigan Theory 'Doesn't Line Up,' His Atty Tells Jury

By Celeste Bott

Counsel for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan told an Illinois federal jury Friday that prosecutors attempting to convict him of racketeering have painted an "incomplete and misleading" picture of a crooked politician at trial, but have failed to meet their burden to prove he ever acted with corrupt intent or engaged in a "this for that" exchange for his official action.

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Amex GBT Faces Sept. Trial In DOJ Case Against $570M Deal

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge set a September trial date Friday for the U.S. Department of Justice suit challenging American Express Global Business Travel Inc.'s planned $570 million purchase of CWT Holdings LLC, rejecting company assertions of "exigencies" necessitating a decision by June.

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Musk Can't Yet Appeal Twitter Investors' Cert., 9th Circ. Says

By Lauren Berg

The Ninth Circuit on Friday rebuffed Elon Musk's request to immediately appeal a California federal judge's decision to certify a class of thousands of Twitter investors over claims the billionaire businessman fraudulently tweeted about the social media company's alleged bot problem to get out of his $44 billion acquisition.

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Chancery Keeps $4.6B Cvent Sale Challenge Alive

By Jeff Montgomery

Most claims moved forward toward trial Friday in a Delaware Court of Chancery suit alleging breaches of fiduciary duty by the directors and CEO of cloud-based event management technology provider Cvent Holding Corp. and its controlling stockholder in a $4.6 billion take-private sale to affiliates of Blackstone Inc.

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BCBS Has 'High Hurdle' For New $13M Trial, Mich. Judge Says

By Danielle Ferguson

A Michigan federal judge on Friday told Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan it had a "high hurdle" to meet for him to say a new trial is warranted, after a jury awarded almost $13 million to a worker who was fired after being denied religious accommodation from the company's COVID-19 mandatory vaccine policy.

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Brief

Thomson Reuters Settles With Ex-Worker Who Criticized BLM

By Julie Manganis

Thomson Reuters has settled a lawsuit claiming it wrongly fired a white data scientist in its Boston office for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement on a company messaging system, according to a filing in federal court.

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SEC's Corporation Finance Director Joins Freshfields

By Andrea Keckley

Freshfields is touting the addition of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's director of the Division of Corporation Finance, saying Friday that he will boost the firm's offerings on securities, governance, corporate and regulatory matters.

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Harter Secrest Adds Former PGT, LendingTree GC In New York

By Christine DeRosa

Harter Secrest & Emery LLP has expanded its corporate law offerings in New York with the addition of the former general counsel for building materials maker PGT Innovations Inc. and co-general counsel for LendingTree.

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End-Of-Year FCPA Enforcement Surge Holds Clues For 2025

The last three months of 2024 saw more Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions than any quarter in the previous four years, providing lessons for companies — even as a new administration raises doubts about whether this momentum will continue, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

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What's Next For Accounting Enforcement After SEC's Big 2024

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the Trump administration will likely continue to focus enforcement efforts on many of the same accounting and auditing issues that it pursued over the past year — but other areas, such as ESG, internal controls and cryptocurrency cases, may fall out of focus, say attorneys at Debevoise.

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Mentorship Resolutions For The New Year

Attorneys tend to focus on personal achievements or career milestones when they set yearly goals, but one important area often gets overlooked in this process — mentoring relationships, which are some of the most effective tools for professional growth, say Kelly Galligan at Rutan & Tucker and Andra Greene at Phillips ADR.

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Law Students Scramble As Federal Gov't Yanks Job Offers

By Alison Knezevich

Law students across the country are scrambling to figure out their next steps after a range of federal agencies yanked job and internship offers this week because of the new hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration.

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Mass Tort Atty Files Ch. 11 Owing $202M To Litigation Funders

By Hilary Russ

A Houston plaintiffs attorney has filed for personal Chapter 11 protection with more than $202 million of litigation funding liabilities, according to his petition in the Southern District of Texas.

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Feud Heats Up Over Estate Of Wife Killed By Ex-BigLaw Atty

By Emily Johnson

The godson of a Georgia woman killed by her husband, former Fisher Phillips partner Claud "Tex" McIver, has said her cousins shouldn't get proceeds from a settlement of an underlying wrongful death suit, calling them "strangers" to her and claiming "the redistributive windfall" they're asking for "has no place in Georgia law."

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Boston Firm Says IT Vendor Holding Computers 'Hostage'

By Julie Manganis

Boston-based law firm Melick & Porter LLP says a company it hired to manage its information technology is now holding its computer network and data "hostage" by refusing to cooperate with the transition to a new vendor unless Melick pays it $380,000.

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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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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Phillips Black Inc., Ridley McGreevy & Winocur PC and King & Spalding LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court revived claims from a woman on death row in Oklahoma that prosecutors unfairly sex-shamed her and relied on gender-based stereotypes to convince a jury that she had killed her estranged husband for insurance money.

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

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen Axa Insurance and Admiral face a claim from a former lawyer recently exposed for personal injury fraud, the owner of Reading Football Club sue a prospective buyer and mobile network Lycamobile tackle action by Spanish network Yogio. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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