Trump Media Says Presidential Shield Deflects Investors' Suit

By Lauren Berg

President Donald Trump's social media company on Friday urged the Delaware Chancery Court to dismiss, or at least stay, a lawsuit brought by investors alleging that plans to take the platform public would cheat them out of their shares, arguing that a sitting president is shielded from civil litigation in state court.

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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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SEC Gets Kraken's Major Questions Doctrine Defense Axed

By Rae Ann Varona

A California federal judge on Friday partially granted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's bid to ax some of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken's key defenses to allegations it violated securities laws by offering crypto assets without proper registration, saying the case wasn't the type to implicate the so-called major questions doctrine defense.

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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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10 AGs Target Major Banks Over DEI, ESG Initiatives

By Irene Spezzamonte

Major financial institutions in the United States, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, could have made business decisions to follow political agendas, attorneys general from 10 states said, urging them to tackle a series of questions about their diversity and inclusion policies.

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Brief

SEC Names New Top Enforcer, GC And Other Temp Leaders

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's acting chair, Mark Uyeda, announced the appointment of five new department heads Friday to at least temporarily fill the vacancies left by the recent departures of several senior staff members at the agency.

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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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Deel Blasts Racketeering Suit Over Alleged Money Laundering

By Gina Kim

Deel Inc. asked a Florida federal judge to permanently end a putative class action alleging it enabled money laundering and facilitated illegal transfers for Surge Capital, which allegedly scammed investors out of $35 million, arguing the plaintiff is trying to pursue liability of "an innocent party for the wrongdoing of another."

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Ex-Staffing Co. Execs Get Prison After Copping To $75M Fraud

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge sentenced two brothers who built the staffing firm Resource Employment Solutions to prison Friday after they admitted lying to two financial firms about their Florida company's finances in what prosecutors called a $75 million fraud conspiracy.

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Conn. Oil Trader Says Timing Of Money Moves Sinks Verdict

By Aaron Keller

A onetime Connecticut oil trader has asked a federal judge to erase a September 2024 conviction on charges he used a go-between to bribe an official at Brazilian oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA, arguing the jury verdict hinged on third-party wire transfers that occurred beyond the statute of limitations.

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Del. Justices Reject Investor Suit Over Dropped Drug Prospect

By Sydney Price

Delaware's Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Court of Chancery decision dismissing a Ception Therapeutics Inc. stockholder suit alleging breaches of an agreement to use commercially reasonable efforts before Cephalon Inc., which acquired Ception, and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. abandoned a new drug prospect.

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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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Wells Fargo Gets Another Win In Lifetrade Investor Suit

By Sydney Price

A New York federal judge determined that investors of Lifetrade Fund BV cannot prove Wells Fargo aided or abetted an alleged massive fraud orchestrated by Lifetrade's managers, saying the investors presented only contradictory information regarding the value of the Lifetrade portfolio.

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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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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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Insights For Finance Firms, Regulators From House AI Report

Though a U.S. House of Representatives report encourages the financial sector to embrace artificial intelligence tools, its focus on ensuring high-quality datasets, transparent development and equitable access underscores that firms and regulators must strike a delicate balance between technological innovation and responsible implementation, says Brendan Palfreyman at Harris Beach.

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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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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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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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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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