Good morning. New York's court system and others are pressing pause on jury trials as COVID-19 cases jump, activist law students are ramping up pressure on law firms representing President Donald Trump and his allies in litigation over the election as Porter Wright drops out of a case, employment lawyers are predicting a flurry of worker-friendly executive orders and rules from President-elect Joseph Biden, and the SEC says top Wells Fargo execs misled investors. Welcome to the new week!
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Jury trials are being halted as COVID-19 cases surge REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare With daily COVID-19 cases shattering U.S. records and straining hospitals nationwide, courts are once again pressing the pause button on jury trials in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Here's a snapshot of how courts in states big and small are grappling with the pandemic's surge:
New York: Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks in a memo on Friday announced the state court system until further notice will suspend all new jury trials and grand juries statewide, citing "recent adverse trends in coronavirus transmission rates," Sara Merken reports.
Maryland: The state's top court on Thursday said new criminal and civil trials would be suspended until at least January. Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera said the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the state warranted re-imposing a suspension it had earlier lifted.
Texas: The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday extended an emergency order restricting state courts from holding jury trials until Feb. 1.
Wyoming: The Wyoming Supreme Court on Friday suspended jury trials until further notice. Jury trials had resumed in August.
Trump's law firms face student pressure to bow out REUTERS/Jim Urquhart Activist law students and young lawyers are increasing pressure on major law firms representing President Donald Trump and Republican allies challenging the results of the presidential election, pushing their peers to shun job interviews and offers.
The People's Parity Project, a group founded by Harvard Law School students who seek to place "people over profits," is taking aim at four law firms, including Porter Wright, which last week amid mounting criticism bowed out of one of the cases, Arriana McLymore reports.
King & Spalding has also come into its cross-hairs, David Thomas reports, after Jones Day and Consovoy McCarthy likewise came under attack for representing the Trump campaign or Republicans in election-related lawsuits.
The group has unveiled a pledge calling on law students to essentially boycott the firms. The group on Friday also urged firms and law schools to not hire former Trump officials.
Democrats and The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, have accused lawyers representing the campaign of undermining faith in U.S. democracy. Activists from other groups staged protests Friday outside the offices of King & Spalding in D.C. and Jones Day in New York. Check out how the firms are responding.
Industry buzz
Employment lawyers predict COVID protections, federal contractor rules under Biden REUTERS/Leah Mills Lawyers and worker advocates are expecting President-elect Joseph Biden's administration to push forward a flurry of employment-related executive orders and rules, starting with an emergency workplace safety standard addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel Wiessner reports.
With the prospects of the Senate still in Republican control, it could take months or years to undo business-friendly Labor Department and EEOC rules adopted under the Trump administration, including one that made it easier for workers to be classified as independent contractors instead of employees.
But experts say Biden could act unilaterally to require federal contractors to raise wages and ditch mandatory arbitration agreements. He could also rescind President Donald Trump's executive orders that barred certain kinds of diversity training, limited civil-service protections for federal employees, and expanded legal exemptions for religious employers.
Several experts said they expect Biden's first priority to be OSHA, which under Trump has resisted calls to issue safety rules during the pandemic and instead has issued non-binding, industry-specific guidance. Read more about what other employment policy changes could be in store.
Coming up today
Later this week
"It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this Court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers."
Chief Judge Timothy Kenny of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan, in rejecting on Friday a request by supporters of President Donald Trump to block the certification of votes in Detroit, which is in Wayne County and which voted heavily in favor of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. It was one of several losses the Trump camp suffered in courts on Friday in Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania in its long-shot bid to challenge the election's outcome. (Reuters, New York Times)
Video: Legal Lookahead Reuters journalist Alex Cohen spotlights all the big happenings in the law this week. Watch the full video here.
In the courts
Columnist spotlight: Election lawsuits might be flimsy, but are they unethical? Lawyers file frivolous lawsuits all too often. Jenna Greene has covered some of them, including the case of the consumer who was outraged to discover there was no fruit in Froot Loops cereal. But does the barrage of litigation from President Donald Trump's camp amount to frivolity? Suits that (in theory) could disenfranchise millions and upend the outcome of the 2020 election? Judging by Greene's Twitter feed, many seem to think so. But while some of the election complaints strike Greene as about as valid as suing over a lack of "froot" in a breakfast cereal, she notes there's a difference, at times subtle, between bringing an unsuccessful, quixotic suit to make a point versus crossing the line into unethical or sanctionable conduct. Read her full column here.
Lawyer speak: How to protect IP against COVID-19 scammers leveraging social media As we battle a pandemic in the offline world, we are battling an "infodemic" in the online world that makes it hard for people to find reliable (and factual) information. Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider’s Josh Reisberg explains that companies may need to take action to protect their brand when their trademarks and other IP are leveraged by bad actors on social media to promote misinformation and sell fake products.
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