Good morning. One again a federal judge is set to weigh whether to allow DACA to survive, New York's Selendy & Gay has become the latest high-end litigation boutique to beat the prevailing Big Law rates for associate bonuses, Attorney General William Barr says there's "no reason" to appoint special counsel for probes of Hunter Biden or the election, and environmental lawyers are preparing for President-elect Joe Biden's EPA chief pick Michael Regan. Nine days to go in 2020. It's the endgame now!

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'Dreamers' fate in court again as Texas judge weighs DACA's legality

REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Six months after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's effort to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the fate of "Dreamers" is going before a judge again.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a nine-state coalition that today will urge U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston to declare that the program created in 2012 by former President Barack Obama is unlawful, Mimi Dwyer and Ted Hesson report.

Such an order would throw into chaos the lives of nearly 650,000 people who under DACA have been protected from deportation and eligible to obtain renewable work permits.

President-elect Joe Biden supports DACA, but the Trump administration wants to end it. Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Douglas Hallward-Driemeier of Ropes Gray will defend the program. They represent 22 DACA recipients who intervened in the case.

Hanen, a nominee of President George W. Bush, in 2015 blocked a similar Obama program that benefited immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. He declined in 2018 to preliminarily enjoin DACA, though, citing the states' delay in suing. Learn more about the case.

High-end litigation boutiques beating Big Law bonus rates

REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

A handful of high-end litigation boutiques are not only meeting but beating the going rates in Big Law for year-end bonuses this season, Caroline Spiezio reports.

The latest is New York-based Selendy & Gay, founded by former Quinn Emanuel partners in 2018. The 50-lawyer firm on Monday said associates would receive median performance-based bonuses based on their seniority of $28,013 to $174,650.

That beats the prevailing rate at large law firms established in November when the Wall Street firm Cravath announced seniority-based year-end bonuses ranging from $15,000 to $100,000, combined with "special" bonuses of up to $40,000.

It's the third year in a row Selendy has beaten the prevailing market rate at firms like Cravath, though it's not alone. Susman Godfrey last week said it's giving year-end bonuses of up to $170,000, based on class year. Wilkinson Stekloff this month said it would award associates bonuses of up to $160,000. Find out why Selendy & Gay decided to reward its associates more.

Industry buzz

Norton Rose Fulbright has laid out its vision for a post-pandemic workforce in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Employees in at least 20 countries will be able to work remotely up to 50% of the time when offices reopen, but for now the firm's U.S. policy is still up in the air. (Reuters)
Latham & Watkins added three partners to its corporate department. Boston-based private equity and M&A partner Matthew Goulding jumped to the firm from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, capital markets partner Alison Haggerty left Cooley to join the firm in New York and Paul Dolman, who headed the private equity and financial sponsors group and co-led the corporate department at Travers Smith, joined in London. (Reuters)
Rutgers University will re-name a dorm after the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RBG began her law career as a professor at the university's law school. (New Jersey Law Journal)
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of claims against Balch & Bingham, a 200-lawyer firm with offices spread across the South, and other defendants by an attorney who claimed a former Balch lawyer, another lawyer and two other men conspired to have him arrested in order to steal his banking clients. (Reuters)

Coming up today

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco will hold a hearing on a bid by three Uber Technologies drivers to certify a class in their lawsuit claiming the ride-hailing company misclassified drivers as independent contractors. The plaintiffs, represented by Shannon Liss-Riordan of Lichten & Liss-Riordan, say they were Uber's employees under a California law known as AB5 that made it more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors. In November, California voters approved a ballot proposal that would exempt "gig economy" companies like Uber from the scope of AB5. Gibson Dunn's Theane Evangelis is defending Uber.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker in Little Rock, Arkansas, is scheduled to address a request by an abortion clinic and a doctor to issue a temporary restraining order blocking for four state abortion restrictions from taking effect as early as today. The request came after the 8th Circuit last week declined to reconsider a ruling that paved the way for the Arkansas laws to go into effect. The ACLU, Center for Reproductive Rights and O'Melveny & Myers are pursuing the case.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will urge U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains, New York, to block a Trump administration rule set to take effect Jan. 1 that aims to lower drug prices by tying payments by Medicare for some medications to the lowest price paid by certain other countries. The drug industry group PhRMA is pursuing a similar case in Maryland and pressed its case before U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake in Baltimore during a hearing Friday. She said she would rule this week. Regeneron has tapped a team of Kirkland & Ellis litigators including Robert Allen and Paul Clement.

Lawyers prepare for climate-focused EPA under Biden-pick Regan

President-elect Joe Biden last week tapped North Carolina's top environmental regulator Michael Regan to serve as his EPA administrator. The Daily Docket asked environmental attorneys what they're most anticipating from a Regan-led EPA.

Stacey Mitchell/Akin Gump

Stacey Mitchell of Akin Gump: "Michael Regan can be expected to be primarily focused on President-elect Biden's priority to combat climate change. To achieve that goal, EPA will need to revise standards for GHG emissions at power plants, which will not be simply a return to the Obama EPA's Clean Power Plan and will require a more ambitious target."

Matthew Leopold/Hunton Andrews Kurth

Matt Leopold of Hunton Andrews Kurth: "Any regulation not completed will be frozen, and DOJ will likely be instructed to pause litigation defending the prior administration rules. The new EPA administrator will have to choose among priorities, and given the climate focus of the Biden team, the ACE Rule, the SAFE Vehicles Rule and the Methane Rule will be targets for early action."

Amanda Berman/Crowell & Moring

Amanda Shafer Berman of Crowell & Moring: "The more interesting question is where the administration will go next in the climate fight. Will it seek to regulate more industrial sectors through the issuance of additional CO2 new source performance standards, moving beyond power plants, motor vehicles, and oil and gas operations? Or will it attempt to use a new and different tool to achieve deeper, broader, cross-economy emissions reductions."

"To the extent that there is an investigation, I think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave."

Outgoing Attorney General William Barr, saying he doesn't expect to appoint special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden or Trump's unfounded claims of election fraud. Barr made the comments at a press conference announcing charges against a third alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. (Reuters)

In the courts

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman in Chicago certified a class of Allstate shareholders represented by Labaton Sucharow, saying the insurer's lawyers failed to show that its alleged misstatements about its auto insurance claims rate did not impact the price of its shares. The judge’s ruling came after the 7th Circuit overturned his prior decision to certify the class and allow Allstate to try to rebut the so-called "fraud on the market" presumption. Allstate counsel John Clarke of DLA Piper declined to comment. (Alison Frankel's On the Case)
A former college entrance exam administrator was spared prison after admitting to charges arising out of the U.S. college admissions scandal. Federal prosecutors in Boston argued Niki Williams, who was a special education teacher's assistant at a public high school in Houston, deserved six months in prison for accepting bribes in exchange for facilitating cheating on ACT and SAT exams. She was instead sentenced by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani to a year of probation and ordered her to forfeit $12,500. (Reuters)
Former supermodel and reality star Janice Dickinson cannot sue Ryan Seacrest Productions, NBC Universal and fashion designer Erik Rosette over her portrayal as a scheming bully on Bravo's "Shahs of Sunset," the 9th Circuit ruled. The ruling was a victory for defense lawyers Wook Hwang and Edward Lee of Loeb & Loeb. (Reuters)
The Democratic-led House Oversight Committee isn't giving up on seeking Trump's financial records even after he leaves office, House Counsel Douglas Letter said in filing with the D.C. Circuit. The committee has been in court trying to obtain records from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices in July sent the case back to the lower courts for further review. (Politico)
Federal law does not shield Sanofi from a woman's claim that it failed to warn her that its cancer drug Taxotere could cause permanent hair loss, U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo in New Orleans ruled. The decision marked a victory for the plaintiff in what will be the second bellwether trial scheduled in the multidistrict litigation over the drug. (Reuters)
A Verseau Therapeutics shareholder can inspect the private drug company's records for evidence of malfeasance in its board's rejection of a funding proposal that would have alleviated a cash crunch but cut off consulting payments to its chairman, Delaware Vice Chancellor Paul Fioravanti ruled. Luke Cadigan of Cooley and others represent shareholder Alexandria Venture Investments, while David Teklits of Morris Nichols defended Verseau. (Reuters)
The Federal Circuit refused to overturn a ruling blocking Apotex from selling a generic version of Eli Lilly's cancer drug Alimta until a Lilly patent expires in 2022. Eli Lilly and Apotex were represented by Adam Perlman of Latham & Watkins and William Rakoczy of Rakoczy Molino Mazzochi Siwik, respectively. (Reuters)
White Stallion Energy through lawyers led by Chris Dickerson of Paul Hastings secured the approval of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Wilmington, Delaware, to access cash to fund its bankruptcy case, which took a complicated turn over the weekend that left lenders battling over rights to the coal producer’s property and its ability to survive unclear. (Reuters)

Columnist spotlight

11th-hour executions cement Trump's legacy. The Trump administration has urgently ratcheted up the pace of executions as the president's term ends, carrying out the first federal executions during a lame-duck period in more than a century. Hassan Kanu takes a look at the particularly grisly end of the Trump era. "A record-setting execution spree during a pandemic simply represents the nadir of the government-sanctioned violence that has marked the Trump administration," Kanu writes. Read his full column here.

Goodwin Procter fails to disrupt $120 million GM class deal in $1.5 million fee fight. None of the 27.5 million people whose vehicle value allegedly declined after the revelation of a defect in some GM ignition switches objected to a proposed $120 million settlement. But Goodwin Procter, which represented class counsel in complex bankruptcy litigation, did. The firm told U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman it was owed more than $1.5 million for its work – and that it should be allowed to get that money from the class recovery. Read Alison Frankel's column to find out more about why Judge Furman shut Goodwin's objection down, calling it "meritless."

Check out other recent pieces from all our columnists: Alison Frankel, Jenna Greene and Hassan Kanu.

Lawyer speak: What government contractors need to know about the SBA latest rule

Last month, the U.S. Small Business Administration's rule consolidating its mentor-protégé programs, which revised its existing affiliation rules and made other technical corrections to better clarify the administration’s intentions for its size regulations, went into effect. Baker Donelson's Joshua Mullen walks through the significant changes in the final rule that government contractors of all sizes should be aware of.

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