Sept. 14, 2021

Good morning. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today will take up two more circuit court nominees from President Joe Biden, whose picks for the bench are being confirmed at a pace not seen in half a century. Plus: The U.S. Supreme Court is urged to defend Roe v. Wade, and a federal bankruptcy judge has approved Purdue Pharma’s multimillion-dollar executive bonus plan. Calendar, moves and so much more below. Let’s dive in!

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Inside the numbers: Biden’s record pace on judges

U.S. Senate Democrats are racing to confirm President Joe Biden’s court picks at a pace that hasn’t been seen since the Nixon administration, according to new research from the Brookings Institution.

So far, nine Biden judicial nominees have cleared the Senate, Nate Raymond reports. Many more nominees for district and appellate seats are awaiting confirmation, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected today to take up two circuit nominees: Beth Robinson for the New York-based 2nd Circuit, and Jennifer Sung for the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit.

Democrats want to leave their mark on the increasingly conservative judiciary and counter the influence of Republican former President Donald Trump’s near-record 234 confirmed judicial nominees, which included 54 appellate judges.

"There's a real understanding we have numbers now, we don’t know how long we will have them and there is zero margin of error, so we have to move as fast as we can," John Collins, a law professor at George Washington University, told Reuters.

Industry buzz

Four first-year law students will receive a $10,000 stipend and mentoring from a network of former New York federal prosecutors as part of a scholarship program honoring the career of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Reuters)
Mayer Brown has appointed Elizabeth Espín Stern to succeed Rajesh De as Washington, D.C., managing partner. De, who’d held the role since 2019, was appointed recently to the firm’s eight-person global management committee. (Mayer Brown)
Georgetown law professor Alvaro Bedoya, who once called privacy “a civil right,” is the Biden administration’s latest pick for a commissioner seat at the FTC. Bedoya is the founding director of Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology. (Reuters)
Defense attorneys for Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani won’t have two seats reserved for them in the courtroom for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ closely-watched trial. Balwani, whose case is being handled separately, had asked for seats for his Orrick defense team, arguing they needed to see the government’s questioning of witnesses up close — but U.S. District Judge Edward Davila simply stamped the motion “Denied.” See the stamp here.

Join Reuters’ Sara Merken and a panel of experts on Twitter Spaces this Wednesday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. (ET) for a chat about mental health in the legal profession. Follow Reuters Legal on Twitter to be alerted when the discussion begins.

Number of the day:

$7,102,700

REUTERS/George Frey

That’s how much Purdue Pharma could pay to five of the OxyContin-maker’s top executives under a plan okayed by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain. Drain approved the incentive payments, which require the executives to meet certain goals, two weeks after he approved the company’s $10 billion reorganization plan and largely shielded members of the Sackler family from future liability over their role in the opioid epidemic. Also at the hearing, Ellen Isaacs, whose son died of an opioid overdose, berated Drain, claiming members of the Sackler family hand-picked him to oversee their bankruptcy because he had a history of approving releases from liability. Read more to find out what Drain said in response.

Columnist spotlight:

In California recall, state’s top lawyers put politics aside. As California voters go to the polls on Tuesday to decide in a yes-or-no vote whether to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, Jenna Greene looks at pending litigation challenging the constitutionality of the process. The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta is tasked with defending the recall law, but as Greene notes, Bonta owes his job to Newsom, who nominated him to the post in March. Read how state lawyers are nonetheless going all-out in mounting a defense.

In appeal over busted $5.8 bln hotel deal, Anbang throws shade at Greenberg Traurig. When Delaware Chancery Court Judge Travis Laster ruled in December than South Korea’s Mirae Assets could walk away from its agreement to buy luxury hotels from a successor to China’s Anbang Insurance, he savaged Anbang’s lawyers at Gibson Dunn for allegedly covering up a bizarre scheme to cast doubt on Anbang’s deeds to the hotels. With the case set to be argued Wednesday at the Delaware Supreme Court, Anbang’s new lawyers at Wachtell are trying to shift the glare to Mirae’s counsel from Greenberg Traurig. Alison Frankel has the details.

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

Coming up today

The Biden administration’s pick for solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, heads before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing. Prelogar, a former member of the Special Counsel's Russia investigation team, has been serving as the acting solicitor general since January.
Derek Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers are slated for arraignment in federal court over their role in the arrest and murder of George Floyd on charges they violated Floyd’s constitutional rights. Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were charged alongside Chauvin, who was convicted on murder charges in Minneapolis state court earlier this year. Chauvin is represented by Eric Nelson of Halberg Criminal Defense; Thao is represented by Robert Paule; Kueng is represented by Thomas Plunkett and Lane is represented by Earl Gray of Earl Gray Defense.
White Castle is urging the 7th Circuit to toss a proposed class action accusing the burger chain of collecting and disclosing employees' fingerprint scans without their OK, a violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. White Castle is represented by Melissa Siebert of Shook Hardy, and lead plaintiff Latrina Cothron is represented by James Zouras of Stephan Zouras.
Colombian airline Avianca Holdings SA will ask U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan for the OK to begin soliciting creditor votes for the company’s proposed reorganization plan, which would eliminate around $3 billion in debt. Avianca is represented by Dennis Dunne, Benjamin Schak, Gregory Bray and Evan Fleck of Milbank.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in Manhattan is set to hear arguments again about whether real estate lawyer Mitchell Kossoff has to cooperate with the Chapter 7 trustee overseeing the liquidation of his shuttered law firm, Kossoff PLLC. Kossoff’s criminal defense attorney Walter Mack is hoping to stay Jones’ order requiring him to produce documents to trustee Al Togut pending an appeal to the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Togut, represented by Togut, Segal & Segal, is objecting to the proposed stay.

Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.

"Unless the court is to be perceived as representing nothing more than the preferences of its current membership, it is critical that judicial protection hold firm absent the most dramatic and unexpected changes in law or fact."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, working with lawyers from O’Melveny, Paul Weiss and the Mississippi Center for Justice, on Monday defended abortion rights in a new brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in AG Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. In the case, Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. Read more here from the lawyers defending abortion rights.

In the courts

Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Wright called the college admissions scandal a “sprawling conspiracy that extended coast to coast” in her opening statement in Massachusetts federal court at the first case stemming from the scam to go to trial. (Reuters)
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has moved to broaden the city’s antitrust lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court against Amazon to include wholesalers and third-party sellers. (Reuters)
Health insurer Aetna was hit with a proposed class action over claims it discriminated against LGBTQ beneficiaries by requiring them to pay more out of pocket for fertility treatments. (Reuters)
A rarely used workplace rule with a history of being blocked in court rests at the center of President Joe Biden's plan to require more than 100 million Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19. (Reuters)

Industry moves

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips has brought in former assistant U.S. attorney Karin Bell as a partner in Boston. Bell served as one of the lead prosecutors in the "Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal. (Reuters)
Akin Gump announced Shariff Barakat has joined the firm in Washington, D.C. as a partner in the project finance and development and tax practices. Barakat formerly was a Nixon Peabody partner. (Akin Gump)
Greenberg Traurig said it has added William Turner as a shareholder in Chicago to help expand the firm’s blockchain and digital assets practice areas. He arrives from Steptoe & Johnson. (Greenberg Traurig)
Reed Smith said it hired Mark Bini as a New York-based partner focused on global regulatory enforcement. Bini formerly was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York and in the Middle District of Florida. (Reed Smith)
Morrison & Foerster has added two former prosecutors, Katherine Driscoll and Nathan Reilly, in New York to bolster the firm’s investigations and white-collar defense practice and build a new group that focuses on state attorney general matters. (Reuters)

Lawyer speak: Analyzing workers’ compensation liability for COVID-19 infections

Some state legislatures acted quickly in the pandemic-era to articulate how workers who contracted the COVID-19 virus during the course of employment would be treated under workers’ compensation laws. But absent any new law, like in Louisiana, employers and workers’ comp carriers should turn to a more traditional analysis, write Alan Brackett and Daniel Sullivan of the New Orleans defense firm Mouledoux, Bland, Legrand & Brackett.

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