Good morning. A judge in Los Angeles will hold a hearing today on whether to terminate Britney Spears’ conservatorship, a turning point in the pop star’s fight over the 13-year-old arrangement that controls both her finances and her personal life. Plus, an interview with Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, the sole remaining member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and the story on the connection between large partner classes and the competition for associates. Ladies and gentlemen, the weekend.
Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here.
Britney Spears’ fight to escape the conservatorship that has controlled her life for 13 years could reach its conclusion today as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny holds a hearing on whether to end the arrangement.
Spears has been outspoken about her desire to take back control over her finances and life, telling Penny the conservatorship has been abusive and traumatizing. In July, Penny allowed Spears to choose her own attorney for the first time, setting in motion a flurry of filings from her new lawyer, Mathew Rosengart of Greenberg Traurig, that asked for the pop star’s father, Jamie Spears, to be removed as leader of the conservatorship. Jamie Spears then filed a motion to terminate the arrangement altogether.
At the end of September, after new revelations about Jamie Spears monitoring his daughter’s texts and calls came to light, Penny suspended him from the conservatorship and set today’s hearing. Rosengart has also asked to question Jamie Spears under oath about how Britney’s money was spent during the conservatorship.
Read more about how we got here and what could happen today.
- In Cleveland, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster has let jurors submit written questions in an ongoing trial by two Ohio counties against Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health and Walmart over the companies’ role in the opioid epidemic, a high profile example of a practice that could become commonplace thanks to a rule change the federal judiciary is debating. (Reuters)
- Bruce Spiva, the managing partner of Perkins Coie's Washington, D.C. office, has decided to run for D.C. attorney general next year, becoming the latest contestant to enter the race after incumbent Attorney General Karl Racine declined to seek a third term. (Reuters)
- Exterro, an e-discovery and information governance provider, said it hired Jenny Hamilton, who is the company's first general counsel, from e-discovery services firm HaystackID. (Reuters)
- Harvard Law School received a $10 million donation from the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights and Policy to endow its animal law program. The program, established in 2014, is being renamed the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program in honor of the gift. (Reuters)
- A trustee in Girardi Keese’s bankruptcy replaced a California attorney, Ronald Richards, as her special counsel after Edelson PC accused him of trying coerce the firm into dropping its embezzlement suit against disgraced plaintiffs’ attorney Tom Girardi and his estranged wife reality TV star Erika Girardi to allow the trustee to settle with Erika. (ALM)
That’s how many commissioners of the U.S. Sentencing Commission remain of the seven members the commission normally has. That sole remaining commissioner, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, told Reuters it’s frustrating that the lack of a quorum has prevented the commission from adopting new policies or help implement a 2018 criminal justice reform law. The commission, whose members are nominated by the White House, hasn’t had a quorum since January 2019. Read Reuters’ interview with Breyer.
The plaintiffs’ firm Block & Leviton pioneered a potentially lucrative strategy in a shareholder derivative suit against Facebook’s board. The theory was so promising that rival candidates to lead the case adopted it – and were then picked over Block & Leviton. Alison Frankel’s latest column says it’s easy to understand why Block & Leviton had a hard time walking away, but notes Delaware courts used the case to remind shareholder lawyers that it’s not always about them.
Video: Escooters challenge rules of the road
The proliferation of electric scooters and similar transportation modes on city streets has created legal challenges for municipalities. We talk with lawyers and a scooter company about some of the issues and how they are being addressed. Watch the video.
- U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, is scheduled to hear competing bids for summary judgment by conservation groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over a challenge to the agency's removal of gray wolves from the list of endangered and threatened species in the lower 48 states. The Trump administration last year announced it would lift the protections for the gray wolf, arguing the species had been brought back successfully from the brink of extinction. Environmental groups sued, saying the decision threatened the tenuous recovery of the animal by relying on numbers only from the Great Lakes region to determine protections are unnecessary across the country. The National Rifle Association intervened in the case to defend the administration’s decision, as did several hunting groups and the state of Utah. The environmental groups are represented by Earthjustice, the Western Environmental Law Center and the National Resources Defense Council.
- Northrop Grumman faces a deadline to seek summary judgment against Travelers Indemnity and Century Indemnity as it fights to have the insurers defend it against litigation over Northrop Grumman’s alleged pollution of the area around its aircraft manufacturing and testing facility in Bethpage, New York. Travelers is represented by Mary Beth Forshaw of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Century is represented by Shane Heskin of White & Williams and Northrop Grumman is represented by Georgia Kazakis of Covington & Burling.
- At 1pm ET, the American Bar Association is presenting a webinar titled, "Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave ... Privacy Valuation Inferences from the Dark Web." The speakers, who include Laura Riposo Vandruff of Kelley Drye and Dr. Coleman Bazelon of consulting firm The Brattle Group, will address data sales on the dark web and the effect on privacy litigation.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
What to catch up on this weekend
"A lot of firms are thinking, ‘Look, we’ve got to loosen up on getting more equity partners—at least for a little while here—so that we create an incentive for people to stay.'"
James Jones, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at the Georgetown University Law Center, on the connection between the large partner classes many firms are announcing and the robust competition to keep associates and more junior attorneys. Read more about the partner class trend and what is likely behind it.
- A day before the National Archives was scheduled to turn over hundreds of pages of documents from the Trump White House on the Jan. 6 insurrection, the D.C. Circuit granted the former president’s request to press pause on U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order directing they be released to a House of Representatives committee. Trump’s attorney, Jesse Binnall of Binnall Law Group, argued for the stay at the appellate court. The committee is represented by lawyers from the House, including general counsel Douglas Letter, and by Mary McCord of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center. (Reuters)
- Walmart asked U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco to throw out renewed claims by Greenpeace that the company is deceiving California consumers by labeling some house-brand plastic products as recyclable when most Californians don't have access to facilities that recycle them. Walmart’s counsel, Patrick Oot of Shook, Hardy and Bacon, has argued that Greenpeace, represented by Howard Hirsch of Lexington Law Group, has failed to show how it was harmed by the alleged deception. (Reuters)
- R.J. Reynolds settled e-cigarette maker Fuma's claims that the company’s Vuse line copied its technology -- just days before a trial was slated to begin in North Carolina federal court. Details about the terms of the settlement were not available. Fuma was seeking up to $135 million in damages. RJR is represented by Haynes & Boone and Womble Bond Dickinson, while Fuma is represented by Robins Kaplan; the Law Firm of Brandon M. Jordan; Dirk Thomas; Bell Davis & Pitt and Auchter. (Reuters)
- Opponents of policies used to boost the number of Black and Hispanic students on college campuses have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear two cases accusing Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of discrimination together, which would allow the court to consider the policies in both the private and public school context. Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by conservative anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, is behind both suits. The group is represented by Consovoy McCarthy and Bell, Davis & Pitt. (Reuters)
- Clifford Chance has hired former Mayer Brown attorney Neil Evans as a private equity partner in London. Evans began his career at Clifford Chance in 2010, as an associate. (Reuters)
- Fox Rothschild announced that it has added trial attorney Paul Brown as a partner in Seattle. Brown joined the firm from Karr Tuttel Campbell. (Reuters)
- Rimon has added three pharmaceutical and biotech attorneys, Dr. Ping Wang, Michael Ye and John Murray as intellectual property and patent prosecution partners in the firm’s Washington D.C. office. The group was previously at Morris Manning and Martin. (Rimon)
Donor-advised funds have long been a tool for donors to increase their tax deductions without the creation of a private foundation. But new legislation known as the ACE Act would reign in these funds dramatically, starting by disallowing the charitable deduction for gifts to most existing funds, write Eric Mann and Jacob Calvert of Neal Gerber Eisenberg. Read more to find out how the bill could impact donors that rely on the funds.
Copyright © 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. 610 Opperman Drive, Eagan, MN 55123
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can unsubscribe from this list here.
|
