Good morning. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear historic arguments in a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade today, in a court fight that includes dozens of law firms large and small. Plus, a Manhattan federal judge questioned whether members of the Sackler family that owned Purdue Pharma abused the bankruptcy system, and new challenges to mandatory attorney bar dues are back at the high court. It’s a huge day for court watchers, so stick with us!
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The U.S. Supreme Court will take up a direct challenge to its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide as it considers a case today that has drawn dozens of lawyers to both sides of the fight.
The arguments will center on the constitutionality of a Mississippi state law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi state solicitor general Scott Stewart, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, will argue for the state. Stewart, a former Gibson Dunn associate, was named the state’s top appellate attorney earlier this year after leaving the Trump-era Justice Department. He will face Julie Rikelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights, who is representing the Jackson, Mississippi, clinic challenging the ban.
Among the many big law firms that filed briefs supporting the clinic: Boies Schiller submitted a brief for more than 500 women athletes, and Covington has advocated for the National Birth Equity Collaborative and other organizations. Milbank filed a brief for reproductive justice scholars, and Cooley lodged an amicus brief for the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. WilmerHale represented groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
On the other side, former Trump impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow filed a brief on behalf of his organization, the American Center for Law and Justice, Gene Schaerr of Schaerr Jaffe is representing the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. Others filing briefs in support of Mississippi’s position include Thomas McCarthy of Consovoy McCarthy, who is representing the Family Research Council, and Christian Strickland of Schwartz, Orgler and Jordan, who is among those representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Read to find out more about the historic arguments.
At a contentious hearing in the appeals over a bankruptcy court’s approval of Purdue Pharma’s reorganization plan in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon said she wanted more information about whether the members of the Sackler family who owned the company had abused the bankruptcy process.
Specifically, McMahon said she wanted to drill down on more than $10 billion the family members received from Purdue between 2008 and 2018, suggesting they may have tried to protect their wealth by taking money out of the company ahead of its bankruptcy. An attorney for the family said there was “not a shred of evidence” the Sacklers had that intention.
Read more about what spurred McMahon’s interest.
- Lawyers from Jones Day, Consovoy McCarthy and the conservative Goldwater Institute are at the U.S. Supreme Court pressing challenges to mandatory bar dues. The justices last year declined to take up a similar challenge to Wisconsin bar dues. (Reuters)
- Eversheds Sutherland has added Jeffrey Smith to Konexo, its alternative legal and compliance services business. Smith, a former associate general counsel at natural resources company BHP Group, is now Konexo’s head of legal services. (Reuters)
- Burford Capital has expanded its investment team with three lawyers from WilmerHale, Patterson Belknap and Sidley Austin. (Reuters)
- After a jury found that former King & Spalding associate David Joffe did not prove allegations the firm retaliated against him after he reported its attorneys had misled a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni asked Joffe to explain why his claim for wrongful termination of benefits shouldn’t be tossed too. (Reuters)
Number of the day: $55,228,866.70
That’s the legal-fee award U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin in Chicago approved for “exemplary” class lawyers who represented direct purchasers alleging a price-fixing conspiracy in the chicken industry. The law firms Lockridge Grindal Nauen and Pearson, Simon & Warshaw served as court-appointed interim co-lead counsel, and Hart, McLaughlin & Eldridge served as interim liaison counsel. “A substantial award is warranted here as a proper incentive for high quality counsel to take on complex cases, requiring a massive investment of time and money, with such a high risk of non-payment,” Durkin wrote. The judge earlier granted final approval to settlements with defendants including Pilgrim's Pride and Tyson Foods.
Dolores Troiani, a longtime lawyer for one of the women who accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault, received a PACER notification one day in 2016, alerting her that her motion and an accompanying exhibit had been docketed in her client’s defamation case. The surprise twist: Troiani hadn’t filed them. The FBI figured out that the fake filings had been engineered by a fervent Cosby supporter, who was masquerading as Troiani and later convicted for making false statements. Last week, the 3rd Circuit overturned his conviction and ordered his release. Alison Frankel explains the court’s reasoning – and why Troiani believes it was wrong.
"The people of California should not be precluded from attempting to prevent mass murders simply because they don’t occur regularly enough in the eyes of an unelected Article III judge."
9th Circuit Judge Andrew Hurwitz, who wrote a concurrence hitting back at his fellow 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s dissent from the full court’s 7-4 ruling reinstating California’s ban on high-capacity magazines. After the en banc court held that California’s desire to stop mass shootings was a sufficient reason for the ban, VanDyke said those events are statistically rare and the ruling ignores “the life-threatening impact of being forced to reload in a self-defense situation.” Read more about the 9th Circuit’s decision.
- U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark is set to appear before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing to serve on the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Circuit. Stark would bring extensive experience with patent law to the appeals court, as his Delaware court is one of the most active IP benches in the country. The judiciary committee is also set to consider ACLU voting rights litigation leader Dale Ho to serve on the Manhattan federal district court, and Silicon Valley-based Winston partner Kathi Vidal to lead the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Watch the committee hearing here.
- D.C. Circuit Judges Sri Srinivasan, Judith Rogers and David Tatel will take up a public-records lawsuit that could force the U.S. Justice Department to release more information about why the Trump-era DOJ did not bring an obstruction charge against former President Donald Trump tied to the special counsel’s Russia probe. DOJ, represented by appellate veteran Sarah Harrington, challenged a federal trial judge’s order requiring the release of an internal memo written in 2019 that recommended then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr not bring an obstruction case against Trump.
- The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce will hear from former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and others at a hearing that will delve into “targeted reforms to tech’s legal immunity” under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. The law broadly shields tech companies from liability for content posted by users. Other panelists include Eugene Volokh of UCLA School of Law, Mary Anne Franks of the University of Miami School of Law and Daniel Lyons of the Boston College Law School. Watch the hearing here.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
- Federal courts blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to enforce two more mandates for COVID-19 vaccines, impacting millions of American workers. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, temporarily blocked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from enforcing its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers until the court can resolve challenges, and U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove in Frankfort, Kentucky, entered an order barring enforcement in three states of a regulation that new government contracts must include clauses requiring that contractors' employees get vaccinated. (Reuters)
- Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said that Mindbody shareholders, led by investment firm Luxor Capital Group, had adequately alleged that private equity firm Vista knowingly failed to disclose information about the process behind its $1.9 billion deal to take Mindbody private. Vista is represented by Kirkland & Ellis, while the shareholders are represented by Bernstein Litowitz. (Reuters)
- In a ruling that could have broad implications for contract workers impacted by COVID-19-related layoffs, a 4th Circuit panel said a company that shut down construction on a nuclear power plant was not obligated to provide advance notice that its contractors' 4,000 employees would be losing their jobs. The court handed a win to South Carolina utility SCANA Corp, represented by Ted Speth of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, holding that the company was not the workers’ employer under the WARN Act. (Reuters)
- U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant in Texas rejected motions to dismiss the U.S. Justice Department’s first-ever criminal antitrust price-fixing claims concerning wages paid to contractors. The defendants’ lawyers, including a team from Locke Lord, called the charges “unprecedented” and claimed they violated due process rights. (Reuters)
- A three-judge D.C. Circuit panel expressed skepticism toward former President Donald Trump's bid to prevent a special U.S. congressional committee from obtaining records about his conversations and actions before and during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot at the U.S. Capitol. (Reuters)
- Fried Frank has added Ilan Graff, the Manhattan deputy U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution of state-owned Turkish lender Halkbank, as a New York-based white-collar partner. Graff will reunite with his former boss Geoffrey Berman, who leads Fried Frank's white-collar defense practice. (Reuters)
- Britt Whitesell Biles has joined Womble Bond Dickinson’s Washington, D.C., office, where she will be part of the firm’s business litigation group and work on its white collar and investigations team. Biles was previously a general counsel at the U.S. Small Business Administration, and a special assistant to the President and associate White House counsel during the Trump administration. (Reuters)
- Matthew Segal, the former chief of the special prosecutions unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, joined Stoel Rives as a partner in the litigation practice group. Segal will work out of the firm’s Sacramento office. (Stoel Rives)
- Fox Rothschild picked up Kari Barnes as a partner in the firm’s intellectual property department based out of L.A. Barnes was previously a shareholder at Buchalter.
(Fox Rothschild)
Companies in the cryptocurrency space should be prepared for increased scrutiny from federal regulatory agencies and the U.S. Justice Department, write Daniel Stein, Glen Kopp and Brendan Harrington of Mayer Brown. The Justice Department last month announced a new crypto enforcement team focused on complex investigations and prosecutions. For now, the authors write, regulation through enforcement will be the norm.
Learn more about how DOJ has geared up for bigger fights.
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