Good morning. The DOJ is pushing back on the news media’s request for the affidavit that backed up the Mar-a-Lago search, but it won’t oppose other releases. And a group of elite colleges lost an early bid to toss a proposed class action accusing them of conspiring to limit financial aid. Plus, an eight-year-old case against a former Dewey & LeBoeuf exec could be coming to a close. Grab that coffee and let’s go!
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The U.S. Justice Department is opposing requests by the news media to unseal the affidavit that prosecutors used to obtain a federal judge's approval to search former President Donald Trump's Florida home, Sarah N. Lynch reports. Prosecutors said they would not oppose disclosure of certain other materials, including cover sheets and the government's motion to seal.
Releasing the affidavit itself could harm the ongoing investigation, the Justice Department told U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. "If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government's ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps," prosecutors wrote in their filing.
The Justice Department has faced pressure from Republicans to disclose the affidavit and other details about the execution of the search warrant at Trump’s house. The government’s Aug. 5 search was done as part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021. Investigators removed 11 sets of classified documents including some marked as top secret from Mar-a-Lago.
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2022 State of Corporate Law Departments Report
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Based on data driven and reliable insights:
-2,000+ telephone interviews with in-house counsel
-1,000+ survey responses
-Detailed spend data from the Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index
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2022 State of Corporate Law Departments Report
|
Based on data driven and reliable insights:
- 2,000+ telephone interviews with in-house counsel
- 1,000+ survey responses
- Detailed spend data from the Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index
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A group of 17 universities – including Brown University, Georgetown, Columbia and Yale – can’t dodge a proposed class action accusing them of conspiring to restrict financial aid to as many as 170,000 students, a Chicago federal judge said.
The litigation has pulled in some of the biggest names in antitrust defense circles, like Karen Lent, head of the antitrust practice at Skadden, who is defending Columbia. Eric Mahr of Freshfields, co-head of the antitrust litigation group, is on the defense team for MIT, and Mayer Brown partner Britt Miller, co-leader of the firm's antitrust practice, is representing Georgetown. White & Case partner Mark Gidley, leader of the firm's antitrust group, is representing Vanderbilt.
The potential class is represented by teams from Berger Montague; Roche Freedman; Gilbert Litigators & Counselors; and Fegan Scott. Robert Gilbert, managing partner of Gilbert Litigators, said the plaintiffs look forward “to taking the depositions under oath of the decision makers at each university who participated in this antitrust conspiracy.”
Read about what’s next in the case.
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- The SEC said it is poised to settle an eight-year-old civil case against former Dewey & LeBoeuf CFO Joel Sanders, who was convicted of fraud in 2017. The settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed, would resolve the SEC's monetary relief claim against Sanders, its only claim left. (Reuters)
- Latham recruited former Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch as of counsel in D.C. As general counsel, Stretch testified before Congress in high-profile hearings in 2017 as the U.S. investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. (Reuters)
- Federal prosecutors say that a New York man attacked a court security officer in an elevator and two others who responded to the scene after the man was barred from seeing a federal judge whom he had threatened to detain with "armed troops." Robert Wilson, 63, was arrested following the incident at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, and charged with assaulting a federal officer. (Reuters)
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That’s the settlement amount Apple agreed to pay to resolve a nearly decade-old lawsuit claiming the company shortchanged 15,000 retail workers by not paying them for time spent in security checks after their shifts. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco approved the settlement in the 2013 class action. The California Supreme Court in 2020 used the case to rule that state law requires employees to be paid when they go through mandatory security screenings. Alsup awarded more than $9 million in fees to plaintiffs’ counsel, including McLaughlin & Stern and Kralowec Law. Walmart and Amazon.com are also among major U.S. employers to face similar lawsuits.
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It’s only been a few weeks since a 3M subsidiary entered bankruptcy in the face of more than 200,000 claims by military veterans who allege 3M earplugs caused hearing loss. But plaintiffs lawyers have already come up with all kinds of creative theories for why they should be allowed to continue to litigate their claims against 3M itself in the MDL, where veterans have won bellwether jury verdicts worth $265 million. Alison Frankel discusses an early setback for plaintiffs in a ruling Sunday night from the MDL court but explains why other intriguing theories remains alive.
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"Here, the Court is deeply concerned over 3M Company’s sudden, bankruptcy-eve about-face regarding the entity responsible for the [earplug] claims in this litigation."
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—U.S. District Judge Casey Rogers, who had harsh criticism for 3M’s strategy to resolve thousands of lawsuits over its Combat Arms Earplugs, made by subsidiary Aearo Technologies, in bankruptcy court. Aearo filed for bankruptcy on July 26 and said it had committed $1 billion to resolve the earplug litigation. Days before the filing, it entered into an agreement to indemnify 3M for all liability related to CAEv2. Rogers rejected as premature a veteran’s request for an order blocking 3M from arguing that it is not liable for claims against Aearo. Read more about what Rogers had to say about 3M’s bankruptcy gambit.
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- Jury selection resumes in Chicago federal court in the prosecution of R&B singer R. Kelly on charges that he lured underage women into having sex with him and obstructed a 2008 state case that ended with his acquittal. The 55-year-old multiplatinum artist faces multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a child, enticement of a female and possession of material containing child pornography. Kelly has pleaded not guilty. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison on his conviction in a New York federal court on racketeering and prostitution charges.
- U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn is holding a hearing in Manhattan in the bankruptcy case of crypto lender Celsius Network. Represented by Kirkland & Ellis, Celsius is asking for the OK to sell its mined Bitcoin, and pay its employees’ wages and benefits, among other things.
- Boston Scientific and its attorneys from Mayer Brown and Faegre are asking a Delaware federal judge to throw out the University of Texas’ claim that the company infringes a patent related to "drug-releasing biodegradable fibers used in the delivery of therapeutics." Boston Scientific said the school lost the right to sue after licensing the patent to another company.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Artist Ryder Ripps asked a Los Angeles federal court to stop a trademark lawsuit brought against him by the maker of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, arguing that his works copying Yuga Labs’ NFT art were protected by the First Amendment. Ripps, who is represented by Louis Tompros of WilmerHale, also doubled down on his allegations that the NFTs contain coded racist imagery, and called Yuga's lawsuit an attempt to "silence an artist who used his craft to call out a multi-billion-dollar company built on racist and neo-Nazi dog whistles." Yuga has said Ripps’ claims of racism are false. (Reuters)
- Donald Trump’s media and tech company was ordered to turn over information about the recruitment and hiring of Devin Nunes, CEO of the company, as part of Nunes' defamation lawsuit against Hearst media and reporter Ryan Lizza. Hearst’s lawyers are seeking information to counter Nunes’ claim that he suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages from a 2018 Esquire article. (Reuters)
- Twitter must give Elon Musk documents from a former Twitter executive who Musk said was a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform. Bot and spam accounts on Twitter have become a central issue in the legal fight over whether Musk must complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. (Reuters)
- The Boy Scouts of America will attempt to exit from bankruptcy without a $250 million payment from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after a judge refused to approve a settlement between the organizations. The settlement involved BSA protecting the Mormon church from sexual abuse claims in exchange for a $250 million contribution to the BSA settlement fund. (Reuters)
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- Mayer Brown added structured finance lawyer Ronan Mellon to the firm’s London-based banking and finance practice as a partner. Mellon was previously with DLA Piper. (Reuters)
- Widyawan & Partners, Linklaters' associated law firm in Indonesia, hired Narendra Adiyasa to lead its dispute resolution and employment and incentives practices in Jakarta. Adiyasa was at Hiswara Bunjamin & Tandjung. (Reuters)
- Foley & Lardner added Diane Hazel as a Denver-based antitrust partner. Hazel joins from the Colorado attorney general’s office, where she headed the antitrust unit. (Foley & Lardner)
- Cozen O’Connor brought on Siran Faulders in Washington, D.C., as a partner in the firm’s state attorneys general group. Faulders formerly practiced at Troutman Pepper. (Cozen)
- Gibson Dunn said Jonathan Bond joined the firm as a Washington, D.C.-based appellate partner from the U.S. Justice Department, where he was an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general. (Gibson Dunn)
- King & Spalding added trial partner Jamie Dycus in the firm’s New York office. Dycus previously practiced at WilmerHale. (King & Spalding)
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