Good morning. Google and its competitors could face a slew of legal challenges if the U.S. Supreme Court limits a federal immunity shield for tech companies. Plus, a lawyer for Donald Trump hires an attorney to represent himself amid the DOJ's classified documents investigation, and the federal judge overseeing the case against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried suggested the disgraced crypto mogul might deserve to be jailed pending trial due to potential witness tampering. It’s Friday. Let’s dig in.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday is set to take up a major case exploring the scope of the “Section 230” federal immunity shield for tech companies. A ruling against Google in the case before the justices could expose the company and other online giants to legal challenges from many directions, legal experts told our colleague Andrew Chung.
A broad decision undermining Section 230 immunity, which shields companies from responsibility for content posted online by their users, could threaten services including search engines, job listings and product reviews. Anyone dissatisfied with a platform's action could look for a legal basis to sue, said Eric Goldman, a director at the University of Santa Clara Law School's High Tech Law Institute. "There's going to be more lawsuits than there are atoms in the universe," he said.
The dispute at the Supreme Court involves an appeal by the family of a young American woman fatally shot in a November 2015 rampage by Islamist militants in Paris. Eric Schnapper, a professor at University of Washington’s law school, is lead counsel for the family. Google, represented by Lisa Blatt of Williams & Connolly, has attracted support from technology companies, scholars, legislators, libertarians and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
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Cozen O’Connor added four patent attorneys and several other IP professionals to anchor a new office in Boulder, Colorado, which the firm said is slated to open soon. The new hires arrive from Lathrop GPM. (Reuters)
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Cryptocurrency payments startup MoonPay brought on Lindsey Haswell from Blockchain.com as chief legal officer, marking the company's first in-house lawyer hire. Miami-based MoonPay provides payment infrastructure for crypto and non-fungible token transactions. (Reuters)
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British litigation funders say their industry will face “seismic consequences” if an appeal over funding agreements is allowed by the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court. Truckmaker DAF is challenging funding agreements entered into by two claimant groups which brought lawsuits over the company’s alleged involvement in a cartel. (Reuters)
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The New York state court system has withdrawn a requirement that judges and employees receive COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new filing in a lawsuit by Poughkeepsie city court judge Frank Mora, who claims he should have been granted a religious exemption. The court system last April fired 103 employees who did not comply with the vaccine mandate and required Mora and three other judges to work remotely. (Reuters)
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The U.S. Senate confirmed Daniel Calabretta, a California state judge, to serve on the Sacramento-based Eastern District of California. Calabretta had served on the Superior Court since 2019. The Biden administration thus far has appointed 74 federal district court judges.
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REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton |
Congress overhauled disclosure rules for federal judges last April to assure public confidence that judicial decisions haven’t been tainted by secret financial considerations. But the new law does not undermine longstanding precedent that allows judges to invest in index funds without worrying about the funds’ ownership of shares in public companies, according to a ruling on Wednesday from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of Oakland. Alison Frankel reports on Rogers’ notably tart-tongued decision denying a motion asking her to step aside from consolidated patent litigation in which she has already entered summary judgment against the patent holder, Cellspot. Cellspot’s theory about index funds could have had huge consequences, Frankel says, but Rogers squashed it like a bug.
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"I will note I don't use TikTok, and I would not advise anybody to do so because of these concerns." |
—Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, announcing a joint effort by the United States’ Justice and Commerce departments to block adversaries from "trying to siphon our best technology." Monaco unveiled the "disruptive technology strike force" Thursday at a speech in London, during which she also addressed concerns about Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok. The U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in 2020 ordered Chinese company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China's government. That divestment has not taken place.
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Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero in San Francisco will consider the fairness of Major League Baseball’s agreement to pay $185 million to resolve a wage and overtime class action filed by minor league baseball players under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Court-appointed class leaders at Korein Tillery and Pearson, Simon & Warshaw are seeking $55 million in legal fees for their work on the settlement. Lawyers from Proskauer Rose represented MLB. The league and its teams deny all of the claims in the lawsuit.
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Longtime Republican Party operative Jesse Benton will be sentenced in D.C. federal court for his role in a scheme to unlawfully funnel a $25,000 foreign campaign contribution from a Russian national to Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. “There is no question that [Benton] knew what he was doing, and that he knew what he was doing was wrong,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. Benton, the government said, was on probation at the time for a previous campaign finance offense. Prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden to sentence Benton, who was found guilty at trial, to 24 months in prison.
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In San Jose federal court, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila will weigh a request from former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to remain out of prison pending his appeal after a jury convicted him of fraud. Davila in December sentenced Balwani to nearly 13 years in prison on charges of defrauding investors and patients of the now-defunct blood testing startup led by Elizabeth Holmes. Davila sentenced Holmes last year to more than 11 years in prison for her role defrauding investors in Theranos, which was once valued at $9 billion. Holmes is appealing to the 9th Circuit.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes. |
What to read this weekend |
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U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan intimated that Sam Bankman-Fried might deserve to be jailed pending trial after prosecutors suggested that the indicted FTX co-founder may have tampered with witnesses while out on bail. Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried’s use of a virtual private network indicates he may be trying to hide some of his online activity. The judge questioned whether prosecutors' proposal to largely ban Bankman-Fried's internet use went far enough, citing the risk he could use his parents' unmonitored devices. Bankman-Fried's lawyers said his attempts to contact FTX's current chief executive and general counsel were efforts to help, not interfere. (Reuters)
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A workers union in New York said in a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board that Tesla on Wednesday laid off more than 30 employees at its Buffalo plant in retaliation for launching a campaign to unionize. The union also said workers received an email with an updated policy prohibiting them from recording workplace meetings without all participants' permission–an alleged violation of federal labor laws. (Reuters)
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The founder of WallStreetBets, credited with helping ignite investors' frenzy into "meme" stocks, is suing Reddit in Oakland federal court, accusing it of wrongly banning him from moderating the community and undermining his trademark rights. Reddit called his complaint a “frivolous lawsuit with no basis in reality.” (Reuters)
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Alaska Airlines must pay Richard Branson’s Virgin Group close to $160 million as “minimum royalty” under a trademark agreement even though the U.S. airline no longer uses the Virgin brand, a London court ruled. The judge said a minimum royalty is a flat fee payable for the right to use the brand name, whether or not that right is exercised. An Alaska Airlines spokesperson said the case is without merit and that the airline plans to appeal the decision. (Reuters)
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Fox News told a judge that Dominion Voting Systems has no evidence to support its “staggering” $1.6 billion damages claim in a defamation lawsuit over the network's coverage of election-rigging conspiracy theories. Fox in a counterclaim alleged that Dominion's damages claim has "no connection" to its value "or any supposed injury it suffered" after the network aired debunked claims that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the election against Republican Donald Trump and in favor of his Democratic rival Joe Biden. (Reuters)
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Hogan Lovells hired Matt McTygue as a partner in its private equity practice in Boston. McTygue comes from Locke Lord. (Hogan Lovells)
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Kirkland brought on Cristina Weidner in Munich to lead the firm’s restructuring practice in Germany. She was previously at Clifford Chance. (Kirkland)
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McGuireWoods added corporate and securities litigator Chelsea Hilliard in Dallas from Foley & Lardner. (McGuireWoods)
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BakerHostetler hired Los Angeles-based intellectual property partners Ed Poplawski and Olivia Kim from Wilson Sonsini. (BakerHostetler)
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Dechert added Saira Henry as a London-based antitrust and competition partner from Orrick. (Dechert)
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Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss brought on Tim Taylor as a partner in Doha and Dubai. Taylor joins the firm from King & Wood Mallesons, where he was the Middle East practice head. (Lewis Baach)
>> More moves to share? Please drop us a note at LegalCareerTracker@thomsonreuters.com. |
Venue and settlement considerations in cases involving state attorneys general are different than those brought by other plaintiffs, write Amy Pritchard Williams, Ryan Strasser and Ashley Taylor of Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders. State AGs often bring cases in state court, and that means assembling a legal team familiar with local rules and customs. Read more about developing a fresh strategy.
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