The hedge fund industry has urged the Eighth Circuit on to overturn a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission victory against a penny stock trader, arguing that the SEC's case threatens to "make a felon of every institutional investor" by declaring them unregistered securities dealers.
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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2025 Law360 iOS App Law360 Android App Follow Law360 on Facebook Follow Law360 on LinkedIn Follow Law360 on Twitter

TOP NEWS

SEC's Dealer Suit May Criminalize Major Investors, Funds Say

By Jessica Corso

The hedge fund industry has urged the Eighth Circuit on to overturn a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission victory against a penny stock trader, arguing that the SEC's case threatens to "make a felon of every institutional investor" by declaring them unregistered securities dealers.

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CFTC Signals Openness To Regulate Sports Event Contracts

By Alex Lawson

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a public roundtable to discuss its regulation of contracts tied to high-profile sporting events Wednesday, with the acting chair bemoaning the commission's current policy as a "sinkhole of legal uncertainty."

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SEC Assistant Chief Litigation Counsel Joins Carlton Fields

By Katryna Perera

An assistant chief litigation counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has left the agency to join Carlton Fields as a shareholder in the firm's securities litigation and enforcement practice in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Thursday.

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Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2025 Editorial Boards

Law360 is looking for avid readers of our publications to serve as members of our 2025 editorial advisory boards.

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PRACTICE GROUP OF THE YEAR

Appellate Group Of The Year: Gibson Dunn

By Christopher Cole

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP notched critical wins as the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an Eighth Amendment challenge to a city's public camping law and gave insurers a voice in mass tort bankruptcies, making it one of the 2024 Law360 Appellate Groups of the Year.

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POLICY & REGULATION

Trump's Federal Worker Buyout Plan Put On Hold

By Brian Dowling

A Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday put on hold the Trump administration's "deferred resignation" program for federal employees, delaying the deadline for workers to accept the offer until Monday while the court weighs the legality of the move.

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FCPA

Bondi Says FCPA Probes Will Focus On Cartels

By Phillip Bantz

The scope of foreign bribery enforcement will be narrowed significantly under the direction of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has said since taking office Wednesday that the Justice Department will concentrate on the "total elimination of cartels and transnational organizations."

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COMPLIANCE

DOJ To Weigh Criminal Action Against Cos. With DEI Policies

By Sarah Jarvis

The U.S. Department of Justice will consider bringing criminal and civil investigations against companies over their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a new memorandum from Attorney General Pam Bondi.

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CRYPTO & FINTECH

House GOP Floats Stablecoin Bill Amid Debanking Buzz

By Aislinn Keely

House Financial Services lawmakers unveiled a discussion draft of a bill to regulate stablecoins Thursday evening, joining a separate effort introduced in the U.S. Senate earlier this week.

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CIVIL ENFORCEMENT

SEC 'Exposes Lunacy' Through Its Dueling Suits, PE Firm Says

By Catherine Marfin

A South Carolina private equity fund said Thursday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to gut it through a Florida lawsuit, telling a Texas judge the commission made "out of touch statements" on how the litigation will harm its business.

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WHITE COLLAR

Brief

No Bail For Ex-Federal Reserve Adviser In Espionage Case

By Elliot Weld

A former senior adviser to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was ordered to be detained by a D.C. federal judge Wednesday at the request of prosecutors who warned that his significant ties to China put him at high risk of fleeing his charges of stealing classified information for that nation.

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DELAWARE

Northern Trust Corp. Sued In Del. For Alleged Fund Breaches

By Jeff Montgomery

The son of a now-deceased California businessman and philanthropist has sued in Delaware's Court of Chancery for the removal of an affiliate of Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. as trustee for his father's family trust, alleging multiple breaches of fiduciary duty.

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INVESTOR ACTIONS

Earthlink Investors' Attys Score $28M In Merger Suit

By Nadia Dreid

The attorneys who helped Earthlink investors score an $85 million settlement with the company after they said they were tricked into approving a $1.1 billion merger with a failing telecommunications company will be walking away with almost $28 million for their trouble.

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GSK's Zantac Woes Gave Investors Heartburn, Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

The maker of heartburn and acid reflux relief tablet Zantac has been hit with a shareholder suit in Pennsylvania federal court alleging that the company suffered stock price losses after it was revealed that for nearly 40 years the company knew that Zantac contained high levels of a cancer-causing compound.

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Block's Dorsey, Others Face Derivative Suit Over AML Woes

By Emilie Ruscoe

Officers and directors of Square and Cash App parent company Block Inc. face a shareholder derivative complaint over alleged anti-money laundering compliance failures weeks after the company reached an $80 million settlement of related claims with state banking regulators.

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Wealth Firm Latest To Be Sued Over Cash Sweep Program

By Emilie Ruscoe

Wealth management firm Osaic is the latest financial institution to face proposed class action claims over its alleged "dramatic underpayment" of interest to customers participating in its cash sweeps programs.

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PEOPLE

Nixon Peabody Adds Greenberg Glusker Cannabis Co-Chair

By James Mills

Nixon Peabody LLP is boosting its West Coast litigation team, bringing in a former federal prosecutor, who was most recently the founder and co-chair of the cannabis practice at Greenberg Glusker LLP, as a partner in its Los Angeles office.

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EXPERT ANALYSIS

The Post-Macquarie Securities Fraud-By-Omission Landscape

While the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 opinion in Macquarie v. Moab distinguished inactionable "pure omissions" from actionable "half-truths," the line between the two concepts in practice is still unclear, presenting challenges for lower courts parsing statements that often fall within the gray area of "misleading by omission," say attorneys at Katten.

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Expect Scrutiny Of Banks To Persist, Even Under Trump

Although the change in administrations brings some measure of uncertainty as to the nature of bank compliance oversight, if regulators in Washington, D.C., attempt to dilute the vigilance of federal superintendence, the states are waiting in the wings to fill the void, say attorneys at Polsinelli.

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AI Will Soon Transform The E-Discovery Industrial Complex

Todd Itami at Covington discusses how generative artificial intelligence will reshape the current e-discovery paradigm, replacing the blunt instrument of data handling with a laser scalpel of fully integrated enterprise solutions — after first making e-discovery processes technically and legally harder.

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LEGAL INDUSTRY

BigLaw Firms Saw Double-Digit Profit Growth In 2024

By Aebra Coe

Last year was "one of the strongest years on record" for U.S. law firm financial results, according to Citi Global Wealth at Work Law Firm Group head Gretta Rusanow, with a survey by the bank of mostly large law firms showing a 16.6% increase in profits and a 12.3% increase in revenue over 2023.

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Legal Sector Gains 900 Jobs In January Amid Data Revisions

By Xiumei Dong

The U.S. legal sector started the year with a modest boost, adding 900 jobs in January, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday following the agency's annual employment data revision that also lifted earlier job figures from the past year. 

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Dentons US Names Capital Markets Leader Managing Partner

By Anna Sanders

Dentons tapped capital markets partner and regulatory team leader John Holahan to serve as U.S. managing partner, the firm announced Friday.

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Injury Attys In Hot Water Over Possible AI-Hallucinated Cites

By Lauren Berg

Morgan & Morgan PA and the Goody Law Group on Friday withdrew pretrial motions in a personal injury lawsuit against Walmart over an allegedly defective hoverboard after a Florida federal court ordered the firms to explain why the filings contained what appears to be case law hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence.

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Plaintiffs Lawyers Swarm Los Angeles Post-Fires

By Brandon Lowrey

A deadly wildfire may be among the first covered by a new state fund that reimburses at-fault utility companies. This could mean billions of dollars for plaintiffs lawyers, and, if past fires are any indication, frustration and confusion for some victims.

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4th Circ. Says LeClairRyan Founder May Duck Tax Liability

By Jack Karp

Defunct law firm LeClairRyan PLLC's operating agreement did not bar founder Gary LeClair from jumping ship in time to potentially dodge massive tax bills tied to the firm's collapse, the Fourth Circuit ruled Friday.

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Goldstein's Pro Se Filing Irks Feds Amid Murky Atty Situation

By Elliot Weld

Prosecutors have asked a Maryland federal judge to strike a pro se motion from Tom Goldstein in his tax evasion case, saying the U.S. Supreme Court attorney and SCOTUSblog publisher shouldn't be allowed to personally make arguments to the court when he is represented by several experienced lawyers.

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2nd Circ. Orders In-House Counsel Docs In Grand Jury Case

By Parker Quinlan

The Second Circuit on Friday ruled that an in-house attorney for a publicly traded company under federal investigation in New York must turn over communications as part of a grand jury investigation under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

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Analysis

Del.'s Quiet Ambition To Tweak Chancery, Stem Feared DExit

By Jeff Montgomery

Anxious over claims that stockholder-tilted decisions by Delaware's Court of Chancery will trigger more companies to follow Tesla, SpaceX, Meta and Dropbox to other states, Delaware policymakers are taking a hard look at the venerable business court's processes, hoping to slow a feared rush to DExit.

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DC Prosecutor Axed Jan. 6 Case Against Client, Group Says

By Lauren Berg

A legal group filed a bar complaint in Missouri Thursday against President Donald Trump's top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., saying the attorney violated rules of professional conduct when, in his new government role, he moved to dismiss charges related to the U.S. Capitol attack against his own client.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Aebra Coe and Kevin Penton

Lawyers from Latham & Watkins LLP and Proskauer Rose LLP kick off this week's Law360 Legal Lions, with a jury decision ending a $500 million antitrust lawsuit against their clients, U.S. Soccer and Major League Soccer.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

General counsel will be scrutinizing their companies' DEI policies after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the U.S. Department of Justice to probe and penalize illegal diversity policies in the private and public sectors. Outside the DOJ, legal professionals, including in-house attorneys, reported high job satisfaction in a recent survey, likely leading to lower turnover. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Investec Bank PLC sue two diamond tycoons, London florist Nikki Tibbles file a claim against an "imitator company," a direct descendant of the Cartier family launch a claim, and a Coronation Street actor hit footballer Joe Bunney with a defamation claim. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Promo that reads 2024 Practice Groups of the Year Promo that reads Law360 Pulse In-House Counsel Satisfaction Survey

LAW FIRMS IN TODAY'S NEWS

Addleshaw Goddard

Asher Kelly

Bernstein Litowitz

Bird & Bird

Bivonas Law LLP

Brozynski & Dalton

Bryan Cave

Cahill Gordon

Carlton Fields

Carney Bates

Carpmaels & Ransford

Clyde & Co

Continental PLLC

Councill Gunnemann

Covington & Burling

Crowley Fleck

DLA Piper

Dentons

DiCello Levitt

Fieldfisher

Fox Williams

Gallivan White

Gentry Locke

Gibson Dunn

Goody Law Group

Grabar Law

Greenberg Glusker

Guerra LLP

Guttman Buschner

Herbert Smith Freehills

Hicks Johnson

Hill Dickinson

Holland & Knight

Hueston Hennigan

Irwin Mitchell

Johnson Fistel

Jones Day

Katten Muchin

Keoghs LLP

Kessler Topaz

Kirkland & Ellis

Latham & Watkins

Lauro & Singer

Lerch Early

Lewis Silkin

McCoy Leavitt

Morgan & Morgan

Morgan Lewis

Morris Kandinov

Morvillo Abramowitz

Munger Tolles

Murphy Anderson PLLC

Nixon Peabody

Norton Rose

Orrick Herrington

Paul Weiss

Penningtons Manches

Polsinelli PC

Proskauer Rose

Quinn Emanuel

RBG Legal Services Ltd.

RWK Goodman

Reed Smith

Reynolds Porter

Rigrodsky Law

Robbins Geller

Ropes & Gray

Sheppard Mullin

Sidley Austin

Simmons & Simmons

Skadden Arps

Stevens & Bolton

Tavenner & Beran PLC

Theodora Oringher

Tostrud Law Group

Tousley Brain

Troutman

Umberg & Zipser

Walker Morris LLP

Willenken LLP

WilmerHale

Withersworldwide

Womble Bond

Wright Lindsey

Young Conaway

COMPANIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

Acadia Pharmaceuticals

AccuWeather Inc.

American Airlines Group Inc.

American Bar Association

American Federation of Government Employees

American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations

American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees

Amgen Inc.

Argo Group International Holdings Ltd.

Atos SE

Ballard Partners Inc.

Bank of America Corp.

Barclays PLC

Bibby Financial Services Ltd.

Block Inc.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

California Earthquake Authority

Canon Inc.

Cartier SA

Cash App

Coinbase Global Inc.

Conference of State Bank Supervisors

Credit Suisse Group AG

Democracy Forward Foundation

Deutsche Bank AG

DraftKings Inc.

E-House (China) Holdings Ltd.

EarthLink Inc.

Exxon Mobil Corp.

Fordham University

George Washington University

Globant SA

Google LLC

Hatch Henderson Fivel LLC

Howden Broking Group Ltd.

IDEX Corp.

Instagram Inc.

Investec PLC

Jetson Electric Bikes LLC

LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LinkedIn Corp.

London Stock Exchange Group PLC

Longford Capital Management LP

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

MGA Entertainment Inc.

Macquarie Group Ltd.

Macquarie Infrastructure Corp.

Major League Soccer LLC

Major Lindsey & Africa LLC

Managed Funds Association

McKinsey & Co. Inc.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. SA

Meta Platforms Inc.

Michigan State University

Moelis & Co.

MoneyGram International Inc.

NICE Ltd.

NICE inContact

National Association of Government Employees

Netflix Inc.

Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.

New York Law School

Northern Trust Corp.

Osaic Wealth Inc.

PG&E Corp.

Palantir Technologies Inc.

Pershing Square Capital Management LP

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Public Citizen Inc.

Purdue Pharma LP

RELX PLC

Robert Half Inc.

Rutter's Holdings Inc.

Southern California Edison Co.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

State Bar of California

Station Casinos LLC

TUI AG

Tempur Sealy International Inc.

Tesla Inc.

The Florida Bar

The PNC Financial Services Group Inc.

Toyota Motor Corp.

TripAdvisor Inc.

Twitter Inc.

United Policyholders

UnitedLex Corp.

University of Virginia

Walmart Inc.

Wells Fargo & Co.

Windstream Holdings Inc.

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

Australian Securities and Investments Commission

Bureau of Labor Statistics

California Supreme Court

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Delaware Court of Chancery

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

European Medicines Agency

Executive Office of the President

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Communications Commission

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Federal Reserve System

Federal Trade Commission

Financial Conduct Authority

Food and Drug Administration

Information Commissioner's Office

Internal Revenue Service

National Labor Relations Board

New York Attorney General's Office

Office of Foreign Assets Control

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

U.S. Army

U.S. Attorney's Office

U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland

U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Labor

U.S. Department of the Treasury

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

U.S. Senate

U.S. Supreme Court

UK High Court

United States District Court for the District of Wyoming