Wake Up Call: LVMH Faces In-House Litigator’s Sex Harassment Claims in NYC

• A senior in-house attorney in LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s New York office is accusing the French luxury company of ignoring her claims of sexual harassment by another senior attorney, and for retaliating against her for complaining. Andowah Newton, vice president of legal affairs and litigation counsel at the company, alleges that the company attributed the male senior attorney’s behavior to working in French culture, and to Newton’s good looks. She hired Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht for her lawsuit. The company disputed her allegations as without merit. (New York Law Journal) (ABAJournal.com) (BET)

• Paul Hastings snagged leveraged finance attorney Frank Lopez, the co-head of Proskauer Rose’s global capital markets group, to be co-head of its own global capital markets practice and a partner in the leveraged finance practice in New York. (PaulHastings.com) Paul Hastings also launched an artificial intelligence practice group, led by London co-chair Sarah Pearce and Washington co-chair Robert Silvers. (PaulHastings.com)

• Bar exam prep company Barbri Inc. and law schools didn’t engage in an unlawful conspiracy to force competitor LLM Bar Exam LLC out of business, a federal appeals court affirmed. Goodwin advised Barbri, while Skadden and Boies Schiller Flexner represented the law schools, which included Harvard, NYU, Columbia, and Duke. Law Office of Judd R. Spray represented LLM Bar Exam. (BLAW)

• Jones Day partner Kerri L. Ruttenberg, head of litigation in the firm’s Washington office, is leaving to become Walmart’s senior vice president of litigation. (BLAW via BLB)

• Seattle-based compensation data site PayScale got a majority private equity investment from San Francisco-based Francisco Partners, in a transaction that values PayScale at around $325 million. Willkie Farr & Gallagher advised PayScale and its board of directors, while Francisco Partners got advice from Kirkland & Ellis. (GeekWire.com) (BusinessWire.com)

• Morrison & Foerster expanded its new Boston office with two corporate partners from Foley & Lardner. Todd Boudreau, who led Foley & Lardner’s private funds and buyout practice, joins as co-head of MoFo’s global private equity investments + buyouts group and as a partner in its private funds group. He’s represented clients across industries including technology and life sciences. Matt Karlyn, who joins as a partner in the technology transactions group, has many life sciences clients. (MoFo.com)

• Former Nissan and Renault chief Carlos Ghosn is out of jail in Japan again but he has to get court permission to meet or speak to his wife, according to his lawyer. (Financial Times)

• The Sacramento Kings and the NBA started a joint investigation into a former sports reporter’s allegations that coach Luke Walton sexually assaulted her in 2014. Walton’s attorney is Mark Baute, a former Jones Day lawyer now managing partner of L.A.-based trial boutique Baute, Crochetiere & Hartley and a UCLA School of Law adjunct faculty member. (Associated Press via BN)

Lawyers, Law Firms, Deals

• Months before the Mueller report was released, President Trump planned with his lawyers how to stymie Democratic investigations likely to arise from the special counsel’s findings, a report says. (Daily Beast)

• Most reports that the U.K.'s legal profession regulator (the Solicitors Regulation Authority) receives about use of non-disclosure agreements in discrimination or harassment cases relate to claims made within law firms, a report says. (Legal Futures)

Laterals, Moves, Promotions

• NFL deputy counsel Anastasia Danias Schmidt, who spent almost 20 years as a litigator at the National Football League, is taking a new job as executive VP and general counsel at Major League Soccer, starting May 13. The current top lawyer at MLS, Bill Ordower, is becoming the first executive VP of MLS Business Ventures. (Corporate Counsel)

• Minnesota health care provider HealthPartners Inc. promoted in-house attorney Nancy Evert to replace Barb Tretheway as VP and general counsel effective July 5. Evert, a former Dorsey & Whitney attorney, joined HealthPartners in 2005. (BizJournals.com)

Legal Actions, Decisions

• More than 60,000 employers will have to turn over worker pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by Sept. 30, as part of an annual workforce data report known as the EEO-1, a federal judge ruled. (BLAW)

• Facebook Inc. is facing a new investigation by Ireland’s data privacy regulator over a data breach that left millions of user passwords exposed to the company‘s employees. (BLAW)

• The $5 billion that Facebook has reserved to cover a possible settlement with the Federal Trade Commission may cover only part of the costs it potentially faces from privacy probes and litigation in the U.S. and abroad. (BLAW)

Technology

• Transatlantic firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, which was formed last year out of the merger of St. Louis-based Bryan Cave and U.K.-based Berwin Leighton Paisner, said it picked document review technology made by Toronto-based legal tech company Kira Systems for the firm’s “high-volume workstreams.” (Artificial Lawyer)

Legal Education

• Weil, Gotshal & Manges is investing $1 million per year in a program for 10 pre-law students to work at U.S.-based nonprofit organizations. (BLAW via BLB)