• Google’s use of Java shortcuts for its Android mobile phone operating system violated Oracle’s copyrights, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. It’s the latest turn in a years-long feud between the two software giants. The ruling means the search engine company could owe Oracle billions of dollars out of the $42 billion it has earned on mobile advertising. ( Bloomberg ) The decision is a win for Oracle’s appellate team, led by Orrick partner E. Joshua Rosenkranz and also including Kirkland & Ellis lawyers. Google was represented by King & Spalding. ( The Recorder )
• Uber agreed to pay $10 million to settle a pay-discrimination class action lawsuit filed last year by three female software engineers. Jahan Sagafi, of law firm Outten & Golden,represented a class of 420 engineers who claimed the company’s payment system discriminated against women and nonwhites. A team of Paul Hastings lawyers represented Uber, according to the proposed settlement . ( Recode )
• Restructuring experts at law firms Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP and Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, are advising gunmaker Remington Outdoor Company on its bankruptcy case pending in Delaware federal court. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB ) Meanwhile, the bankruptcy means Remington, which is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, could escape up to $500 million in liabilty over trigger defects on guns, as well as another lawsuit by survivors of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. A Shook, Hardy & Bacon partner Monday filed a notice alerting a St. Louis federal appeals court to provisions that require such litigation to be stayed as a result of the bankruptcy filing. ( Bloomberg )
• Gibson Dunn is advising Facebook, and Squire Patton Boggs and U.K. firm Gunnercooke are advising Cambridge Analytica, in the scandal over the U.K.political consulting firm’s harvesting of Facebook data to help Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. ( Legal Week )
• A federal judge disqualified a Pillsbury Winthrop legal team amidst conflict-of-interest questions in a case challenging a $400 million debt collection contract awarded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB )
• Hagens Berman partner Steve Berman is representing U.S. plaintiffs suing BMW AG in the latest suit against a carmaker for installing software designed to cheat diesel-emissions tests. ( Bloomberg )
• Bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer Steven J. Reisman, known for his friendship with singer-rapper Drake and sometimes called “Two Dollar Steve” because of his penchant for giving away $2 bills, has joined Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP to head its bankruptcy and restructuring practice. Reisman, who is jumping to Katten after nearly three decades at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, is accompanied by four other Curtis lawyers joining Katten as partners. ( BLB )
Laterals, Moves, Law Firm Work
•Cozen O’Connor said veteran life sciences attorney Jeffrey Townes has joined its fast-growing intellectual property department as a member in its Washington office, coming from LeClairRyan. ( Cozen.com )
• Cooley said T.J. Graham has joined as a partner in the firm’s technology transactions group, based in Palo Alto, coming from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he spent over a decade. ( Cooley.com )
Legal Market
• The Labor Department invited management-side attorneys from law firms Jackson Lewis, Littler Mendelson, and Crowell & Moring, and other business representatives to a closed-door briefing last fall on regulatory reform, but it apparently forgot to invite worker advocacy or union representatives. ( Bloomberg Law )
• With hospital mergers bigger than ever but increasingly difficult to get approved by antitrust regulators, its a good idea for merging parties to know the “ABCs” of merger review, writes a partner at Akerman’s healthcare practice group. ( Bloomberg Law )
• Since 2014, when the price of crude oil began an historic slide, at least 134 North American oil and gas companies have declared bankruptcy, according to Dallas-based law firm Haynes & Boone LLP. ( Bloomberg )
Legal Actions
• Yesterday in the trial over the U.S. antitrust suit to block the $85 million proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc., AT&T ’s lawyer, O’Melveny & Myers partner Daniel Petrocelli, said past comments by Dish Network Corp.’s chairman show the merger won’t have the destructive impact the U.S. claims. ( Bloomberg )
• Sidley Austin client American Honda Motor Co. picked off a California plaintiff and defeated some claims in a class action over a Bluetooth feature, but other claims survived a ruling of a California federal court, in a case for which Hagens Berman and others are representing plaintiffs. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB )
Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Tom Taylor.
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