The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to President Trump after the high court upheld the third version of his travel ban in a 5-4 vote, barring almost all travelers from five Muslim countries, North Korea and government officials from Venezuela.

“This is a big win for President Trump,” says Dallas appellate attorney David Coale in a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing. “The decision signals that so long as the president is acting in an area of traditional executive power, in a facially neutral way with regards to religion, he has a lot of power. This signals how things may go in later immigration litigation about border policy.”

Coale adds that the latest ruling is different from another immigration hot button involving asylum.

“This dispute turned on the force of a law about visas. The current immigration dispute involves asylum requests, which is a different set of statutes. So this case does not apply directly, but it does provide a road map for future litigation by making analogies to these laws.

“Both the majority and Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent note the system of waivers and exemptions built into the president’s order. The majority says it shows that the order was drafted carefully; the dissent says that if the waivers and exemptions are not actually used, that can justify a challenge to the statute. So that may be the next round of litigation about these matters – whether the waivers and exemptions are in fact being applied as written.

“Also,” he noted, “the majority signals that it isn’t particularly interested in presidential ‘tweets.’ It mentioned them, but basically said they were not relevant to the legal issue at hand.”

A recent California case may force companies doing business with foreign entities to reconsider—and maybe rewrite—their contracts, points out Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in its Corporate & Securities Law Blog.

In Rockefeller Tech. Invs. (Asia) VII v. Changzhou Sinotype Tech. Co., No. B272170, the California Court of Appeal held that parties may not contract around the formal service requirements of the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents, commonly referred to as the Hague Service Convention.

Authors Hwan Kim and Neil Popovic write that the decision could have profound implications for international business.

“The Rockefeller decision arguably makes it impossible to require foreign companies from some of the largest economies including China, Japan, Germany, U.K., India, Korea, Russia and Mexico, to show up in a California court based on notice provided by mail, courier (FedEx), or email even if the parties agreed to such forms of notice in their contract,” the authors warn. “This will have profound consequences for companies with global supply chains such as Apple and GM, for investment funds with foreign investors, for engineering and construction companies that procure materials and handle projects around the world, such as AECOM, and potentially for any company that imports or exports goods to or from the United States.”

Read the article.

Conservatives on the Supreme Court said Wednesday that it was unconstitutional to allow public employee unions to require collective bargaining fees from workers who choose not to join the union, a major blow for the U.S. labor movement, reports The Washington Post.

Reporter Robert Barnes writes that the 5-to-4 decision overturned a 40-year-old precedent and said that compelling such fees was a violation of workers’ free speech rights. The old rule could force the workers to give financial support to public policy positions they oppose, the court said.

“States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. “This procedure violates the First Amendment and cannot continue.”

Read the Post article.

Holland & Hart announced the addition of patent and trademark partner Loren R. Hulse to the firm’s Salt Lake City office in the firm’s Intellectual Property practice.

“Utah’s life sciences industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the U.S., with highly-successful innovations in genomics, pharmaceuticals, and medical device manufacturing by local technology companies,” said James Barnett, administrative partner of the firm’s Salt Lake City office. “Loren brings knowledge instrumental to assist companies in Utah and beyond with strategic IP advice essential to drive positive impacts to the state’s economy.”

Hulse has experience as former in-house intellectual property counsel for NPS Pharmaceuticals and as patent counsel for Ceramatec, Inc., the firm said.

“Loren is a strong addition to our highly-skilled, innovative patent team,” said Dan Glivar, the firm’s Intellectual Property practice group leader. “His experience in the life sciences industries and strength in chemical patents aligns with our firm’s goals to continue expanding service offerings in these rapidly-evolving areas.”

Prior to joining Holland & Hart, Hulse was a partner at Stoel Rives, where he served as the co-leader of the firm’s Life Sciences industry group.

See Also: Addition of Loren Lembo to Katten’s firm in Tax Planning Practice.

Bloomberg Law reports on a survey of mostly female lawyers that sexual harassment, including unwelcome texts, physical contact and bullying, exists at big and small law firms.

The Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership conducted the study.

“Nearly 38 percent of respondents said they’d been the recipient of an unwanted sexual email, text or instant message at work. Approximately 21 percent said they’d experienced or witnessed unwelcome physical contact at work,” reported Stephanie Russell-Kraft. “More than two-thirds of those who said they had experienced or witnessed unwelcome physical contact said they didn’t report it.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

Law firm Hogan Lovells has entered into an association with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based ZS&R Law Firm. The firms will work together to provide legal advice to their national and international clients, the firms said in a release.

Riyadh-based ZS&R Law Firm was founded in 2017 by Dr. Najem Alzaid, Saad Alrashed and Turki Alsheikh. The three founding partners have backgrounds with international legal experience, multilingual capabilities, and are experienced in advising on national and cross-border transactions. ZS&R works in practice areas including projects, dispute resolution, banking and finance, capital markets and corporate and M&A.

Under the terms of the agreement, ZS&R Law Firm will operate in association with Hogan Lovells, and the two firms will work together on client matters while remaining separate legal entities.

“Saudi Arabia is a strategic market for our clients,” explained Miguel Zaldivar, incoming Regional Chief Executive for the Asia Pacific Middle East region. “Partnering with ZS&R Law Firm is part of our commitment to providing clients with a full service solution to their commercial and legal needs. We have had a relationship with the three founding partners of ZS&R Law Firm for some time, and we have viewed what they have achieved professionally with reverence. Together, they have created a truly outstanding legal practice in Riyadh, with a service offering which strongly aligns to the needs our clients.”

Alzaid, one of the founding partners of ZS&R Law Firm said, “This is an exciting time to be in Saudi Arabia. We will witness the public offering of Saudi Aramco and other privatisations, the fruition of key strategic plans such as Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program, and we expect a new wave of foreign investment. We are pleased to work alongside Hogan Lovells supporting clients investing in the Kingdom as well as help our Saudi clients achieve their international ambitions.”

Steve Immelt, CEO of Hogan Lovells, added: “The association with ZS&R Law Firm is an important milestone which allows us to expands our ability to help clients in an important jurisdiction. Together with ZS&R we can provide clients with deep sector experience and knowledge in the Kingdom and across the wider Middle East. Most importantly, ZS&R’s client service ethos, and the principles by which they conduct business, align with our approach to the market.”

Christopher J. Townsend has joined Freeborn & Peters LLP’s Chicago office as a partner and co-leader of the firm’s Environment and Energy Practice Group.

“This is the exact right time for Chris to be joining the firm,” said Philip L. Comella, a Freeborn Partner and Co-Leader of the Environment and Energy Practice Group. “Environmental and Energy law and policy continue to converge at an increasing pace, with clients looking for creative but practical ways to address emerging technologies, shifting energy markets, and constantly evolving laws and regulations. I look forward to collaborating with Chris to lead our team helping a wide variety of clients address environmental and energy issues. Chris is a nationally-ranked leader in Energy law, and our clients will greatly benefit from his insights and experience in developing innovative solutions, particularly related to complex infrastructure projects and multi-faceted administrative proceedings.”

In a release, the firm said Townsend has more than two decades of experience representing forward-thinking energy market participants, both individually and in coalitions, develop, defend and improve the structures for effective and efficient competition in the energy markets. He regularly provides energy advice to entities other than the local utilities, including large industrial, institutional and commercial energy users; municipalities; and other governmental entities. He also assists alternative electricity and natural gas suppliers in developing the structures for energy markets. In addition, he represents energy project developers on complicated and cutting-edge projects and assists other large-scale energy industry participants.

“We are thrilled to welcome Chris to the firm,” said Freeborn Co-Managing Partner Michael J. Kelly. “His award-winning commitment to client service and continuous focus on positioning clients for the next wave of changes in the energy world is a great fit with our firm’s culture.”

The firm said Townsend has been involved in a wide variety of regulatory proceedings before the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as in numerous legislative efforts before the Illinois General Assembly, with an emphasis on matters related to bringing additional efficiencies to the energy industries. He also has served as counsel to several consortia composed of large industrial, institutional, governmental and commercial electricity consumers; retail energy suppliers; a public water district; and a small privately owned water company. Globally, he has worked with the U.S. State Department and counseled the government of Iraq on multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure projects.

Townsend previously was a partner at DLA Piper and most recently was a member of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Practice Group at Clark Hill PLC in Chicago. He has been consistently ranked by Chambers, receiving its top rank in the area of Illinois Energy & Natural Resources law earlier this year. He also is a three-time winner of the exclusive Lexology Client Choice Award for Energy & Natural Resources in Illinois.

Townsend received his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law (with honors) and his Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) from Augustana College.

A former attorney in Texas has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to insurance fraud and barratry, or litigation for profit, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

The Tarrant County district attorney said that Richard Kent Livesay schemed to bill insurers for fraudulent hailstorm damage to roofs without the knowledge or consent of homeowners.

The DA’s office said Livesay would have received more than $300,000 in fraudulent payments if his fraud hadn’t been discovered first by investigators from the Texas Department of Insurance.

Livesay also had to surrender his law license and to provide restitution to his victims, the report says.

Read the Star-Telegram article.

The U.S. Supreme Court, winding down its nine-month term, will issue rulings this week in its few remaining cases including a major one on the legality of President Donald Trump’s ban on people from five Muslim-majority nations entering the country, reports Reuters.

“The nine justices are due to decide other politically sensitive cases on whether non-union workers have to pay fees to unions representing certain public-sector workers such as police and teachers, and the legality of California regulations on clinics that steer women with unplanned pregnancies away from abortion,” write Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung.

On the subject of collecting fees for union from non-members, the court’s conservatives indicated opposition during arguments on Feb. 26 to so-called agency fees that some states require non-members to pay to public-sector unions.

Read the Reuters article.

A Pennsylvania appeals court rejected a request by a natural gas production company to rehear a case whose outcome could affect drillers across the country, reports WSKG.

Briggs v. Southwestern Energy Production Company involves the legal principle known as “rule of capture,” which means a property owner has the right to extract or “capture” an underground resource such as water, oil or gas, even if it flows from beneath another property owner’s land, explains reporter Susan Phillips. The case calls into question the longstanding practice as it applies to fracking, which requires subsurface rock to be deliberately broken in order to release trapped gas.

“In 2015, the Briggs family sued Southwestern Energy for trespass and conversion, arguing that the company’s fracking efforts were illegal and it should not be allowed to use wells on neighboring properties to tap gas beneath their land,” writes Phillips. “The family owns about 11 acres of land in Susquehanna County and did not lease its land for gas drilling.”

The trial court rejected their arguments, but an appellate court found that the Briggs’ arguments had legal merit.

Read the article.

A recent decision from the Connecticut Superior Court illustrates the limits to enforcing non-compete agreements, writes Michael LaVelle for Pullman & Comley’s Working Together blog.

LaVelle explains the case’s background: “Typical of non-compete enforcement situations, the plaintiff company learned that an executive employee who had just resigned had been hired by a key competitor. The former employee had signed a ‘Confidential Information, Non-Compete and Inventions Assignment and Assumption Agreement’ at the start of her employment. The company sought to enforce the agreement by obtaining an injunction to prevent the former employee from working for the competitor.”

The court found that by preventing the individual from performing any work or services, whether as an employee, consultant or independent contractor, for any competitor, the agreement went beyond the limits of reasonableness.

Read the article.

Few concepts are as confusing as the “gross up” of operating expenses to those who do not regularly deal with office leases, writes William Hof in a white paper for Husch Blackwell.

“Most tenants understand that in addition to base rent, tenants often directly reimburse their landlords for a portion of the building’s operating expenses (e.g., real estate taxes, casualty insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc.),” explains Hof.

In the paper, he defines “gross up” and explains how it works, and he discusses variable vs. constant expenses and tenant protection.

Read the article.

Arbitration is a creature of contract, and an arbitrator’s powers are in effect defined by the parties’ arbitration agreement, points out a post on the Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo blog ADR: Advice From the Trenches.

“Paradoxically, although an arbitration agreement can be written (double-spaced) on one side of a cocktail napkin, in some cases it may grant greater authority to an arbitrator than a judge has,” writes Narges Kakalia.

In the post, she discusses Timegate Studios, Inc. v. Southpeak Interactive, LLC, in which the Fifth Circuit confirmed an arbitration award in which the arbitrator substantially reformed the parties’ commercial agreement by, among other things, awarding one a broad perpetual license to certain of the other’s intellectual property, despite the fact that the original agreement had granted only a more narrowly drawn ten-year license.

Read the article.

Above the Law has updated its extensive list of law firms that have matched Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy’s $190,000 salary scale for new associates, with almost four dozen large firms represented.

The most-recent additions to the list, added on Thursday, include Dechert, Orrick, Akin Gump and Sherman & Sterling, each with pay scales of $190,000 for first year associates and $340,000 for senior year associates.

Those four also offer $5,000 bonuses to first years, and $25,000 to their more-senior associates.

Read the Above the Law article.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states can force retailers to collect state and local sales taxes no matter where the seller operates its business, saying those taxes support local police and fire departments and other services.

“The decision, in South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc., was a victory for brick-and-mortar businesses that have long complained they are put at a disadvantage by having to charge sales taxes while many online competitors do not,” explains The New York Times. “And it was also a victory for states that have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.”

Justices split 5-4 on the ruling, with Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch in the majority.

Read the Times article.

A Georgia lawyer who represented a woman in a divorce told colleagues he was worried about his client’s ex-husband, and a few hours later the man murdered him, according to police.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Antonio Benjamin Mari, 41, died from multiple gunshots Wednesday afternoon, two hours after the final divorce hearing in a Bartow County court.

“After shooting Mari, [Walter Samuel] Radford called his ex-wife, Cindy Radford, to tell her he’d killed the attorney, according to Lt. M.E. Bettikofer with Cartersville police. From there, Walter Radford, 33, allegedly broke into his ex-wife’s house and shot himself while no one else was home. He was found dead in the Willow Bend Drive home at 2:40 p.m. Wednesday,” reports Alexis Stevens.

Mari had worked nearly 18 years as a high school history teacher before becoming a lawyer.

Read the Journal Constitution article.

Zapproved will present a PREX event designed to provide education and networking for in-house ediscovery, on Sept. 25-27, 2018, in Portland, OR.

The selection of sessions will be curated especially for in-house ediscovery leaders, practitioners, and partners, the company says on its website.

“Together, we’ll pursue the vital intersection of innovation and collaboration within the corporate legal operations ecosystem and how to navigate those changing dynamics to advance your organization and career,” Zapproved says.

Zapproved says PREX promises both education and excitement, offering new ideas to grow a career and network with ediscovery experts, judges, and professionals across legal, IT, and business operations disciplines. The event will include three full session tracks, an executive roundtable, and a day-long user group.

The company says the event is designed for corporate general counsel, directors of compliance and information governance, directors of e-discovery, paralegals and legal discovery specialists, directors of discovery and legal operations.

Register or get more information.

Attorneys for Dallas-based Fears Nachawati Law Firm have secured a $166 million verdict against the daughter and son-in-law of a North Texas woman who was killed in 2014 for the proceeds of life insurance policies totaling $5 million.

Jurors in Tarrant County’s 141st Judicial District Court determined Mark and Virginia Buckland were central figures in the conspiracy that led to the stabbing death of Anita Fox that was carried out by two members of a nomadic ethnic clan known as Irish Travellers. The multimillion-dollar verdict is believed to be among the largest in Tarrant County this year, according to the firm.

Though the couple has never been charged criminally in the murder, the jury found that they had crafted an insurance scheme in which they would be the sole beneficiaries of a series of policies, in part without the knowledge of the 69-year-old Ms. Fox.

Read details of the case.

Three women have filed a federal class action lawsuit claiming that the Travis County District Attorney’s office and the Austin Police Department have violated the constitutional rights of women and discriminated based on gender in the manner in which they handle sexual assault cases.

The lawsuit notes that while more than 1,000 women report a sexual assault to Austin police each year, the number of cases actually taken to trial annually are in the single digits, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The lawsuit alleges that Travis County DA Margaret Moore has ratified the discriminatory policies publicly, making statements that acquaintance rapes are really more “traumatic occurrences” than criminal acts.  Moore has also indicated that the testing of the backlog of thousands of rape kits in Austin is for “informational purposes” and not for prosecution, confirming her office’s intent not to seek justice for those victims.

The lawsuit also notes that the Austin Police Department’s sexual assault unit at one time had a wall with photos of victims whose claims had been “debunked” by officers as “trophies of their investigations which determined allegations by purported victims were unsubstantiated.”

Finally, the lawsuit notes that while women make up 91 percent of sexual assault victims, the only case taken to trial in 2017 involved a male victim.  In that instance, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office and the DA were aware of allegations by multiple women in previous years against the same perpetrator, but those cases were never prosecuted.

“[The] unconstitutional conduct by Defendants subjects both victims and all the women of Austin to continued risk at the hands of perpetrators who are never held accountable,” according to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, claims that the dominant culture and ongoing and historical failures by local law enforcement to pursue sexual assault cases establishes a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of an estimated 6,000 sexual assault victims, while also violating their constitutional rights for equal protection.

“It is shocking that the vast majority of women who survive sexual assault are provided so little protection or recourse, and are essentially blamed for the refusal of law enforcement to seek justice in their cases,” says Jennifer Ecklund of Thompson & Knight and lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “Women go to authorities in order to seek justice and to protect other women, but the policies and practices of law enforcement instead re-traumatize survivors while allowing their attackers to walk free.”

The case is Amy Smith, Julie Ann Nitsch and Marina Conner v. City of Austin, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, Rosemary Lehmberg and Travis County, Texas.

The number of cases involving consumer data breaches is rapidly growing, points out Ehren M. Fournier in a post on the website of Schoenberg Finkel Newman & Rosenberg LLC. Data breaches inflict additional costs on financial institutions, leading those institutions to turn to litigation to recoup their losses from merchants.

Fournier discusses a recent case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Court dealt a significant blow to attempts by financial institutions to bring negligence claims against merchants for failing to adequately safeguard their customers’ data:

In 2012, hackers infiltrated Schnuck Markets, a large Midwestern grocery chain, and stole the data of about 2.4 million credit and debit cards. Financial losses from the unauthorized purchases and cash withdrawals made with the stolen data reached into the millions. Because federal law requires the consumers’ banks to indemnify the consumers for losses incurred as a result of fraudulent activity, four banks brought a class action lawsuit against Schnucks to recover their losses. The plaintiff banks had no direct contract with Schnucks, and instead resorted to common-law negligence/tort claims, common-law contractual claims, and several claims under Illinois statutes. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision to dismiss all claims, and its decision on the economic loss doctrine bears some discussion. The federal appellate court anticipated that the high courts of both Illinois and Missouri would reject imposing tort liability under these circumstances.

Read the article.