Two years after a major data breach exposed the personal information of around 147 million Americans, the credit bureau Equifax has agreed to pay at least $650 million to resolve consumer claims and multiple state and federal investigations stemming from the episode, according to The New York Times.

At least $300 million of that amount will go to consumers, with an additional $125 million available if the initial fund is exhausted.

Times reporter David Yaffe-Bellany writes that individual victims may be able to claim as much as $20,000 in compensation for losses resulting from the breach if they can prove they were harmed.

Read the NY Times article.

Several Trump administration officials have personal or professional ties to Boeing’s man at the center of the 737 Max jetliner crash drama. He’s J. Michael Luttig, the longtime general counsel whom the company reassigned to lead its 737 response, reports Bloomberg.

“When he was a federal appellate court judge, Luttig brought on dozens of promising young clerks who are now spread throughout the judiciary and beyond,” explain Bloomberg’s Tom Schoenberg, Julie Johnsson and Peter Robison. “In more than a decade at Chicago-based Boeing, he stocked his department with ex-government lawyers. He also tapped Kirkland [& Ellis LLP], which has a big Chicago presence, for matters as varied as acquisitions and contract disputes.”

Luttig also is wired into the Supreme Court. He was a groomsman at the wedding of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The Associated Press reports that federal, North Carolina and Virginia governments asked a court Thursday to declare the country’s largest electricity company liable for environmental damage from a leak five years ago that left miles of a river shared by the two states coated in hazardous coal ash.

The AP’s Emery P. Dalesio writes: “Government lawyers sought to have Charlotte-based Duke Energy declared responsible for harming fish, birds, amphibians and the Dan River bottom. Hazardous substances like arsenic and selenium poured into the river at levels high enough to harm aquatic life, according to a complaint filed in the North Carolina federal court district near the site of the 2014 disaster.”

Duke Energy pleaded guilty to federal environmental crimes in 2015 and agreed to pay $102 million.

Read the AP article.

Some companies, hoping to prevent negative online consumer reviews, include clauses in form contracts stating that bad reviews are prohibited and punishable by fines. However, the Federal Trade Commission seeks to protect U.S. consumers and ensure fair competition and business practices, according to a post on the website of Ryley Carlock & Applewhite.

The FTC’s Consumer Review Fairness Act states that such gas clauses  are illegal and void in form contracts.

Companies should treat such gag clauses in past contracts as void, and essentially should ignore negative reviews from a relatively few consumers, the authors advise.

Read the article.

Reuters reports that civil rights groups who successfully blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census are seeking sanctions against government officials, saying they brazenly hid the truth about the inquiry’s origins during trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a New York court to grant new discovery into the alleged misconduct, as well as monetary sanctions for the government’s “concerted campaign of delay and obfuscation” during trial last November.

Reuters’ Nick Brown writes that the plaintiffs cited a list of “false or misleading” testimonies that amounted to “fraud on the court,” perpetrated by officers of the U.S. Department of Commerce, DOJ and Census Bureau.

Read the Reuters article.

The ABA Journal reports that a partner at Husch Blackwell in Madison, Wisconsin, has left the law firm after receiving a reprimand for allegedly punching a bar manager and driving while intoxicated.

The firm announced that Jeffrey McIntyre had withdrawn from the firm in wake of the state supreme court’s reprimand. “Obviously, our firm does not condone or tolerate his behavior,” the firm said in a statement.

The reprimand cites an incident that happened in the early-morning hours of Christmas 2017, in which a manager of a bar in Madison told police that McIntyre was with two women who were not happy that the bar was closing. The manager said the situation escalated, with McIntyre punching him in the nose.

McIntyre also pleaded guilty to a driving while intoxicated charge in 2018.

Read the ABA Journal‘s article.

Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP will present a free webinar, “Not So Obvious: Secondary Considerations at the PTAB,” featuring Fitch Even attorneys Dave A. Gosse and Evan Kline-Wedeen.

The event will be on Thursday, July 18, 2019, at 9 am PDT / 10 am MDT / 11 am CDT / 12 noon EDT. It will also be available as an on-demand webinar after presentation.

Objective evidence of non-obviousness can overcome a prima facie case of obviousness, both in district court litigation and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. These “secondary considerations” are an important tool that patent owners can use to defeat obviousness challenges. Historically, the PTAB has not often been persuaded by such evidence. But in recent years, patent owners have found some success when presenting compelling objective evidence of commercial success, copying, long-felt need, and other secondary considerations.

During this webinar, presenters will discuss the following:
• Developing trends at the PTAB concerning secondary considerations
• How to insulate your petition from secondary considerations
• Best practices for patent owners developing evidence related to secondary considerations

Register for the webinar.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts cemented his new role as the Supreme Court’s swing vote, angering people on the political left and right in the process, as he decided the outcomes of major rulings on the census and electoral map manipulation, according to a Reuters report.

In two 5-4 votes, Roberts sided with his fellow conservative justices in rejecting challenges to a practice called partisan gerrymandering but joined the court’s liberals in dealing to a damaging blow to President Trump’s plan to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The votes illustrate how Roberts now is the court’s center, a role he inherited following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writes Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley.

But seeing a chief justice taking the middle road hasn’t gone down well with some “deeply disappointed right-leaning lawyers and pundits who had been counting on near-certain victory from a court now stocked with a pair of Trump-appointed justices handpicked by conservative legal activists,” according to a Politico report.

Read the Reuters article.

The Associated Press is reporting that a former Equifax executive who sold stock a week and a half before the company announced a massive data breach was sentenced Thursday to serve four months in federal prison for insider trading.

Jun Ying is the former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. Information Solutions. His prison time is to be followed by a year of supervised release, and he was also ordered to pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta said in a news release.

“The SEC has said that at the time of the breach, Ying was often entrusted with nonpublic company information,” according to the AP. “He was a leading candidate to become the global chief information officer of Equifax, a job he was offered on Sept. 15, 2017, the same day the company announced then-CIO Dave Webb would retire.”

Read the AP report.

A Justice Department lawyer who argued in court that the federal government wasn’t legally required to provide soap and toothbrushes to detained migrant children in some conditions is defending herself after video of the exchange went viral, reports NBC News.

“Clips of her argument, along with the astonished reactions from judges hearing her testimony, were posted online and went viral, turning [Sarah] Fabian into a face of the Trump administration’s treatment of detained child migrants,” writes NBC’s Josh Lederman.

Fabian posted a message on Facebook, in which she said she shares “many people’s anger and fear” about the nation’s future. She adds that she is a career federal employee who has served since 2011, long before President Trump took office.

Read the NBC News report.

The Energy Law Blog of Liskow & Lewis discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could have far-reaching implications concerning wage-and-hour laws for workers on oil and gas platforms located in open water on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Authors Jackie E. Hickman and Thomas J.McGoey II explain the background of the case:

“The plaintiffs in Parker Drilling Management Services, Ltd. v. Newton, were offshore rig workers who filed a class action asserting that their employer violated California’s minimum wage and overtime laws by failing to pay them for stand-by time while they were on the drilling platform. Both parties agreed that the platforms were governed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”), but they disagreed regarding whether the California’s wage-and-hour laws were incorporated into OCSLA and therefore applicable to workers on the platform.”

The Supreme Court found that federal law is exclusive and state law only applies where there “is a gap in federal law’s coverage.”

Read the article.

President Donald Trump’s fondness for the U.S. Supreme Court could be tested by a series of legal disputes targeting him personally – from his taxes and businesses to his 2016 election campaign – that ultimately may be decided by the justices, according to a Reuters report.

Reuters reporters Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley write that some legal experts speculate that “as the focus of some of the major legal challenges shifts from his policies to Trump himself, there could be disappointments in store for him, … in particular if the Supreme Court stoutly defends the ability of Congress to pursue investigations of the president.”

J.W. Verret, an expert in corporate and securities law at George Mason University in Virginia, told the reporters that conservative justices “won’t feel any loyalty to Trump, but will instead support strong separation of powers” as delineated in the U.S. Constitution.

Read the Reuters article.

Chicago attorney Joel Brodsky, who gained national notoriety for his representation of wife killer Drew Peterson, has been indefinitely suspended from practicing law amid an investigation into a series of bizarre antics that have drawn the ire of opponents and judges alike, reports the Chicago Tribune.

A filing by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission claims a license suspension is necessary before the investigation is complete because Brodsky allegedly “engaged in conduct that threatens irreparable injury to the public and to the orderly administration of justice.”

Tribune reporter Jason Meisner writes about one example cited: “In an insult-laced letter sent to a rival attorney in a divorce case, Brodsky said the lawyer ‘appears to be learning disabled,’ implied that the rival has a drinking problem and sarcastically asked if the attorney has gay ‘feelings for his client, the filing alleged.”

Read the Tribune article.

The Dallas-based law firm Fears Nachawati has been retained by the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners in Maryland to pursue a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors over their role in the epidemic of addiction to these painkillers, the firm said in a release.

Representing the southern Maryland county is a legal consortium that features Matthew McCarley and Jonathan Novak of Fears Nachawati, along with attorneys from Ferrer, Poirot & Wansbrough in Dallas; Motley Rice in Washington, D.C.; and The Kane Law Group and McNamee, Hosea, Jernigan, Kim Greenan & Lynch in Maryland.

Just southeast of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Calvert County has seen its public resources overburdened by the societal, health and public safety demands created by the reckless proliferation of prescription opioids, plaintiffs say.

“The opioid epidemic has continued at a horrifying pace, taking a tremendous human toll and creating intense financial and social services pressures on local governments such as Calvert County,” said McCarley. “There is no single, simple solution, but recovery cannot begin until those who knowingly created the problem are held responsible for their actions.”

Fears Nachawati currently represents 61 counties, cities and hospital systems in Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico and North Dakota in lawsuits seeking to hold 30 of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors liable for their role in the opioid addiction crisis that resulted from deceptive and illegal marketing schemes.

“While we fight to recover some of the financial costs related to the public health emergency caused by the overuse of prescription opioids, this is also about stopping these illegal and unethical practices,” said Novak.