Amazon.com Inc. cut ties with two of Washington’s biggest lobbying law firms and brought on new advisers following passage of the tax overhaul bill last year and in the face of new challenges in the age of President Donald Trump, reports Bloomberg Politics.

The shakeup occurred shortly before Trump briefly sent Amazon’s stock tumbling when he tweeted that Amazon doesn’t pay enough in state and local sales taxes, hurts retailers and gets an unfair edge on the back of the U.S. Postal Service.

“Amazon ended its relationship with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, the law firm that attracts more lobbying revenue than any other K Street operation, and Squire Patton Boggs, last Friday, according to a person familiar with the decisions,” write Ben Brody, Spencer Soper and Jennifer Jacobs.

The reporters add that their source told them Amazon hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc.

Read the Bloomberg Politics article.

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s attempt to derail a multistate fraud investigation into the company’s public comments about climate change flamed out in a New York court, according to wire services, via The Dallas Morning News.

The report says a U.S. district judge in New York on Thursday dismissed Exxon’s lawsuit claiming officials in New York and Massachusetts conspired with environmental groups in planning the securities-fraud probe and made up their minds about its outcome before it started.

Judge Valerie Caproni said in her ruling that Exxon’s tactic of suing in federal courts in New York and Texas to stop the state probes “running roughshod over the adage that the best defense is a good offense.”

Read the Dallas News article.

Bloomberg is reporting that Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion to settle a probe into how it sold the sort of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis, securing a penalty less than half of what U.S. authorities originally demanded.

Reporters Stephen Morris and Gavin Finch explained: “The British lender was the only bank to push back against the size of the settlement demanded by the Justice Department, prompting the prosecutor to file a lawsuit in the waning days of the Obama administration in 2016. The DOJ wanted a fine of about $5 billion, but the bank refused to pay any more than $2 billion, Bloomberg news reported in 2016.”

Two former executives at the bank, Paul Menefee and John Carroll, also settled Thursday and agreed to pay $2 million to resolve claims without admitting wrongdoing.

Read the Bloomberg article.

PilieroMazza PLLC has posted an on-demand video discussing how businesses can proactively get out in front of pre-bid issues and avoid missteps.

“We often see what can go wrong in the bidding and procurement process long after a client submits a proposal or is awarded a contract,” the firm says on its website. “From awards challenged because companies did not confirm their set-aside status, to incorrect assumptions made about the cost of labor, mistakes made before you bid can be costly, and even devastating.”

Topic include:

• The general requirements of the BAA and TAA
• The applicability of the requirements and exceptions to their applicability
• Tests for determining a product’s country of origin
• Relevant FAR clauses and certifications
• The potential penalties for non-compliance
• Practical tips and strategies for compliance

Watch the on-demand video.

Charles Sartain offers a reminder that a court will (if it’s doing its job) enforce an agreement according to what it actually says, not by that which one party or the other would have liked it to say or imagines that it said.

Writing in Gray Reed’s Energy & the Law blog, Sartain discusses Claybar v. Samson Exploration. That case involved an agreement over an indemnity clause in a contract for the drilling of petroleum wells and related operation on property owned by Claybar.

Sartain presents the facts of the case, including a break-down of both side’s positions.

“Generally, indemnity agreements do not apply to claims between the parties but apply to claims made by others who are not parties to the agreement,” Sartain writes. “However, the parties can write an agreement to indemnify one another against claims they later assert against each other. To do so, the parties must expressly and specifically state that intention.”

Read the article.

PilieroMazza has posted an on-demand webinar discussing compliance with new laws requiring or providing a preference for the purchase of goods, products, or materials produced in the United States.

President Trump signed Executive Order 13788 on April 18, 2017, aimed at tougher enforcement of the “Buy American Laws” which are those laws requiring or providing a preference for the purchase of goods, products, or materials produced in the United States. Given the Trump administration’s intent for stricter enforcement of domestic preference requirements, government contractors need to stay abreast of the relevant laws and regulations, such as the Buy American Act  and the Trade Agreement Act, the firm says on its website.

Webinar topics include:

• The general requirements of the BAA and TAA
• The applicability of the requirements and exceptions to their applicability
• Tests for determining a product’s country of origin
• Relevant FAR clauses and certifications
• The potential penalties for non-compliance
• Practical tips and strategies for compliance

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Despite Facebook’s efforts to appear up-front in its handling of revelations of misuse of users’ data by Cambridge Analytica — using an approach that has worked in the past — this scandal really is different, and everyone in Silicon Valley knows it, according to Vanity Fair.

“Indeed, the repercussions are massive in both immediate and longitudinal ways,” writes Nick Bilton. “Just a couple of days into the Cambridge crisis, Facebook’s stock has dropped by more than 20 points, which has led its market capitalization to fall by tens of billions of dollars.”

The company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been called to testify before Congress and the British Parliament. The FTC and shareholders are pressing legal action, and the company’s plan to expand into China are now less likely.

Read the Vanity Fair article.

Image by Mike Mozart

The biggest U.S. antitrust case of this century kicked into high gear Thursday as a government lawyer warned that AT&T Inc. wants to buy media giant Time Warner Inc. to “weaponize” its must-have content — a move that would raise prices for consumers and hinder innovation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In opening arguments, Justice Department lawyer Craig Conrath said AT&T could use Time Warner’s content as a weapon against competitors that rely on the programming.

Reporter Jim Puzzanghera writes: “AT&T’s added leverage over pay-TV competitors to withhold content from some of the most valuable assets in entertainment — including HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT and Warner Bros., Hollywood’s largest TV and film studio — would cause prices to rise by more than $400 million a year for Americans, Conrath said.”

Read the LA Times article.

A magistrate judge in the U.S. Western District of Texas has disqualified a former counsel to Rolls-Royce from representing a client in litigation against his former employer, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Donald Little represented Rolls-Royce as in-house counsel from 1997-2008 and as outside counsel in a 2010 case where Rolls-Royce was alleged to have made false statements about ‘suspect’ airplane parts,” explains reporter Mindy L. Rattan. “Rolls-Royce hired George Gage as an expert in that case.”

Then, when Gage sued Rolls-Royce North America Inc. in a qui tam case that involved the explosion of a U.S. Air Force plane, Little represented him.

The magistrate judge who heard the defendant’s motion to disqualify Little said it was “stunning” that Little took that position.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Technology is revolutionizing nearly every aspect of contracts, from how they are generated to how they are terminated. In some cases, contract tech is beneficial – but in other cases, as with the Internet of Things (IoT), tech is making contracts more and more difficult to analyze,  according to IoT Business News.

“Many experts believe that contract law isn’t prepared for the IoT revolution, which is dangerous considering the abundance of IoT devices already in operation,” the article says. “Businesses and consumers alike should be aware of concerns regarding contracts and the IoT, so everyone can stay protected in the years to come.”

The article defines a contract in the age of IoT and discusses how the IoT has changed contracts.

Read the article.

Poorly drafted waivers include lawyerly language that may appear concrete on the surface but crumbles during a lawsuit, warns Hellmuth & Johnson in a blog post.

Authors Micheal D. Howard and Jason S. Raether describe a recent case involving a fitness studio  that demonstrates how a poorly drafted waiver can be as effective as having no waiver at all.

In the case, involving an injury to the customer of a fitness studio, a trial court found in favor of the studio, based on the language of an indemnity agreement. But the appellate court reversed, finding the language to be inadequate.

Read the article.

As the number of vendors that businesses engage with rises, so does the need for a greater contractual understanding of vendor agreements among businesses, CIOs, IT departments, and general counsels alike, according to a post on the Biztech Law Blog of Foster Swift Collins & Smith.

Katila Howard warns that, while many of the underlying contractual principals remain the same, overlooking the differences can be costly.

In her article, she discusses the considerations of security and privacy, limitation of liability, access to data, privacy, service levels, and subcontractors.

Read the article.

Walmart Inc. was sued on Thursday by a former executive who accused the world’s largest retailer of issuing misleading e-commerce results, amid growing pressure from Amazon.com Inc,, and firing him for complaining about it, reports Reuters.

In his complaint, former director of business development Tri Huynh alleges various wrongdoing, including the mislabeling of products, enabling Walmart to charge excessive sales commissions, and failure to properly process customer returns, enabling it to boost results, according to the report by Jonathan Stempel and Nandita Bose.

“Wal-Mart cut corners and cheated in a race to expand and gain market-share,” having been “desperate to gain the ground it had long lost to Amazon,” Huynh said in his complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Walmart called Huynh a disgruntled former employee who was let go during a restructuring.

Read the Reuters article.

A Dallas judge has rejected an attempt by Toyota to seal documents describing the automaker’s history of withholding information about its defective and dangerous products in connection with consumer lawsuits, often involving injured victims, according to a post on the website of  Androvett Legal Media and Marketing.

In his March 5 ruling, state District Court Judge Dale Tillery said that it is in the public interest to keep such documents open for review because they detail issues involving public health and safety. In a separate ruling, Judge Tillery ordered Toyota to make a representative available to describe how the company manages and stores databases of hundreds of thousands of documents that may contain information about safety and design issues of Toyota products.

Attorneys from The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson obtained the records as part of a lawsuit on behalf of a Dallas family whose two children were seriously injured in 2016 when seatbacks in their Lexus ES300 failed during a rear-end collision.

“The implications of this ruling go far beyond our case,” said Branson. “Toyota has a track record of not producing information in American courts.”

The judge’s order also applies to internal correspondence from a former Toyota corporate lawyer who complained that the automaker routinely refused to comply with information requests from lawyers in product defect cases. The Androvett post says in-house lawyer Dimitrios Biller left Toyota in 2007, citing his objections to Toyota’s lack of transparency and its efforts to avoid releasing proprietary internal documents to plaintiffs in injury lawsuits. Biller’s correspondence specifically describes Toyota’s efforts to settle injury lawsuits rather than turn over a safety database known within Toyota as the “Books of Knowledge.”

The case is Reavis et al. v. Toyota Motor Sales USA et al., Cause No. DC-16-15296.

Branson, who represents the Reavis family along with Branson firm attorneys Chip Brooker and Eric Stahl, said the public deserves access to court files, particularly when the records document safety and design issues.

Trial lawyer Courtney Ervin has joined commercial litigation boutique Hicks Thomas LLP, the firm announced.

“Courtney is a highly skilled and effective trial lawyer” said Hicks Thomas co-founder John B. Thomas. “She is an exceptional advocate and has great instincts. Her addition enhances our diversity and positions us to serve our client needs well into the future.”

Ervin was profiled as one of the leading energy litigation lawyers in the U.S. in 2016 by The Legal 500 and has repeatedly earned a place on the Texas Rising Stars list recognizing up-and-coming lawyers, the firm said in a release.

She earned her law degree from the University of Houston Law Center, magna cum laude, and her bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University.

Read details of the announcement.

A U.S. District Court has rejected motions filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco to remand two global warming public nuisance lawsuits filed by the cities in state court against several large energy companies, reports Anthony B. Cavender in Pillsbury’s Gavel2Gavel blog.

The companies are BP P.L.C., Chevron Corporation, ConocoPhillips Company, Exxon Mobil Corporation and Royal Dutch Shell plc). The case is The People of the State of California v. BP P.L.C., et al.

“The complaints filed by the City of Oakland and the City of San Francisco are based on the premise that, despite knowing of the risks associated with climate change and global warming, these companies continued to produce and sell their products to the public that uses fossil fuels in their day to day operations,” Cavender writes. “The complaints seek an abatement fund to pay for seawalls and other infrastructure to address rising sea levels.”

Read the article.

Troutman Sanders will host a complimentary webinar that will cover the legal landscape surrounding data based products. The event will be Thursday, March 22, 2018, 3-4 p.m. Eastern time.

“In the last few years, the right to privacy has been hotly debated in the United States. What critics do not understand or appreciate is that the next technological paradigm is completely dependent on improvements both to the quality and quantity of data,” the firm says on its website.

Webinar speakers will cover the ongoing evolution of the legal landscape for data-based products, so that organizations can continue to succeed in their development of data-based products.

Register for the webinar.

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, which should provide guidance as to the circumstances in which the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) applies to interstate transportation workers who are purported independent contractors, according to the Transportation Blog of Holland & Knight.

“The case will be important for in-house and private transactional attorneys who draft contracts with transportation sector independent contractors, as well as litigators handling employee misclassification cases,” the article’s authors write.

They explain: “Over the past several years, a spate of class action litigation has targeted the long-standing use of owner-operator truck drivers as independent contractors, with drivers claiming that they should be classified as employees. The contract between the motor carrier and the driver often contains an arbitration clause, but drivers typically file these cases in court, leading to a fight over the proper forum.”

Read the article.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s National Indemnity Co. has to pay more than $43 million of Montana’s asbestos-related settlement costs, a state judge has ruled. according to a MarketWatch report.

Reporter Nicole Friedman explains: “Montana had reached a $43 million settlement in 2009 with people injured by asbestos at a vermiculite mining operation in Libby, Mont. The victims claimed the state had knowledge of unsafe conditions at the mine for decades and failed to protect workers.”

National Indemnity  provided general liability insurance to the state at the time of the alleged exposure, but it had argued those insurance policies didn’t cover the asbestos-related claims.

Read the MarketWatch report.

A blog post by J. Marc Ward for Fredrikson & Byron addresses some of the risks associated with the failure to negotiate a data processing agreement, as well as tips on how to avoid common pitfalls.

The article is aimed at the banking business.

Ward addresses regulatory risks, mergers and acquisitions, and negotiating the contract.

“As products and services are added to the master agreement, do not lose sight of the big picture,” he advises. “Watch out for services with terms longer than the other services in the agreement and ensure that any added services terminate at the same time as the master agreement.”

Read the article.