A King County, Washington, judge has sanctioned two attorneys hired by Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist’s office, citing their “intentionally misleading conduct” during a long-running lawsuit, according to a report in the Tacoma News Tribune.

“The ruling Wednesday from Superior Court Judge Beth Andrus sanctions Seattle attorneys Richard Jolley and Stewart Estes,” the report says. “It orders them to pay $32,000 for withholding information from civil attorney Fred Diamondstone and conducting ‘misleading settlement negotiations’ that fell apart in December.”

The case involves false-arrest lawsuit filed by a former resident who was twice charged with sex crimes by Lindquist’s office.

“Those charges were dismissed initially in 2011 because of erroneous evidence: a picture wrongly identified as Dalsing. The charges were dismissed again by Pierce County Superior Court Judge Ed Murphy in 2015, due to a finding of prosecutorial vindictiveness,” the report says.

Read the article.

Donald Trump has a habit of causing controversy, and his remarks on Ted Cruz‘s Presidential eligibility have been no exception, reports Matt Strong on LawNews.com. The Texas senator now faces several lawsuits across the country — in Illinois, Texas, New York and Utah — that are bringing the candidate unwelcome distractions.

“Since January 17, Trump has made inflammatory threats of litigation over Cruz’s Canadian-birth and the question of whether Cruz is a ‘natural born citizen’ five times,” the site reports.

And others have gone so as to frame their challenges as lawsuits. “Of the litany of filed suits, four in particular pass muster, either by creatively suing a state election board, scaring Cruz’s campaign into a response, or originating from lawyers in pursuit of more than political gamesmanship or political frivolity,” Strong wrote.

Read the article.

A $22 million lawsuit against Beaumont, Texas attorney Wayne Reaud, along with several others, have been dismissed. The plaintiff was an electrician who claimed the defendants committed acts that cost him a business contract with the Beaumont Independent School District, reports SETexasRecord.com.

The plaintiff, Calvin Gary Walker, proprietor of Walker’s Electric, had alleged that the defendants worked to end his professional relationship with BISD, insinuating the respondents wrongfully made light of his 2011 federal indictment for fraud. Walker’s claims against the Beaumont attorney and his newspaper were based on two articles published in The Examiner.

Reaud argued that defamation claims based on the articles were frivolous.

Read the article.

Segal McCambridge Singer & Mahoney senior shareholder Paul Wojcicki once again led a team of nine Chicago SMSM shareholders and associates in editing the LexisNexis Practice Guide: Illinois Personal Injury Litigation, an annual publication that provides up-to-date information and practical pointers for attorneys of all experience levels, the firm announced.

Wojcicki and his colleagues also edited the 2014 edition of the Guide.

Joining Wojcicki on the project as contributing editors were Segal McCambridge shareholders Kevin Bugos and Mitch Morinec, and associates Lamis Eli, Anastasios Foukas, Matthew Kelly, Brian Nye, Christian Ryba, Joyce Williams and Jenni Young.

The Segal McCambridge team updated each of the Guide’s 14 chapters, which cover every step in the personal injury process, from initial client interviews to closing the case, as well as examine a range of substantive topics, such as liability theories and defenses, statutory actions and wrongful death and survival damages.

Read more about the Guide.

A Minnesota jury has awarded former general counsel Chet Taylor $600,000 from the Feltl & Co. securities firm for defaming him by implying in a 2014 public statement that Taylor lost his job as a result of an enforcement action by a securities regulator, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In his 2014 lawsuit, Taylor claimed that he left Feltl & Co. in good standing in 2012.

The report says that Feltl, following the jury verdict, also agreed to pay an additional $250,000 to avoid trying a subsequent punitive damages claim.

Read the article.

Myanna Dellinger of the University of South Dakota School of Law has posted a discussion of a recent case in which a judge faulted Uber with presenting its drivers with a contract that was “likely, frankly, to engender confusion.”

Dellinger wrote about the case in the ContractsProf Blog.

The underlying case is a class action lawsuit against Uber for allegedly misclassifying its drivers as “independent contractors” instead of regular “employees.”

“Whether this is an example of deliberate strong-arming or intimidating the drivers into not joining the lawsuit or simply unusually poor contract drafting may never be known. Judge Chen did, however, order Uber to stop communicating with drivers covered by the class action suit and barred the company from imposing the new contract on those drivers,” Delinger writes.

Read the article.

Sometimes rescission of a property purchase is better than suing for damages, which could limited to the difference between the price paid and the value of the property received, advises Khanh Tran on the blog of Continuing Education of the Bar ● California.

Although rescission makes particular sense when recouping the purchase price is more important than living in the house, it’s not always available, he writes. He advises checking to see if certain common grounds for rescission in the real property sales context apply.

Those grounds include mutual consent, mistake, fraud, failure of consideration, illegality and prejudice to public interest.

Read the article.

A lawyer for Sam and Dee Wyly said Thursday that the tax evasion and tax fraud case brought by the Internal Revenue Service in the Northern District of Texas is nothing more than “a bunch of sound bites” and allegations that are not based in federal tax law, reports The Dallas Morning News.

“The IRS’ lawyer countered that the evidence presented during the past four weeks of an unprecedented billion-dollar bankruptcy trial shows that the Wylys ‘never intended to pay taxes’ on the hundreds of millions of dollars they kept in offshore trusts on the Isle of Man,” the report continues.

The bankruptcy judge hearing the case is expected to take several weeks to rule in the complex bankruptcy trial in which the IRS accused Sam Wyly and Charles Wyly’s widow, Dee Wyly, of tax evasion and fraud and is seeking $2.2 billion in back taxes, fees and penalties.

Read the story.

Stephen Diaco, one of three lawyers accused of setting up a rival’s DUI arrest, was permanently disbarred Thursday by the Florida Supreme Court, reports The Tampa Tribune.

The case began with a civil lawsuit in which Diaco and two other lawyers represented a radio personality who was the defendant in a slander suit. “But during the trial, [the plaintiff’s] lawyer, C. Phillip Campbell, was arrested for DUI. The state bar accused the Diaco firm of orchestrating the arrest by having a paralegal ply Campbell with liquor and then trick him into moving her car when a friend on the Tampa Police Department was waiting to catch him,” The Tribune reports.

The two other lawyers remain temporarily suspended.

Read the article.

A federal jury in New Hampshire ordered Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to pay $31.22 million to a pharmacist who claimed she was fired because of her gender and in retaliation for complaining about safety conditions, Reuters reports.

Maureen McPadden claimed that Wal-Mart used her loss of a pharmacy key as a pretext for firing her in November 2012, when she was 47, after more than 13 years at the retailer.

“McPadden said she was fired in retaliation for her raising concerns that customers at the Wal-Mart store in Seabrook, New Hampshire, where she worked were getting prescriptions filled improperly because of inadequate staff training,” Reuters reports.

Read the article.

In a scathing ruling issued Friday, a state judge in Lubbock declared that prominent Dallas trial lawyer Bill Brewer committed misconduct when he used so-called push polling to improperly influence potential jurors in a West Texas wrongful death and products liability case, reports The Dallas Morning News.

“State District Judge Ruben Reyes described Brewer’s conduct as ‘unprofessional’ and ‘unethical’ — findings that Brewer adamantly denies — and ordered the hard-charging trial lawyer to pay more than $133,000 in sanctions and take 10 hours of legal ethics courses,” according to the report.

Brewer and his law firm conducted a push poll with questions and statements “designed to influence or alter the opinion or attitude of the person being polled,” the judge ruled.

Read the article.

A class-action suit has been filed in federal court in Portland against two daily fantasy sports sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, alleging both businesses are operating illegal online sports betting, reports The Oregonian.

“Brandon Peck, a resident of Polk County, brought the suit on behalf of himself and more than 100 other Oregon players who lost money in the past three years while placing wagers online through the two sites, Draftkings.com and FanDuel.com,” according to the report.

The plaintiff is asking the court to halt the companies’ operations and have each business pay players back double the amount they’ve “wrongfully lost,” seeking more than $5 million.

Read the article.

Relying on “basic principles of contract law,” the Supreme Court has held that an unaccepted settlement offer and offer of judgment under Rule 68 are “legal nullit[ies]” that have no effect on whether a live controversy remains between the parties, according to an analysis written by BakerHostetler’s Jacqueline Matthews and Rand McClellan and published on JDSupra.com.

The case is Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, No. 14-857.

“The upshot of the Court’s decision is that a defendant cannot moot a putative class action by merely offering full relief to the named plaintiff on his or her individual claims,” the authors write. “The Court, however, expressly left open the question of whether payment of full individual relief could moot the case.”

Read the article.

A trial that was supposed to help settle hundreds of lawsuits stemming from General Motors’ faulty ignition switches abruptly ended Friday, a day after the judge raised questions about the plaintiff’s truthfulness, reports the Associated Press.

The case involved a claim by Robert Scheuer of Oklahoma, who complained that a faulty ignition switch prevented his air bags from inflating during a 2014 car crash.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman agreed that evidence submitted by GM revealed that a document supporting Scheuer’s claims appeared to have been doctored and it seems he was more physically functional after his accident than he claimed. By the next morning, General Motors Co. and Scheuer’s lawyers said they wanted to call the trial off, the AP reports.

Read the article.

A couple of words here or there in a contract can make a huge difference, particularly when those words relate to what happens if there is a breach or some other dispute between the parties, writes Shep Davidson in Burns & Levinson’s blog, The In-House Advisor.

He discusses the case of Family Endowment Partners, L.P. v. Sutow.

That case involved a lawsuit that resulted in a $48 million award to the plaintiffs in a ruling issued by an arbitrator. Part of the award included triple damages. Davidson explains how some simple changes in the contract could have avoided much of the defendant’s loss.

Read the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a rare setback Wednesday to companies trying to avoid potentially expensive class-action lawsuits when justices ruled that offers of full compensation to the lead plaintiff in such a case do not automatically end the legal challenge, reports USA Today. The 6-3 decision was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“An unaccepted settlement offer, like other unaccepted contract offers, creates no lasting right or obligation,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 6-3 opinion. “Once unaccepted, the offer is off the table.”

“The case was among several on the court’s docket this term that could lead to more or fewer class-action lawsuits,” the report says.

Read the article.

U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co. on Friday said it would pay $830 million to settle a federal class action lawsuit involving allegations the company failed to adequately inform investors about heart risks from its now-recalled Vioxx pain medication, according to a report on the Business Insurance website.

“The drug was approved by U.S. regulators in 1999 as a new type of treatment for pain and quickly became a blockbuster product, ultimately used by an estimated 20 million Americans,” according to a Reuters report. “But the company in 2004 recalled Vioxx from the market after a colon-polyp prevention study showed it more than doubled the risk of heart attacks or stroke after 18 months of use.”

The company’s cash payment for the settlement and fees will be about $680 million after reimbursement from insurance policies, Merck said.

Read the article.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed prohibiting application of pre-dispute arbitration agreements to class litigation involving certain consumer financial products, according to a report published by Carlton Fields on its website.

“Citing concerns that such agreements ‘effectively prohibit’ class litigation and prevent consumers from obtaining remedies for harm caused by providers of consumer financial products or services, the proposal would apply to most products subject to Bureau oversight,” the report says.

“The Bureau’s proposal would prohibit inclusion of arbitration clauses that block class action claims in contracts with consumers for credit cards, checking and deposit accounts, prepaid cards, money transfer services, certain auto loans, auto title loans, small dollar or payday loans, private student loans, and installment loans.”

Read the report.

A judge has voided the remaining $5 million of a $7.1-million jury award to a former Los Angeles Times sports columnist, ruling that he was not entitled to any damages on his claims that the newspaper discriminated against him because of his age and a disability, the Times reports.

The ruling nullifies the jury’s findings on key issues in a six-week trial, including whether Simers was forced out or quit his job after he was disciplined for not fully disclosing a conflict of interest, as his editors contended.

“On Monday, MacLaughlin ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support Simers’ claim of constructive termination, namely that the newspaper had created or permitted intolerable working conditions,” the Times reports. “Instead, the judge ruled, Simers had quit his $234,000-a-year job of his own accord.”

Read the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a California appellate court’s refusal to enforce an arbitration provision in a contract, concluding that the court’s decision is incompatible with the Federal Arbitration Act and prior Supreme Court precedent, reports John G. Papianou of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads LLP.

DirecTV, Inc. v. Imburgia involved two DirecTV customers who sued the company in California state court, claiming early termination fees in their service agreements violated California law, Papianou wrote in an article published by Lexology.com. DirecTV cited a provision in the service agreement that called for binding individual arbitration of all disputes between DirecTV and its customers. The trial court denied the request and DirecTV appealed.

He wrote that the message is clear: arbitration agreements that waive class actions or class arbitration are enforceable. And state-court judges must enforce them.

Read the article.