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The Oklahoman reports that jurors wanted to send a message to health insurer Aetna after hearing how the company’s overworked doctors denied an Oklahoma cancer patient’s claim for coverage for proton beam therapy.

Reporter Nolan Clay writes that jurors awarded $25.5 million to the patient’s estate and to her husband, a retired Oklahoma City firefighter, in the bad-faith case against the company.

The patient, Orrana Cunningham, died in 2015 from a viral outbreak after getting treatment for the tumor in her head and returning home. She was 54.

Read the Oklahoman article.

Bloomberg Law reports that class counsel will take home $300 million from settlements over an alleged conspiracy among banks to fix prices in the foreign exchange market.

The court issued the order on Thursday, Nov. 8.

The settlement, approved in August with banks that include Bank of America, JP Morgan and Citibank, is the third largest antitrust class action settlement in history, according to plaintiffs, writes Bloomberg reporter Perry Cooper.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The ABA Journal reports that a $30 million lawsuit alleges a personal injury firm had its clients stolen by two competitors who sent case runners to a pain clinic where they enticed the patients to switch firms.

Reporter Debra Cassens Weiss writes: “The law firm Ginarte Gallardo Gonzalez & Winograd, with offices in New York and New Jersey, alleges its clients were lured away with promises of payments of about $2,000 or $3,000, which were paid from a ‘briefcase full of cash’ by lawyer William Schwitzer.

The suit names Schwitzer and his firm, William Schwitzer & Associates in New York City, as defendants, along with some other lawyers associated with the firm.

Read the ABA Journal article.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether it should place limits on class-action settlements in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers receive millions and their clients get nothing, reports The New York Times.

“The case arose from an $8.5 million settlement between Google and class-action lawyers who said the company had violated its users’ privacy rights,” writes Times reporter Adam Liptak. “Under the settlement, the lawyers were paid more than $2 million, but members of the class received no money.”

As a part of the settlement, Google agreed to contribute to institutions concerned with privacy on the internet, including centers at Harvard, Stanford and Chicago-Kent College of Law, and AARP.

“How can you say that it makes any sense?” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked a lawyer for the members of the class.

Read the NY Times article.

An El Paso neurosurgeon is the subject of a lawsuit filed last week, accused of unlawfully conspiring with a local attorney to solicit legal representation for a dying truck wreck victim, according to a release from Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The lawsuit, filed by El Paso resident Karla Triana, claims that while her mother was undergoing emergency surgery at Del Sol Medical Center, Dr. Bratislav Velimirovic handed her a lawyer’s business card and urged her to contact the attorney. Triana’s mother died as a result of her injuries.

Triana subsequently received a call and text message on her personal cell phone from an employee in the office of the attorney, Victor J. Bieganowski, indicating that he sought to represent her in a civil claim against the trucking company.

“It’s clear that the doctor and the attorney are breaking the law by working together to solicit legal representation of accident victims and their families,” says attorney Tom Carse of Dallas. Carse handles cases involving charges of unlawful representation, known as barratry, against other attorneys, according to the release.

“It’s logical to think this was not an isolated incident, and that there may be more instances of this conspiracy still to be uncovered.”

The release states that Bieganowski was convicted in 2000 on federal charges for his role in a massive medical and legal fraud, and received a 30-month prison sentence and a fine of $375,000. He was disbarred, but subsequently regained his law license. The fraud charges involved claims against union officials for funneling the cases of injured workers to Bieganowski’s legal practice and the medical practice of his brother, Dr. Arthur Bieganowski.

Dr. Velimirovic is a partner in Neurosurgical Specialists of El Paso. According to the clinic’s website he is a “board-certified neurosurgeon who utilizes advanced techniques to perform minimally invasive spine surgery, cranial surgery and interventional radiologic procedures.”

A new study by Above the Law takes a unique approach to ranking the influence and impact of justices of the U.S. Supreme Court by rating them based on the career success of their former clerks.

“Today’s Supreme Court clerks are tomorrow’s Supreme Court justices. They are tomorrow’s attorneys general and United States attorneys.” explains executive editor Elie Mystal. “They are tomorrow’s law professors and corporate GCs. Former Supreme Court clerks are incredibly powerful people in their own right, and they received their final training from a Supreme Court justice.”

The study covers former justices as well as current members of the court. That’s why, for example, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and the late Thurgood Marshall score high in the rankings. The study focuses on four categories: the judiciary, Biglaw, academia and government.

Read the Above the Law article.

A California appellate court has given Tokai Intl. Holdings Inc. the go-ahead to proceed with cleanup cost-related malpractice claims against law firm Paul Hastings LLP, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

“The firm allegedly failed to properly advise the Delaware-based company about environmental cleanup costs taken on by a subsidiary when it bought a holding company in 2005. Paul Hastings provided advice during the acquisition,” writes Bloomberg reporter Peter Hayes.

Tokai alleges an agreement in a contract for the purchase of a holding company left it, rather than the seller, with $2 million or more in reimbursed cleanup costs related to contamination at a former manufacturing site in California.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The ABA Journal reports that a would-be class action suit filed against President Donald Trump alleges he engaged in a scheme to defraud investors by promoting three companies that charged people to sell their products and learn about business opportunities, while failing to disclose the financial risk of the buy-in.

Reporter Debra Cassens Weiss writes that the suit alleges Trump didn’t disclose that he was “lavishly paid” for the endorsements, and instead led consumers to believe that his backing was based on due diligence, inside information and personal experience with the companies.

Defendants include Trump, the Trump Organization and children Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump.

Read the ABA Journal article.

SCOTUSblog reports that in Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit correctly held that an employer consented to class arbitration.

The employer in that case included language in the arbitration contract that committed the parties to use arbitration “in lieu of any and all lawsuits or other civil legal proceedings,” specified that arbitral claims include those “that, in the absence of this Agreement, would have been available to the parties by law,” and authorized the arbitrator to “award any remedy allowed by applicable law.”

Lower courts have found that the arbitration agreement could be read to authorize class arbitration, and that California contract law called for ambiguity on that point to be resolved against the contract’s drafter, Lamps Plus, writes Charlotte Garden.

Read the article.

An Ohio company faces a record fine of more than $63 million after allegedly bilking a government aid program out of millions of dollars, some of which went toward funding the lavish lifestyle of the firm’s chief executive, federal regulators said Tuesday.

The Washington Post reports that the the Federal Communications Commission is taking action against American Broadband, a provider of low-income phone service whose agents allegedly created fake or duplicate customer accounts to claim extra federal funding under a program that offers disadvantaged Americans a small monthly discount on phone and Internet service.

Post reporter Brian Fung explains:

American Broadband’s chief executive, Jeffrey Ansted, was also held personally liable for the alleged misconduct Tuesday as the FCC accused him of embezzling aid money and using it to pay for luxury goods such as an $8 million private Cessna jet, a $1.3 million Florida condominium and a $250,000 Ferrari convertible. He also used the funds to buy memberships to yacht and country clubs, the FCC said.

Read the Washington Post article.

The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas businessman Christopher Faulkner, better known by his now infamous moniker “Frack Master,” has admitted to securities fraud, tax evasion and money laundering and faces up to 12 years in prison, federal officials said Tuesday.

Reporter Jess Mosier writes that Faulkner, the former CEO of Dallas-based Breitling Energy, became a star in business circles for his high-profile media appearances defending hydraulic fracturing or fracking. He used fake college degrees and skimpy business experience to convince Dallas business elite and Texas political elite that he was an oil and gas expert.

“The SEC effectively shut down Breitling Energy and related businesses after suing Faulkner and 11 others in 2016 for misusing $23.8 million of the $80 million they raised for oil and gas investments,” according to Mosier. “Besides the prison time, Faulkner must pay back the nearly $24 million made from his schemes, under the terms of his settlement.”

Read the Dallas News article.

Over the past 15 years, Key Risk Insurance Co. has made multiple trips to courts and before the North Carolina Industrial Commission to argue that Mario Seguro-Suarez has been faking his symptoms from an on-the-job injury and that his benefits should be cut off.

The Charlotte Observer reports documents show that the company disregarded years of medical opinions — including several from its own doctors — that Seguro-Suarez was indeed left disabled from his fall at a Southern Fiber factory. The 2003 head-first fall from 18 feet onto a concrete floor left him disabled.

After years of failing to cut off payments to Seguro-Suarez, the insurance company’s private detective “took what a detective would describe as misleading information to Lincolnton police to accuse Seguro-Suarez of insurance fraud. He was arrested, jailed and later indicted,” reporter Michael Gordon writes.

That attempt drew a withering rebuke from a judge, and now Seguro-Suarez is suing for malicious prosecution.

Read the Charlotte Observer article.

The U.S. International Trade Commission has unanimously affirmed that PMP Fermentation Products, Inc. was materially injured by unfairly traded sodium gluconate, gluconic acid, and derivative imports from China.

Barnes & Thornburg represented PMP before the commission.

Inn a release, the firm said the final USITC decision of Oct. 16 followed the U.S. Department of Commerce’s imposition of two sets of tariffs, antidumping and countervailing duties totaling over 408 percent on Chinese sodium gluconate products after it was determined they were subsidized and sold in the U.S. market at less than fair value. These tariffs were imposed to protect PMP from unfair Chinese trade and were in response to a petition prosecuted by Barnes & Thornburg.

“We’re delighted the USITC found that PMP was injured by reason of chronically low-priced Chinese imports underselling U.S. products,” said David Spooner of Barnes & Thornburg. “We expect this decision will help level the playing field for the U.S. manufacturer, PMP.”

The Barnes & Thornburg team representing PMP consisted of Spooner, Christine Sohar Henter and Nicholas Galbraith in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, and Mari Yamamoto Regnier in Chicago.

Photo by Kārlis Dambrāns

A former employee of Huawei Technologies Co. accuses the company of using a lawsuit against his Silicon Valley startup as part of a strategy to steal intellectual property and help China achieve technological dominance over the U.S. according to a report in The Dallas Morning News.

“Huawei and its FutureWei unit sued Huang and his startup CNEX Labs Inc. last December, accusing Huang of making off with sensitive trade secrets related to technology that uses integrated circuits as memory to store data,” the article reports. “Huang was hired as an engineer by FutureWei in Santa Clara, California, in January 2011 and left two years later to form CNEX, where he’s chief technology officer.”

But Huang responded that he was the victim of the Chinese company trying to take control of his inventions for Solid State Disk Non-Volatile Memory. Huang’s defense raised the corporate espionage allegations filed by other American companies and a congressional report that said use of Huawei equipment “could undermine core U.S. national-security interests.”

Read the Dallas News article.

Bloomberg Law reports that K&L Gates LLP is facing a $100 million legal malpractice suit from a Texas semiconductor company, Quantum Materials Corp., over an alleged conflict of interest.

Reporter Sam Skolnik explains that the plaintiff’s petition alleges that the law firm represented lenders in a legal action against the company while also representing Quantum. The petition filed Oct. 16 in District Court of Hays County, Texas, seeks punitive damages.

The complaint says that Quantum retained K&L Gates in 2016 as corporate counsel, and the representation was never ended. But when Quantum became involved in a dispute with two lenders, K&L Gates lawyers represented the lenders against Quantum, according to the complaint.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

A former Foley & Lardner partner was suspended two years by the state Supreme Court for lying to the IRS during an audit of two wealthy estates connected to a major area business, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“The firm fired Adam Wiensch, 55, in 2016 when it learned he had falsified documents related to the transfer of wealth from the owners of Carma Laboratories to their children, a move that attempted to save the family millions in taxes,” writes the Journal Sentinel‘s Bruce Vielmetti.

The court’s opinion recounts Wiensch’s earlier testimony that he had been facing “several highly disruptive and personal” issues at the time of his offenses, and was dealing with depression and alcoholism.

Read the Journal Sentinel article.

The New York Times reports on the Heritage Foundation’s “Federal Clerkship Training Academy,” which required applicants to keep the training materials secret and to pledge that they wouldn’t use any of the training materials “for any purpose contrary to the mission or interest of the Heritage Foundation.”

The report by Adam Liptak says application materials told prospective clerks that “generous donors” were making “a significant financial investment in each and every attendee.”

“But legal experts said the effort by Heritage to train and influence law clerks raised serious ethical questions and could undermine the duties the clerks have to the justice system and to the judges they will serve,” according to Liptak.

A few hours after the Times report went online, the foundation announced that it was suspending the program.

Read the NY Times article.

The Associated Press reports that Florida’s next governor and not incumbent Gov. Rick Scott will get to pick three new justices to the state Supreme Court, the court ruled in a decision with major implications in this year’s gubernatorial campaign.

“In a major rebuke to Scott, the Supreme Court concluded that the Republican governor exceeded his authority when he started the process to find replacements for the three justices,” the AP reports.

Because of age limits of 70, three justices must retire at midnight Jan. 8, the same day Scott is scheduled to leave the governor’s office. Scott, claiming he had authority to name the replacements, last month asked a nominating commission to start accepting applications with a Nov. 10 deadline.

Read the AP article.

Two companies facing multiple lawsuits over a summer tourist boat accident in Missouri that killed 17 people have invoked an 1851 law that allows vessel owners to try to avoid or limit legal damages as they also seek settlement negotiations with victims’ family members, reports the Chicago Tribune.

“If a judge concluded that the federal law cited by Ripley [Entertainment Inc.] and Branson Duck Vehicles applies, claims for damages over the July 19 accident on Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri, could be consolidated into a single federal court case,” explains the article, from the Associated Press. “The companies’ petition states that under the federal law, they would not owe any damages because the boat carried no freight and was a total loss.”

Read the Chicago Tribune article.

The lawyer most responsible for winning a $289 million verdict against Bayer AG may end up wiping it out, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

Brent Wisner, the lead trial attorney who in August convinced a jury that Monsanto Co.’s Roundup weed killer caused his client’s cancer, irked the judge handling the case so profoundly that she’s considering tossing the verdict and ordering a new trial.

From the Bloomberg report: “The lawyer told jurors that Monsanto executives in a company board room were ‘waiting for the phone to ring’ and that ‘behind them is a bunch of champagne on ice,’ according to a court filing. He said that ‘if the damages number isn’t significant enough, champagne corks will pop.’”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.