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March 10, 2025
GAO Says NIH Treated Bidders Disparately On $20M IT Deal
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has sustained a protest over a $19.9 million National Institutes of Health software development task order, finding the NIH unreasonably treated similar aspects of the protester's and awardee's bids differently.
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March 06, 2025
DC Judge Won't Block USAID From Firing Contractors
A D.C. federal judge on Thursday declined to temporarily block the termination of personal services contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, concluding their challenge to the dismantling of the agency is likely ill-suited for federal court.
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March 05, 2025
Contractors Claim Constitutional Injury In USAID Cuts
A group representing U.S. citizen personal services contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development insisted before a D.C. federal judge on Wednesday that their challenge to the Trump administration's dismantling of the humanitarian agency differs from another brought by workers employed directly by USAID.
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March 05, 2025
BCBS Hit With New Antitrust Suits By $2.8B Deal Opt-Outs
Dozens of hospitals and healthcare systems that opted out of a landmark $2.8 billion Blue Cross Blue Shield antitrust settlement filed fresh Sherman Act lawsuits against the insurance entities in Pennsylvania, California and Illinois federal courts Tuesday, accusing them of colluding to restrict competition for the purchase of healthcare services.
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March 05, 2025
Trump's NIH Cost-Cutting Measure Blocked By Judge
A Massachusetts federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot cap indirect costs for research grants at the National Institutes of Health, rejecting the move as a rushed cost-saving measure that violates federal law governing the expenses.
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March 04, 2025
Colo. Justices Won't Review Hospital Tax Classification Suit
The Colorado Supreme Court declined to review an appeals court ruling finding that a rehabilitation hospital should be classified as a commercial property for tax purposes because it was predominantly designed for its services and not for residency.
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March 03, 2025
Credit Bureaus Look To Duck Renewed Medical Debt Claims
Equifax, Experian and TransUnion asked a California federal judge Monday to toss an updated case accusing the credit reporting agencies of violating antitrust law by agreeing to exclude medical debt under $500 from consumer credit reports.
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March 03, 2025
Insurer Doesn't Owe Spine Surgery Suit Defense, Judge Says
An insurer has no duty to defend or indemnify an orthopedic treatment center or one of its surgeons in a suit over a botched spine surgery, a Georgia federal court ruled Monday, saying the policy bars coverage for claims reported to another insurer before its effective date.
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March 03, 2025
Adult Day Care Owner Must Pay $1.5M For Medicare Fraud
The former owner of a Michigan adult day care facility was sentenced Monday to spend one year in prison and pay about $1.5 million in restitution for submitting $3.4 million in fraudulent bills to Medicare for psychotherapy services that were either unnecessary or not provided by qualified professionals.
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March 03, 2025
Oddities Shop Owner Says Collecting Body Parts Not Criminal
A woman accused of taking part in an interstate ring buying and selling human remains allegedly stolen by the former director of Harvard University's morgue asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss an indictment against her, arguing that charges of transporting stolen goods don't apply to body parts.
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March 03, 2025
Justices Decline Data Breach Suit Against SC Medical Center
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Fourth Circuit decision that a health center cannot use federal immunity as a shield against a data breach lawsuit even though it received public funds, despite the company's warning that the ruling has created a circuit split.
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February 27, 2025
USAA, Mich. Clinics Resolve Billing Fraud Row
United Services Automobile Association said Wednesday that it has resolved its claims against physical therapy providers the insurer alleges solicited car crash victims to refer and bill them for unnecessary medical care.
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February 26, 2025
Judge Says VA Could Exclude $14B Consulting Deal Bid
A Court of Federal Claims judge has rejected a protest over a company's exclusion from a $14 billion multiaward consulting contract, saying the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs appropriately determined the firm wasn't qualified for the deal.
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February 25, 2025
San Francisco Must Face Airline Group's Suit Over Health Law
San Francisco lost its bid to escape an airline industry group's challenge to a healthcare ordinance Tuesday, with a California federal judge ruling that the city and county must face claims that the Healthy Airport Ordinance is preempted by three federal statutes.
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February 25, 2025
Wage-Fixing Jury Should Hear Of DOJ Pivot, Exec Says
A nursing executive headed for trial next month on wage-fixing charges has urged a Nevada federal judge to let the jury hear that before 2016 the Justice Department didn't view such conduct as criminal, in the lone remaining test of the DOJ's labor antitrust enforcement initiative.
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February 24, 2025
Fed. Circ. Shouldn't Assume Doctors Read Labels, Profs Say
The Federal Circuit has been reviewing whether generic-drug companies induce infringement of their limited-use drugs based on a misunderstanding of how prescribing physicians do their job, law professors from Illinois and Pennsylvania have argued in a new paper.
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February 24, 2025
Patent Eligibility Appeals 'Will Not Go Away,' Justices Told
Another plea to hear a patent eligibility case has been lodged at the U.S. Supreme Court, this time in an amicus brief from the owner of two invalidated patents covering medical machinery that warned "the problem will not go away. The problem will get worse and worse."
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February 24, 2025
GAO Sinks Protest Over Army Corps Solicitation Amendment
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has said the Army Corps of Engineers rightly changed a solicitation to remove the requirement that solicitors attach a project labor agreement, denying a construction contractor's protest of the change.
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February 24, 2025
Shooting Victim Blames Nursing Home For Lack Of Security
A Pennsylvania man who was robbed and shot while visiting his brother at a Pittsburgh nursing home last November has filed a lawsuit against the facility in state court, claiming the company falsely represented that it was safe and secure.
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February 20, 2025
Trump Trans Edicts Will Cause More Teen Suicides, States Say
Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota argued Wednesday for a court order halting President Donald Trump's executive orders targeting federal funding for gender-affirming care for young people, saying the edicts are unconstitutional and have "unleashed unbridled fear and irreparable harms."
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February 20, 2025
Nootropics Co. Can't Push Nurse's Suit To Arbitration
Makers of the Thesis brand of supplements can't push into arbitration a former U.S. Army nurse's lawsuit claiming its nootropics, sometimes called "smart drugs," secretly contained amphetamines, which caused her to fail a drug test and be booted from the military, a Washington federal judge has ruled.
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February 20, 2025
Ex-Opioid CEO's Billing Spat With Trial Atty Lands In Court
A Manhattan federal judge teed up a briefing schedule Thursday after a fight over expenses erupted between convicted former opioid CEO Laurence Doud and the lawyer who represented him at his criminal trial, who says Doud still owes $150,000.
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February 19, 2025
Contractors' Group Asks DC Judge To Halt Gutting Of USAID
A group representing U.S. citizen personal services contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development is the latest to ask a federal judge to step in and block the Trump administration's push to gut the agency and its operations.
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February 19, 2025
Colorado Joins Fight Against Trump Trans Health Order
Colorado on Wednesday joined Washington and two other states opposing President Donald Trump's executive order targeting federal funding for gender-affirming care for people younger than 19, in an amended complaint that noted Colorado was the first state to include gender-affirming care among essential health benefits.
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February 18, 2025
Policyholders Win Bid To Preserve Records For Antitrust Suit
Insurance policyholders who accused Hartford HealthCare Corp. of violating antitrust and unfair trade practices in a Connecticut state court can intervene in a federal court lawsuit with similar claims against the hospital network to preserve records for their class action, a federal district judge has ruled a month after the federal suit settled.
Expert Analysis
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8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney
A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.
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This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys
Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.
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Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession
About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.
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AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys
The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners
Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.
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Considering Possible PR Risks Of Certain Legal Tactics
Disney and American Airlines recently abandoned certain litigation tactics in two lawsuits after fierce public backlash, illustrating why corporate counsel should consider the reputational implications of any legal strategy and partner with their communications teams to preempt public relations concerns, says Chris Gidez at G7 Reputation Advisory.
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It's No Longer Enough For Firms To Be Trusted Advisers
Amid fierce competition for business, the transactional “trusted adviser” paradigm from which most firms operate is no longer sufficient — they should instead aim to become trusted partners with their most valuable clients, says Stuart Maister at Strategic Narrative.
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11 Patent Cases To Watch At Fed. Circ. And High Court
As we head into fall, there are 11 patent cases to monitor, touching on a range of issues that could affect patent strategy, such as biotech innovation, administrative rulemaking and patent eligibility, say Edward Lanquist and Wesley Barbee at Baker Donelson.
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How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations
Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.
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Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles
Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.
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Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.
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5 Tips To Succeed In A Master Of Laws Program And Beyond
As lawyers and recent law school graduates begin their Master of Laws coursework across the country, they should keep a few pointers in mind to get the most out of their programs and kick-start successful careers in their practice areas, says Kelley Miller at Reed Smith.