Raleigh, North Carolina-based First Citizens said the acquisition fits with its expansion plans in California and the Northeast. First Citizens Bank & Trust Co., a subsidiary of Raleigh, North Carolina-based First Citizens BancShares Inc., will acquire all the deposits and loans of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, the holding company for the failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said . SVB’s 17 former branches are reopening...
President Biden today issued an executive order that would ban federal agencies from using commercial spyware that has been used to spy on U.S. government personnel or that repressive foreign governme...
Under the MCA exemption, the FLSA’s overtime compensation requirement does not apply if “the Secretary of Transportation has [the] power to establish qualifications and maximum hours of service.” A former crane mechanic for Circle 8 Crane Services, LLC was exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements as a “mechanic” under the Motor Carrier Act, the Fifth Circuit held. The appeals court found that the Secretary of Transportation had the power to establish the minimum qualifications and maximum…
The CFTC’s complaint describes a largely offshore corporate structure that is similar in many respects to that of the failed crypto platform FTX, including control by a one or a small number of individuals and the existence of many, largely undisclosed, proprietary trading entities. The CFTC brought civil charges against Binance Holdings Limited, the firm’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao and several additional entities for allegedly operating as an unregistered derivatives exchange. Binance is the…
A bill designed to improve the security of open-source software has been introduced by Sens. Gary Peters (D., Mich.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.). The Securing Open Source Software Act (S 917) would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “to develop a risk framework to evaluate how open source code is used by the federal government,” the senators said in a news release . “CISA would also…
A Texas district court had jurisdiction to enter the preliminary injunction because the president’s vaccine mandate fell outside the scope of the Civil Service Reform Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld a district court’s nationwide injunction against the president’s executive order requiring that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or face possible termination. The ruling overturned an appeals court decision by a smaller panel that had reversed the…
The Second Circuit rejected the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning regarding the CFPB’s funding in a case involving a CID against a law firm debt collector. On appeal, the Second Circuit rejected arguments that the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional, and declined to follow the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in Community Financial Services Association of America v. CFPB , which had held that the creation of the CFPB violated the Appropriations clause. The…
Justices questioned whether the parties really disagreed on the legal standards, and if not, what the Court could contribute besides dismissing the case as improvidently granted. The Supreme Court today heard arguments in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi (No. 21-757), a case that could affect the ways pharmaceutical research companies must develop and describe their inventions in order to receive the broad scope of protection they would prefer to justify their research and development costs.…
The court found the arguments on appeal to be “without merit.” By way of a summary order without precedential effect, the Second Circuit affirmed the Southern District of New York’s 2021 dismissal of SL-x IP S.a.r.l. parent and subsidiary (collectively, SL-x) complaints. Stock-lending platform and fintech startup accused Bank of America and several other major banks of forcing it out of business through an antitrust conspiracy. The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of the SL-x Parent complaint…
The workers failed to establish that the disinfectant tested by their expert in his experiment was the authentic product or that it was unexpired and properly stored. In an action brought against a disinfectant manufacturer by healthcare workers who suffered asthmatic symptoms allegedly due to exposure to the product’s chemicals, the federal district court in Minnesota granted the manufacturer’s motion to exclude the workers’ expert evidence. The court found that the tested product was not…
The duty of prudence requires a plan fiduciary to systematically review its funds both at the initial inclusion of a particular fund in the plan and at regular intervals to determine whether each is a prudent investment. On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hughes v. Northwestern University , the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of an excessive recordkeeping fees claim and a share-class claim brought by Northwestern employees who participated in retirement…
As you may know, the NLRB’s top prosecutor issued a memo last year seeking to bar employers from convening employee meetings on working time to address union representation unless they provide employees specific assurances that pa...
Should Employers Freak out About the FTC's Recent Attention on “Noncompetes”? “Noncompete agreements” (among other restrictive covenants such as customer nonsoliciation, employee nonraiding and confidentiality agreements) have bee...
A table of proposed rule comment dates and final rule effective and compliance dates for SEC and CFTC rulemaking. Recent SEC activity includes the following: Electronic filing. The SEC is proposing to require that registrants subm...
The PCAOB determined that Friedman failed to reasonably supervise two accounting firms that played a substantial role in the audits of 12 issuers with operations in China. The PCAOB censured and fined Friedman for its failure to r...
Welcome to The Week in State Privacy and Cybersecurity Legislation , your weekly update on the latest developments in proposed and amended privacy and data security legislation across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as...
The Minnesota state Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection voted last week to pass the Minnesota Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. According to SF 2810, a “business that develops and provides online services, products...
A class action suit against WellDyneRx lacked standing because the consumer failed to establish subject matter jurisdiction when claiming that his sensitive personal information was impacted by the company’s data breach. A consume...
The court found that the employee’s alleged violations of HIPAA policy represented a legitimate reason for termination, whereas the employee failed to convince the court that the employer had any other illegal motives. A terminate...
Corporations, limited liability companies and other entities registered to do business in the U.S. must disclose information about the persons who own or control the company to FinCEN beginning next year. The U.S. Treasury’s Finan...
The publication follows the Fed’s earlier denial of the Wyoming-based special purpose depository institution’s application to be supervised by the Federal Reserve. Basing its decision on managerial, financial, corporate powers, an...
Plaintiff’s identification of two specific examples of allegedly infringing work was enough for direct infringement claim to proceed where defendant’s reports contained identical wording and structure to the originals. Where an in...
The plaintiff failed to obtain a composition registration before suing for composition infringement, and, in any event, the two songs lacked substantial similarity. Emelike Nwosuocha’s suit alleging that Donald Glover’s song “This...
The consumers sufficiently pleaded that the ice cream’s label “healthy fats” statement could mislead a reasonable consumer. It was plausible that a reasonable consumer could be misled into thinking that the Rebel Creamery ice crea...
In breaking new legal ground, the court had temporarily sealed its opinion in order to give the parties opportunity to suggest redactions. The federal district court in New York City has unsealed an opinion in which it dismissed a...
The manufacturers’ causation defenses were not affirmative defenses but were denials intended to negate the specific causation element in the negligence and products liability claims. In a products liability case brought against J...
The document defines an elevated value for children to more accurately assess the benefits of regulations that reduce child fatalities. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is announcing the availability of, and seeking c...