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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS - Pretty sneaky, sis. Concerns about judges abusing unpublished opinions are in the spotlight following a dissental from Judge Jerry Smith last week. The practice is likely rare, but one expert told Law.com's Avalon Zoppo that, as courts become more politically polarized, the risk of judges strategically (and nefariously) using nonbinding, unpublished opinions to avoid en banc review could increase. "All Republican or all Democrat panels may be more tempted to do things to protect decisions from disagreeing colleagues," said Merritt McAlister, a University of Florida law professor. Because unpublished opinions aren't precedential and don't typically get reviewed by full courts, some court-watchers have expressed worry that panels could use them to get their desired outcome in a particular case without making changes to how future similar appeals are decided. Smith, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, accused his colleagues of doing just that: not publishing a decision that paused an airline's COVID-19 vaccine policy to prevent review by the full court. "How could it be that a key component of the law governing federal courts' 'awesome power' to order litigants around does not 'in any way interest persons other than the parties to [this] case'?" Smith wrote.

MORE MIAMI MOVEMENT - Big Law is apparently still looking to party in the city where the heat is on. A second quarter survey of large law firms from ALM Intelligence and LawVision, which polled the 500 largest firms in the U.S., found that 38% of respondents had their eyes set on Miami, Law.com's Andrew Maloney reports. Only the greater New York region, with 43% of respondents, was selected more frequently.  And the surge of firms in Miami may not be over. "Because people are moving there, and some of the private equity decision-makers are moving to Florida, firms are essentially following their clients to South Florida," said Lisa Smith, a principal at Fairfax Associates. Smith added that Miami may be trending higher still because, compared with major markets at least, it's relatively untapped.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Steven K. Ludwig and Brian McGinnis of Fox Rothschild have entered appearances for Slipstream IT LLC in a pending trade secret lawsuit. The case, filed July 5 in Pennsylvania Eastern District Court by Fisher & Phillips and Seyfarth Shaw on behalf of health and research company IQVIA Holdings, centers on allegations that Slipstream and its founders misappropriated proprietary information regarding IQVIA's customers, prospective customers and its business transactions. Co-defendant Erica Breskin is represented by Burns White. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Juan R. Sanchez, is 2:22-cv-02610, IQVIA Inc. v. Breskin et al. >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.

ON THE RADAR - Moderna sued Pfizer and vaccine partner BioNTech on Friday for patent infringement in connection with Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. The court case, brought by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Massachusetts District Court, claims that the defendants are infringing patents related to mRNA vaccine technology. In the complaint, Moderna states that it 'refrained from asserting its patents earlier so as not to distract from efforts to bring the pandemic to an end as quickly as possible.' Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 1:22-cv-11378, ModernaTX, Inc. et al v. Pfizer Inc. et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar. 

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