Uber’s Fight: “Uber Technologies Inc.’s new trial team moved aggressively on Thursday to shut down a high-stakes case over the company’s designation of drivers as independent contractors. Lawyers for Uber, led by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Boutrous Jr., urged a federal judge not to certify a class in the wage-and-hour suit, arguing among other things that most Uber drivers don’t even want to be employees.” NLJ affiliate The Recorder has the story here.
Identified: “A Miami-based affiliate of Spanish media giant Imagina group is one of the unidentified sports marketing companies alleged in a U.S. indictment to have agreed to pay a bribe in a global soccer corruption scandal, sources told Reuters.” Read the story here.
The ‘Elonis’ Effect: Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Elonis v. United States, the Facebook threats case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Thursday reversed a man’s threats conviction. Clifford Leon Houston was indicted for sending a threat in interstate commerce. “What was appropriate for Elonis was appropriate for Houston,” the circuit panel said.
Benefits Extended: Attorney General Loretta Lynch says same-sex couples in all 50 states will now receive federal marriage benefits. The change follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Officials with the Justice Department, Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs worked to expand these benefits to people who had previously not received them, The Washington Post reports. “I am proud to announce that the critical programs for veterans and elderly and disabled Americans, which previously could not give effect to the marriages of couples living in states that did not recognize those marriages, will now provide federal recognition for all marriages nationwide,” Lynch said. USA Today has more here. Read Lynch’s full statement here.
Family Affair: A Michigan lawyer is challenging a judge’s order that three children, who she claimed had been brainwashed, must live in a juvenile facility for refusing to have a relationship with their father. Judge Lisa Gorcyca of Oakland County, Michigan, said last month that the children, ages 9, 10 and 15, were in contempt of court because they refused to have a relationship with their father or even to go to lunch with him, the Daily Tribune reports. Gorcyca said the case rivals the worst case of parental alienation she has ever seen, the ABA Journal reports.
Superior Nominations: The White House nominated Washington attorney Darlene Soltys to the District of Columbia Superior Court Thursday, Zoe Tillman reports. Soltys is a senior attorney in the violent crime and narcotic trafficking section of the U.S. attorney’s office and was formerly state prosecutor in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
