Category: News Feeds

This morning representatives of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service boarded a yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire in the Long Island Sound and arrested former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon for defrauding a charity dedicated to raising private money to build a wall on the southern border.

That’s it. That’s the tweet.

A grand jury indictment against Bannon and three alleged co-conspirators for fraud and money laundering was unsealed this morning in New York and announced at a press conference by Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss.

Back in 2018, veteran and anti-immigration activist Brian Kolfage set up a GoFundMe to collect donations for Trump’s border wall project, since we’re not even pretending that “Mexico will pay for it” any more. Kolfage called his project “We the People Build the Wall,” but here on Planet Earth, government projects don’t get funded by bake sales. So in December of 2018, GoFundMe told Kolfage he’d have to move the $20 million pot to a dedicated non-profit, or the platform was going to refund it to the donors.

Luckily, Steve Bannon and his shady VC pal Andrew Badolato (no, seriously, that’s his real name!) were there to help. Instead of donating the money to Uncle Sam, they’d build it themselves. So Bannon created a brand new 501(c)(4) called We Build the Wall Inc., and Kolfage set about persuading the donors to allow him to move their cash to his new project.

And indeed, he was very persuasive, promising that “I take $0 no salary no compensation” and “It’s not possible to steal the money” because “I can’t touch that money. It’s not for me. We have bylaws set up.”

Bannon and Badolato snickered at Kolfage’s promises to “refund every penny if the wall doesn’t get built,” high-fiving each other about “the greatest media narrative ever” that “gives [B]rian Kolfage saint hood” while simultaneously hitting up donors to patronize the online coffee shop that was supposed to be supporting Kolfage’s family. But the pitch worked, with most donors agreeing to move their funds to the private wall project, and soon they had $25 million in the kitty.

Kolfage had assured donors that “100% means 100% right? Board won’t see any of that money!” But that wasn’t quite true. According to the indictment, Bannon, who chaired the board, moved more than a million dollars into a different charitable account and then proceeded to dole it out through payments to sham vendors for “social media” work which was never performed, routing $350,000 to Kolfage and using most of the rest for his own personal expenses.

Bannon agreed to pay Kolfage $100,000 upfront and then a $20,000 monthly “salary.” After the first $100,000 went out, Kolfage worried that the charity would have to disclose the payment on its tax forms.

“Better you than me lol,” Badolato texted. Safe bet the prosecutors lol’ed pretty hard at that one, too. And Kolfage’s subsequent bright idea to disguise the $20,000 monthly payments by sending them …

TO HIS WIFE.

Yeah, it’s not really a brains operation here. In October 2019, these geniuses figured out that the feds were on to them, so they quickly deleted all the stuff about not taking any salary from the charity’s website and switched to encrypted messaging. So gangster!

But the postal cops were not thrown off the trail, and now Bannon, Kolfage, and Badolato are charged with fraud and money laundering. And the nice people at SDNY are demanding that these criminal masterminds (lol) hand over a crapton of assets, including accounts held by Ranch Property Marketing & Management LLC, America First Medical LLC, and “White Knights & Vultures LLC.” (OMG, fire the writers!)

The feds would also like the keys to a 2018 Range Rover and “a 2019 Jupiter marine boat named ‘Warfighter.’” And if you guessed that “Warfighter” is a boat that Kolfage sailed in one of Trump’s vaunted boat flotillas that are so much better than real polls, you’d be right.

Naturally Trump has forgotten that he ever knew his former campaign manager, telling reporters this morning, “He worked for a lot of companies. He was involved in our campaign and for a small part of the administration very early on. Haven’t been dealing with him at all. I know nothing about the project other than that I didn’t like it.”

When asked why two of his former campaign managers had been charged with major crimes, in addition to Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Rick Gates, Trump responded that “there was great lawlessness in the Obama administration.”

And speaking of lawlessness, we can’t help but notice that Bill Barr, who has been twisting the Justice Department into a pretzel to help out Trump’s pals, tried just two months ago to Friday Night Massacre SDNY and put his buddy Jay Clayton in charge. But he failed, and now another character from Trump’s island of misfit toys is under arrest.

Probably a coincidence, right?

US v. Brian Kolfage, et al [DOJ]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Brexit was nothing if not a collective act of wishful thinking, a group of English (and Welsh!) people banding together, closing their eyes and jumping into what was quite clearly—to those with eyes open—a bottomless cavern of decreasing relevance and increasing insecurity, but which those doing the jumping hoped would turn out to be greener grass and milk and honey once they opened their eyes. There, they’d be able to have their cake and eat it, too.

Among the most fanciful bottomless slices of cake pedaled by unscrupulous Brexiteers was that the U.K.’s erstwhile partners would not take the opportunity to gut the City of London like a fish (another somewhat contentious issue these days) and that the British, having voluntarily surrendered their place at the table, would be able to protect its all-important financial services industry from those continental sorts who’ve never much cared for hedge funds and the like. As it turns out, without interference from the Anglo-Saxons, the Germano-Gallic impulse to regulate alternative investments can proceed unmolested—and can be imposed on those Anglo-Saxons, anyway, if they’d like to maintain any clients across the Channel.

We may well be on our way to a brave new officeless world. COVID has shown many businesses — including law firms — that they don’t need the real estate footprints they once thought they did.

But we’re not there quite yet.

The physicality of an attorney’s personalized workspace plays into the mystique of a successful lawyer. I vividly recall the Biglaw call back interviews my 2L year and, like many law students, I was duly impressed with the partner offices I was trotted around to. The corner offices with views of Central Park, the buttery leather couches that clearly cost what translated to a year’s rent for me, even the “messy” offices that were piled with more paper than I’d ever seen in one place still gave an aura of their vastness. And all that for a long time helped define what I considered success. As an associate, meeting in a partner’s office was akin to getting called to the principal’s and I always sat up a little straighter, plastered a smile on my face, and was on my best behavior. I can imagine I’d ever be comfortable enough to invade a partner’s sanctum without them looking on and do my own work.

But that’s exactly what Freshfields is telling their attorneys they should be doing. The London base of the Magic Circle firm is moving to a new office later this year (the move was delayed due to COVID), and as reported by Legal Cheek, the new space is believed to be about 20 percent smaller.

Perhaps in response to this new reality, the London office is rolling out an “office release system,” wherein junior attorneys can use a partner’s office, if that partner is working from home that day:

“If you’re not there, you give your office up”, London managing partner Claire Wills told the website Legal Week (£), while another partner, who isn’t named, said lockdown had shown that “people do not need rooms full of paper and offices in the traditional sense.”

They added:

“I used to think I could not work without precedents around me but it’s more a comfort blanket. We’ve been at home without any of this stuff and most people are busy.”

But lest you think this transition will be seemless, a source at the firm says some people are “quite territorial about rooms and desks.” Which isn’t terribly surprising. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out long term.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns will go down in legend. He claimed they were under audit… apparently for his whole term. He marched Morgan Lewis partner Sheri Dillon in front of a bunch of prop manila folders to swear there was nothing to see — a stunt that landed Biglaw squarely on SNL. He sent the DOJ to court to claim that presidents had magic anti-subpoena powers. But now, finally, some lucky grand jurors are about to see Trump’s financial history laid bare. The rest of us seeing any of these documents depends on whether or not they find anything criminal in there.

So… we’re very likely to see these documents.

The massive, 103-page opinion from Judge Victor Marrero picked up exactly where Chief Justice John Roberts left off when he wrote last month that presidents don’t enjoy absolute immunity from state criminal proceedings. As punts go, Roberts kicked into the wind and directly toward a 20-something Deion Sanders. He didn’t order the accountants at Mazars to hand over Trump’s records immediately — which he could’ve leveled by simply affirming the decisions below — but he certainly didn’t offer the Trump team much hope that their next date in front of Judge Marrero would end any differently than the first.

With no absolute immunity left to stand on, Trump’s attorneys could only get out of this subpoena by proving that it was designed merely to harass him or articulating some specific reason it hinders his constitutional duties. They accomplished… neither.

Since the people around Trump keep getting convicted — and holy hell, Steve Bannon got pinched today — it’s hard to argue that there isn’t a valid investigative interest in Trump’s businesses. Michael Cohen has already told the world that charitable funds were used to pay off porn stars and that’s more than enough to make a valid grand jury inquiry and subsequent revelations lend credence to possible insurance and tax improprieties.

There aren’t a lot of good arguments to get Trump out of this subpoena, so his lawyers emptied the magazine of bad ones. Culminating in a true genius of a circular argument about the harassing nature of these subpoenas:

The SAC alleges that because the Mazars Subpoena was mostly copied from congressional subpoenas designed to achieve national and international goals, it is not properly tailored to the grand jury investigation and should be quashed.

In other words, “the fact that impeachment exists as a remedy doesn’t provide a president with absolute immunity from criminal investigations, but if a criminal investigation involves a president, then it could result in impeachment so that the president is immune from criminal investigation.” Judge Marrero is wildly indulgent in devoting 103 pages to this when a simple “LOL, no” would suffice. Trump also argues that Cohen’s testimony only implicated the president in a limited number of possible crimes, making the Mazars subpoena overbroad — a claim rebutted by the DA’s office explaining that they’re well beyond just those crimes at this point.

As explained in greater detail below, the President’s allegations regarding the timing and preparation of the Mazars Subpoena do not adequately rebut the subpoena’s presumptive validity. The alleged circumstances of the Mazars Subpoena’s preparation and issuance do not raise a reasonable inference of retaliation or harassment, and the President’s allegations that the subpoena’s resulting requests are outside the scope of the grand jury’s investigation fail to account for obvious alternative explanations that accord with the presumptive validity of the subpoena.

At every turn, Marrero provides a detailed response — arguments that could be addressed with a cursory citation to well-established law are given paragraphs of analysis. The straightforward claim that tax returns might be relevant to Congress for one reason and a grand jury for another gets pages of discussion!

What happens next? One assumes that the Second Circuit will be hauled in on an appeal to declare, “didn’t we already deal with this?” and then the Trump team will likely try to get themselves back in front of the Supreme Court.

But that next SCOTUS appointment isn’t likely to offer him much solace. The Court already ruled 7-2 on the actual legal question here and any future appeal would be asking them to disturb the district judge’s application of that prior opinion to pleadings when they’ve already tacitly admitted that they agree with Marrero. All the Supreme Court might offer Trump at this point is a hearing date after November in a bid to maintain its precious — if farcical — apolitical institutional status.

But one way or another, these documents are getting before a grand jury sooner rather than later.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

With the selection of California senator Kamala Harris as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, there’s come an intense amount of scrutiny. Sure, some of it has been downright racist (and more is likely on the way). But as almost a salve to that upsetting drivel, there’ve also been articles designed to humanize the candidate (and wash away the lingering doubt from the left about putting a former law enforcement agent on the ticket). The latest effort from the Washington Post celebrates the “newlywedism” of Harris and her Biglaw husband, Doug Emhoff.

As a Biglaw partner, a litigator from DLA Piper, we’ve covered Emhoff quite a bit at Above the Law. He’s currently on leave from DLA to hit the campaign trail and now his relationship with the wannabe VP is under a microscope. Personal relationships have always been a part of elections, and Emhoff has been public in his support of Harris in the past. But it is unique to see such affection on display. Part of that may well be how relatively new their relationship is — their sixth anniversary is this weekend. As Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, tells WaPo, “They still seem to radiate newlywedism,” saying that Emhoff and Harris are “really besotted with each other.”

And an active social media presence helps to reify the image that the relationship is a strong one:

With an assist from some Emhoff heroics:

When a protester jumped up onstage and lunged at Harris in 2019, Emhoff hopped into action and helped usher the protester away, another gesture that screamed: I’ve got you. “There was something kind of superhero-ish about it,” says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

It’s a throughly modern relationship as well, with the family blending different backgrounds:

At their 2014 wedding, Emhoff wore a flower garland around his neck to honor Kamala’s Indian heritage; they smashed a glass per Emhoff’s Jewish tradition. It’s Harris’s first marriage and Emhoff’s second — he has two children from his previous one. According to the Pew Research Center, remarriage is on the rise — as are unions of two people of differing faiths and races.

Harris has written that, “I was already hooked on Doug, but I believe it was Cole and Ella [Emhoff’s children from a previous marriage] who reeled me in.” The kids affectionately call Harris “Momala.” And Harris joins Emhoff’s ex-wife at the kids’ events saying, “We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.”

As Emoff looks to potentially take on a new role as Second Gentleman, he’ll be put into a historic position redefining gender roles and what’s expected from political spouses. But don’t worry too much about the Biglaw partner — Perry calls Emhoff “a bit of a chameleon in a good way.” And that “whatever role he needs to play, he seems to glide easily into it.” Let’s hope we all have the opportunity to watch him grow into that role.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

As days and weeks go by in these uncertain times brought about by the pandemic, Biglaw firms continue to monitor and reassess their financial situations. Many that put precautionary austerity measures into place are now taking a step back adjusting their previously announced reductions in salary (and in some cases, staff).

The latest firm to roll back salary reductions is K&L Gates, another member of the billion-dollar club that placed 39th in the Am Law 100, with $1,026,626,000 in 2019 gross revenue. Back in April, the firm reduced salaries across the board, with equity partners seeing a 20 percent reduction in scheduled advances, and firm leaders taking even larger reductions. Income partners, associates, and allied professionals and staff were subject to a 15 percent reduction in their salary provided their income didn’t fall below a $75,000 floor (with some regional variations).

Now, because the firm has “performed better than expected” in 2020, those reductions are being reduced. Here’s a relevant excerpt from a memo (available in full on the next page) sent by Jim Segerdahl, the firm’s global managing partner:

1. Our equity partners will continue to lead in this regard, as has been a driving principle from the outset.  Instead of the previously imposed 20% reduction in their normally scheduled advances each month, starting at the end of September the advances will be 15% less than normal, with our Management Committee personnel continuing to take larger reductions.
2. Most other personnel across the Firm (Income Partners, Associates and Allied Professionals/Staff) previously were taking a 15% reduction in their annualized salary (as permitted by and in accordance with local laws and necessary procedures where required) to the extent they have an annualized salary at or above a pre-determined floor. Given the Firm’s strong performance to this stage, this Covid-reduction will be reduced by 33% to 10% going forward starting with the work period commencing at the beginning of September.
3. The pre-determined floor will shift upward from $75,000 to $100,000, again subject to appropriate regional differences. Personnel whose pre-reduction compensation was between $75,001 and $100,000 will return to their pre-reduction compensation as of September 1.

Remember, the firm is still holding open the door for bonuses in light of “extraordinary performances or contributions” during the coronavirus crisis, and in this memo, Segerdahl reminded everyone that because the firm’s future depends on everyone’s dedication, leadership “will not fail to recognize this and act accordingly.”

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

Reed Smith Partially Walks Back Pay Cuts for Lawyers, Staff [American Lawyer]

Earlier: Another Am Law 50 Firm Has Salaries On The Chopping Block

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

There are a lot of reasons for the United States to be ashamed of itself right now, but if the country ever wanted to add a little bit more, it can recall that a global superpower allowed children to drink poisoned water for months and — six years after the fact — hasn’t fully finished fixing it. The crisis in Flint passed from a lot of people’s minds as newer miseries pushed it to the media back burner.

At White & Case, the matter remained front and center. The firm worked pro bono with the legal team representing the children of Flint including the ACLU of Michigan and the Education Law Center and reached a partial settlement in 2018 with the Michigan Department of Education, Genesee Intermediate School District, and Flint Community Schools. That settlement established a screening process to identify children displaying symptoms of lead poisoning and a second prong providing sophisticated psychological testing those children. A significant victory but it wasn’t the end of the fight.

Today, the firm announced that the new $600 million settlement with Michigan, which must still be approved by the court, will include a wide range of services tailored to address the long-term impact of the crisis including special education programs and universal pre-K.

Lindsay Heck, who we talked to back in 2018, offered the following:

“This is a landmark settlement in our special education case,” said Lindsay M. Heck, lead attorney from global law firm White & Case LLP, which worked on the case pro bono. “Lead is a potent neurotoxin that causes irreversible brain damage. There is no medical intervention that can completely counter the effects of lead exposure—education offers the only antidote. This settlement establishes a model to identify children with disabilities, to create structural changes that will ensure that those disabilities are properly addressed, and to prevent school discipline from being used as a substitute for behavioral interventions. It is a model that will not only transform the educational system for Flint children, but that establishes a framework for underfunded school districts in urban communities with deteriorating infrastructures that serve predominantly Black and Brown children. These communities have endured decades of educational disinvestment and environmental racism. We are committed to making sure this settlement turns Flint into a national symbol of resilience and hope.”

There’s still a lot of work to be done developing, implementing, and monitoring the settlement over the coming years, but today is a day for celebration. It’s a massive accomplishment and one that demonstrates the importance of pro bono efforts generally and the value a Biglaw firm can bring to the fight specifically.

(Check out the full terms of the settlement on the next page.)

Earlier: The Power Of Pro Bono: Biglaw Firm Scores Major Victory For Victims Of Flint Water Crisis

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

In the new work-from-home world where nonessential companies have pivoted into a largely remote workforce model with increasing reliance on business tools that ensure connectivity, there is a growing concern that tools like Zoom may not be vetted to the full extent of their now-applicable use case. At home, with consumers turning away from gyms and malls and moving their children into virtual environments for schooling, the question remains as to when the cracks in the foundation will come to light, and who will shine the light on them to the companies who are the custodians of our new normal. In our hospitals and bodies, where medical devices are reliant on proprietary technology and rely on the internet of things to keep lives safe, it’s also critical that manufacturers, suppliers, and those who depend on them know about problems before they become life-threatening.

Vulnerability disclosures expose companies to unfamiliar and often uncomfortable terrain when they are unprepared to receive findings from so-called white hat or ethical hackers as to deficiencies in their security posture. In an ideal world, there is a synchronicity between the disclosures and expectations from security researchers and the consequent organizational response on the receiving end of such information.

Bug disclosure programs are the easiest way to navigate these waters, but not all companies are mature enough or have the resources to set these mechanisms in place. For those who don’t, there are free resources like Disclose.IO that allow companies to opt into and display their affinity for a safe-harbor disclosure framework that gives security researchers the confidence that their disclosures will be treated fairly by the companies receiving them. Similarly, following a system like CERT, put forth by scholastic industry experts like Carnegie Mellon, can be the right path forward to ensure collaboration between hackers and companies. Perhaps even better, many companies proactively incentivize hackers to come to the table with cash rewards for their findings through bug bounty programs. After all, on the other side of the house, security researchers may be wary to come forward with their findings when faced with unknown consequences for their research, including lawsuits and charges stemming from potential violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Paul Hastings privacy and cybersecurity partner Aaron Charfoos has guided clients through cybersecurity vulnerability disclosures, including the Meltdown and Spectre computer chip vulnerabilities, supply chain interdictions, and various other matters, some of which have involved both congressional and regulatory investigations. He counsels that the incident response (IR) framework is the most helpful framework for companies to get the best outcomes in these situations. Everything that is brought to bear in IR comes into play in this scenario. And companies who have committed to using such a framework and have run through tabletop exercises to ensure that they have the synchronicity and muscle memory to get through them in real-time will do best when presented with an actual situation in which their security or privacy postures are called into question.

Conversely, in order to better prepare themselves for the information exchange, security researchers should understand the complexity companies face when vulnerabilities are brought to their doorstep. An appreciation that companies which responsibly adjudicate disclosures of this nature are running their assessments and actions through a multilayer framework akin to IR means that cross-departmental stakeholders from across an entire organization are running a game-time analysis of regulatory disclosures, contractual obligations, reputational harm, and litigation, to name a few.  Internet-facing business applications in particular pose existential risks to an organization if found to be deficient or insecure. And these issues can often take some time to fix.

Charfoos suggests that hackers who find vulnerabilities be reasonable in their approach and allow companies sufficient time to work through a solution that adequately addresses the vulnerabilities so that the products can be fixed appropriately and users can be informed in lockstep with a solution.

Specifically, when a breach occurs, and an enterprise runs vulnerability disclosure through their IR framework, they are able to take the initial steps of establishing severity to the findings and determining the proper outcomes. Further, if the enterprise can successfully work with the researcher on a coordinated release to the public (if that is the desired outcome), assuming no one else has operationalized the vulnerability in the wild, they can also reduce liability and gain the confidence of their board and shareholders.  A coordinated disclosure done right may actually increase consumer confidence in a product.

Security researchers should understand that their research could lead to existential events for a company. While many security researchers are consumed with the technical prowess of the findings, they may not know how to get those findings into the hands of the right people at the company.

Charfoos suggests that when contacting the company, researchers should understand that alluding to going public with the vulnerabilities in a vacuum and without a coordinated approach will not always work for white hat security researchers looking to gain a good reputation in the industry. An important takeaway for those who come across a vulnerability, find the right person at the company to deliver it to. A big problem implicates putting it in the hands of an equally positioned player like the chief security officer. But that person may not be easy to get in touch with, and rightly so. In those situations, and for companies that don’t have bug bounties or outward-facing responsible disclosure programs, contact the legal department. And if you can’t get there right away, start with customer service and work your way up.

Vulnerabilities originating from cyber threat intelligence or penetration testing by Good Samaritans and security experts can be rife with complexities and existential risks if not navigated properly. And with regulators like the FTC, FDA, and DOJ increasingly taking a proactive position on the expected role of corporations in meeting their cybersecurity obligations with vulnerability disclosure programs, at the end of the day, it makes sense for companies to encourage and have a defined intake approach to vulnerability disclosures from researchers to get these across the finish line together. After all, more than ever before, the integrity and security of our new normal depends on it.

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Jennifer DeTrani is General Counsel and EVP of Nisos, a technology-enabled cybersecurity firm.  She co-founded a secure messaging platform, Wickr, where she served as General Counsel for five years.  You can connect with Jennifer on Wickr (dtrain), LinkedIn or by email at dtrain@nisos.com.

The maker of a painkiller seen as one of the chief culprits in the opioid crisis is being accused of causing more than $2 trillion in damages.

Nearly all the states, plus the District of Columbia and territories, made claims against Purdue Pharma totaling $2.156 trillion in connection with the bankruptcy filing the company made last year, according to court documents. The joint filing was made Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York.

Purdue, based in Stamford, Connecticut, is the maker of OxyContin, a long-acting formulation of the opioid painkiller oxycodone. The drug – along with other opioid painkillers marketed by other firms – has been blamed for driving the nationwide opioid crisis that has been going on for more than two decades.

“The opioid epidemic has ravaged this country as a single family has made billions profiting from the destruction it caused,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in an emailed statement. “While [Monday’s] filing may lay out the monetary impact that Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family have had on the United States, this financial toll only accounts for a sliver of the damage inflicted on the American people.”

Purdue could not be immediately reached for comment.

Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year in an effort to block more than 2,000 lawsuits from municipal, state and Native American tribal governments. However, state attorneys general at the time balked at the move amid reports that the Sackler family, which owns the drugmaker, had wired about $1 billion to bank accounts located overseas.

The bankruptcy filing was part of a settlement the company proposed, which would also include the Sacklers contributing $3 billion of their own money, while Purdue would put all of its assets into a trust or similar entity established to benefit claimants and the public at large. Meanwhile, a new company would be established that would market Purdue’s products under certain restrictions and contribute doses of medications used to treat opioid addiction and reverse overdose, at low or no cost.

Purdue is one of numerous drugmakers whose products have been implicated in the opioid crisis, a list that also includes firms such as Mallinckrodt and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, as well as the major pharmaceutical distributors and several large retail pharmacy chains.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 15,000 people died from overdoses on prescription opioids in 2018. Starting in the late 1990s, several drug companies began heavily marketing opioid painkillers, assuring physicians that patients would not become addicted to them. But the drugs turned out to in fact be highly addictive, and the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 10.3 million people misused prescription opioids in 2018, while 2 million were seen as having an opioid use disorder.

Photo: Moussa81, Getty Images

When California made the decision to lower its cut score going forward to a “still-higher-than-almost-every-state-but-not-as-high” 1390, most celebrated the move as an effort to both address an ongoing access to justice problem and to improve absolute diversity in a profession that had suffered from protectionist cloistering. And while there was a sideshow about how this was “racist” — it’s not — the California Supreme Court relished an opportunity to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Then folks started asking why the new test score didn’t apply to the February exam. If the test is as stable as its proponents claim, then a 1400 six months ago would be just as valid today. For that matter, why not go back a little further? The state maintains that passing scores are valid for five years already.

Faced with these well-reasoned arguments, the California Supreme Court decided to ignore them completely and mumble something about Montana being different. The opinion — which the court delegated to the Clerk to pass along in a letter amounted to a comic dodge from a body that had no appetite to actually engage the papers. It’s not the first time this summer that we’ve seen state courts get lazy when challenged.

But the California legislature may step into this struggle. HR 103, introduced earlier this week by State Assembly member and judiciary committee chair Mark Stone, is a resolution calling upon the state supreme court to adopt retroactivity to 2015. As a resolution, the bill wouldn’t bind the justices to take action, though a legislative outcry can exert some pressure on the institution.

Maybe we can at least get the court to write a real opinion that attempts to respond to the arguments that were raised. It would be, you know, the very least they could do.

Earlier: California Supreme Court Refuses To Apply New Cut Score Retroactively
No Dummies, It’s Not ‘Racist’ To Say Lowering The California Bar Exam Cut Score Will Improve Diversity
California Bar Exam Moves Online… And Finally Lowers Cut Score

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.