NY Mayor Adams charged with bribery and illegal campaign contribution, Arizona's relaxed law firm ownership rules, Jones Day to face bias lawsuit ?
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?? Good morning from The Legal File! Here is the rundown of today's top legal news:
?? New York Mayor Adams charged with bribery, illegal campaign contribution
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been charged with bribery and illegally soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday, following a long-running investigation that has sent the largest U.S. city's government into turmoil.
Adams faces five criminal charges total, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said he sought and accepted benefits including luxury travel from wealthy foreign businesspeople and a Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him.
Adams, a Democrat who would become the first of the city's 110 mayors to be criminally charged while in office, said in a video statement that if charges were filed they would be "entirely false, based on lies." He vowed to remain in office while fighting them.
"If I'm charged, I know I'm innocent. I will request an immediate trial so New Yorkers can hear the truth," Adams said.
The case is likely to complicate any Adams bid for re-election in 2025. Other Democratic politicians, including New York City comptroller Brad Lander, plan to challenge Adams - once a key ally of Democratic President Joe Biden - for the party's nomination.
The Times, citing a search warrant, reported in early November 2023 that federal authorities were investigating the possible acceptance by Adams' 2021 campaign of illegal donations, including by the Turkish government.
The probe, conducted by the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, focused on whether Adams' 2021 mayoral campaign conspired with a Brooklyn construction company to funnel foreign money into the campaign through a straw-donor scheme, the Times said.
Authorities have also sought information about Adams' interactions with Israel, China, Qatar, South Korea and Uzbekistan, according to the Times.
Adams, 64, a former police officer who rose to the rank of captain, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and said he is cooperating with the probe.
?? Arizona hits new milestone under loosened law firm ownership rules
Arizona's program that allows people who are not lawyers to co-own law firms now has more than 100 approved businesses, as other states weigh similar legal practice rule changes.
Arizona's high court on Sept. 24 approved seven more applicants to operate as "alternative business structures" under the relaxed law firm ownership rules, including an accident law firm and a unit of online legal services company Rocket Lawyer, according to orders posted on the court's website.
Arizona, in 2020,?became the first U.S. state?to scrap rules barring non-lawyers from having an economic interest in law firms, allowing lawyers and non-lawyers to co-own businesses that provide legal services if approved by the state's Supreme Court.
National legal services businesses LegalZoom and Elevate, and flexible legal talent company Axiom, are among the companies that have been licensed as part of the program since 2021. Other participants include personal injury and mass tort law firms partially owned by non-lawyers and businesses offering estate planning services.
Supporters of the Arizona program and similar initiatives in other states argue that loosening barriers for entrepreneurs and other non-lawyers to hold a stake in providing legal services can make legal advice more affordable, spur innovation and expand access to justice.
Critics, meanwhile, contend that the changes could lead to abuses if providers are not fully bound by professional ethics rules that licensed lawyers must obey.
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?? Law firm Jones Day must face bias lawsuit over parental leave policy
Law firm Jones Day must face a lawsuit claiming that its parental leave policy is biased against fathers, a judge ruled, putting the case on a path to trial.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington denied the law firm's bid to toss out discrimination claims made by married couple Julia Sheketoff and Mark Savignac, both former U.S. Supreme Court clerks who were associates at Jones Day.
Moss also said he would allow Savignac to proceed with claims that he was fired in retaliation for complaining about the leave policy. But he rejected the couple's claims that Jones Day underpaid Sheketoff because she is a woman.
The two sides have been locked in a bitter legal battle for more than five years over claims that Jones Day's family leave policy violates civil rights law because it offers an additional eight weeks of paid disability leave to birth mothers, but not fathers like Savignac. The firm said it offers 10 weeks of sex-neutral paid family leave, separately from its maternal disability policy.
Both Sheketoff and Savignac clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and were members of Jones Day's appellate practice.
?? Authors can depose Meta CEO Zuckerberg in AI copyright case, judge says
Meta Platforms lost a bid to block a group of U.S. authors from questioning Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a lawsuit accusing the company of misusing copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence systems.
Zuckerberg's deposition is justified based on evidence that he was directly involved in Meta's AI-training decisions, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson in San Francisco said on Tuesday.
Meta asked the court for an order barring the authors from deposing Zuckerberg in their case and said they lacked "any substantiation for their belief that Mr. Zuckerberg has any special knowledge of this dispute."
But Hixson said that the authors provided evidence that Zuckerberg was "the chief decision maker and policy setter for Meta's Generative AI branch and the development of the large language models at issue in this action."
The lawsuit was filed against Meta last year by a group of authors including comedian Sarah Silverman. It alleges that the company infringed their copyrights by using their books to train AI language models. The writers have also brought a similar, ongoing case against Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
Several groups of copyright owners including writers, visual artists and music publishers have sued major tech companies over the unauthorized use of their work to train generative AI systems. The companies have argued that their AI training is protected by the copyright doctrine of fair use, and that the lawsuits threaten the burgeoning AI industry.
?? That's all for today, thank you for reading?The Legal File, and have a great day!
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