A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Sara Merken

What's going on today?

REUTERS/Mark Blinch

One-time New York Knicks All-Star Charles Oakley said Madison Square Garden and its longtime lawyer, first deputy New York City mayor Randy Mastro, should be sanctioned for making "false and baseless" statements about the former NBA player's ejection from the audience at a 2017 Knicks game.

MSG last month filed its own sanctions motion against Oakley and his lawyers at Wigdor and Petrillo Klein & Boxer, accusing them of pushing what they called a "false narrative" about Oakley's ejection. The stadium also asked the judge to dismiss Oakley's lawsuit for good.

The dueling sanctions bids are the latest contentious exchange in an eight-year lawsuit Oakley brought against MSG and James Dolan, who owns both the Knicks and the stadium.

Read more from David Thomas. 

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Dropping the requirement that Texas attorneys graduate from an American Bar Association-accredited law school would impede lawyer mobility and increase costs, law deans warned in a letter to the Texas Supreme Court.

Deans from eight of the state’s 10 ABA-accredited law schools asked the court to maintain the ABA requirement–which has been in place since 1983–amid a review of the rule initiated by the court in April.

Texas initiated its review of the ABA requirement several weeks after Florida launched a similar review. The Florida Supreme Court cited an ABA diversity mandate for law schools that has since been put on hold until August 2026 and the “ABA’s active political engagement” as reasons for the review.

Read more from Karen Sloan.

More than 18,000 people were in lockdown as a wildfire raged in Catalonia … Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner jumped ship to Hershey … Novartis won approval for the first malaria drug for newborns and babies … Arizona fossils revealed an ecosystem in flux early in the age of dinosaurs … Ukraine urged an investigation into alleged Russian chemical weapons use. Plus, from “fantastic” to “spoiled”: How Japan's trade effort to woo Trump backfired.

sara.merken@thomsonreuters.com

@saramerken