+ Judge to rule if dividends should be paid.

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The Daily Docket

The Daily Docket

A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

 

By Caitlin Tremblay

Good morning. A Texas judge is expected to rule on Texas AG Ken Paxton’s bid to block a Kenvue dividend payout over Tylenol autism claims. Plus, a federal judge will consider issuing a sweeping ruling against the Trump administration's migrant bond denial practice; Buchalter was spared sanctions over AI-generated case citations; and the lawsuit that ignited the Tom Girardi scandal ended after five years. Dog breed diversity is much older than we thought. Hope your weekend is quite fetching. See you Monday.

 

Texas judge to rule on Kenvue dividend payout over Tylenol

 

REUTERS/Hannah Beier

Today, Texas AG Ken Paxton will ask a state court to block Kenvue from paying a nearly $400 million shareholder dividend this month, after suing the drugmaker for allegedly concealing risks from the use of Tylenol.

The October 28 lawsuit against Kenvue and its former parent Johnson & Johnson, which made Tylenol for six decades, was filed five weeks after President Trump repeated the unproven claim that using Tylenol during pregnancy can cause autism.

Paxton is seeking an injunction blocking the scheduled November 26 dividend payout, saying it would violate a Texas law against fraudulent transfers. His request complicates Kimberly-Clark's planned $40 billion takeover of Kenvue.

The hearing is before Judge LeeAnn Kay Rafferty in the Panola County courthouse in Carthage, Texas, near the Louisiana border.

 

Coming up today

  • The 9th Circuit will hear arguments in an appeal of a district court’s class-wide preliminary injunction over the Trump administration’s termination of various grants to researchers at the University of California.
  • The 9th Circuit will also hear arguments in a First Amendment lawsuit brought against the USDA challenging a policy that prohibits businesses from labeling food “low-FODMAP,” an acronym for foods that are made with easily digestible ingredients. The district court upheld the policy. Read the appeal here.
  • The D.C. Circuit will hear arguments in a bid by Iowa-based Iowaska Church of Healing to compel the DEA to make a decision on its long-pending religious exemption application for the use of ayahuasca. The D.C. Circuit previously ruled that Iowaska could not bring a Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim against the IRS for denying it tax-exempt status because that injury was tied to the DEA’s inaction, not the IRS decision.
  • U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in California will weigh whether the Trump administration is unlawfully subjecting thousands of migrants detained by immigration authorities to mandatory detention without the possibility of being released on bond. Sykes will consider whether to grant nationwide class action status.
  • U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in D.C. will hold a preliminary injunction hearing in a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s August 28 executive order that stripped employees at the U.S. Agency for Global Media and its Voice of America of their collective bargaining rights. Read the motion.
  • U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in D.C. will hold a motion hearing in a lawsuit filed by an internet freedom nonprofit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to terminate grants issued by the U.S. Agency for Global Media and used to counter digital authoritarianism worldwide. Read the complaint.

Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.

 

More top news

    • Trump administration sues California over new redistricting maps
    • Crash victims' families appeal U.S. judge's decision to dismiss Boeing criminal case
    • Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon seek to end Epstein lawsuits
    • Trump pardons British billionaire Joe Lewis
    • Behr Paint sued for ad using Rolling Stones song 'Paint It, Black'
 
 

Industry insight

  • Davis Polk & Wardwell said this week that it will pay its 2027 summer associates $25,000 to spend the summer after their first year of law school in a legal internship at a nonprofit, in government or academia before working at the firm full-time the following summer. Read about this and more in this week’s Billable Hours.
  • Sierra Leone has reached a settlement in principle with Jenner & Block to resolve their fight over $8 million in allegedly unpaid legal fees. 
  • U.S. District Judge Michael Simon in Portland, Oregon, said he won’t impose formal sanctions on lawyers at Buchalter who submitted a court filing that had fake case citations generated by AI, finding their response to the incident sufficient. Read the order.
  • Moves: Amanda McGrady Morrison returned to Ropes & Gray as co-head of the firm’s private capital transactions practice from Advent where she was general counsel … International arbitration partner Maria Kostytksa moved to K&L Gates from Winston & Strawn where she was head of arbitration in Paris … Leah Capritta left Holland & Knight for Buchalter’s litigation practice.
 

$315,000

That’s how much a union representing New York-based legal aid lawyers said it will pay to settle claims it tried to retaliate against three of its members after they challenged the union's issuance of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and "an end to Israeli apartheid." Read more here.
 

In the courts