California

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a Second Amended Complaint in the state's PFAS litigation, alleging that DuPont-related companies executed fraudulent asset transfers designed to shield themselves from environmental liability. The complaint targets E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, DuPont de Nemours, Inc., Corteva, Inc., The Chemours Company, and newly created Qnity Electronics. Bonta contends that corporate restructuring and amended agreements shifted the bulk of PFAS-related liabilities onto Chemours while reducing exposure for New DuPont, Corteva, and Qnity Electronics. The filing invokes the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act, and seeks relief in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.

OpenAI has moved to dismiss Apple's trade-secrets lawsuit, arguing in a federal filing that Apple failed to identify any protectable trade secrets or demonstrate plausible misappropriation. OpenAI contends it is developing "something entirely new" rather than leveraging Apple's confidential information. The motion represents the latest escalation in a dispute centered on whether OpenAI improperly accessed Apple's consumer-hardware plans through two former Apple employees now working at the company.

The FTC, joined by Utah and California, sued telehealth company Hims & Hers Health, Inc. on July 29, 2026, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint alleges that Hims shared consumers' sensitive health information with third-party ad platforms including Meta and Snap despite privacy commitments, and that it charged customers for prescriptions immediately after intake forms were completed—before any provider consultation occurred. The agencies also claim Hims misled customers about billing, subscriptions, and cancellation procedures. The FTC alleges violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), while Utah and California assert violations of state consumer protection and false-advertising statutes.

Apple has escalated its trade-secret lawsuit against OpenAI by seeking a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asking the court to block OpenAI and several former Apple employees from using or disclosing confidential Apple information. The lawsuit, filed in July 2026, alleges a coordinated pattern of employee poaching and misappropriation of trade secrets to support OpenAI's hardware development efforts. Named defendants include Tang Tan, OpenAI's hardware chief and former Apple design executive, and Chang Liu, a former Apple engineer. Apple also targets io Products, OpenAI's hardware-linked entity, and seeks depositions from additional OpenAI staff. OpenAI has publicly characterized Apple's case as "careless" and "oddly personal," denying it possesses or seeks Apple trade secrets.

Apple sued OpenAI and two former Apple employees on Friday, July 10, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging coordinated theft of trade secrets to accelerate OpenAI's consumer hardware development. The complaint names Chang Liu and Tang Tan as defendants and accuses OpenAI of orchestrating a campaign to recruit Apple staff and extract confidential project information, including technical drawings and component specifications. Apple alleges that Tan, while still employed there, used insider knowledge of confidential projects to extract proprietary information from job candidates during OpenAI interviews before his departure.

On July 10, 2026, Apple filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of California against OpenAI, former Apple executives Tang Tan and Chang Liu, and io Products, LLC, alleging a coordinated scheme to steal trade secrets and accelerate OpenAI's entry into consumer hardware. The complaint accuses OpenAI of systematically acquiring confidential Apple information—including product designs, manufacturing processes, and supply chain strategies for the iPhone, Apple Watch, and MacBook—to build competing AI devices.

On July 13, 2026, a coalition of 12 state attorneys general filed a federal antitrust lawsuit challenging Paramount Skydance Corporation's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and joined by officials from Minnesota, Oregon, and nine other states, the plaintiffs argue the merger violates the Clayton Act by eliminating competition between two of Hollywood's five major film distributors and cable operators. The states contend the deal would raise movie ticket and cable prices, reduce employment in the entertainment sector, and diminish consumer choice in news and entertainment programming.

A University of Houston law professor has raised a novel ethics question: could a lawyer face negligence liability for failing to use artificial intelligence in their practice? Renee Knake Jefferson posed this counterintuitive argument in a Legal Ethics Roundup published on Above the Law, marking a sharp pivot from the current judicial consensus. Courts across the country are actively sanctioning lawyers for AI misuse—a California judge imposed $31,000 in sanctions for an error-filled AI-generated brief, while a Georgia Supreme Court overturned a lower court order riddled with AI hallucinations. A federal judge in the Western District of North Carolina now requires attorneys to certify they did not use AI in briefs. Yet Jefferson's framing suggests the profession may soon face pressure in the opposite direction: treating AI adoption as a standard of reasonable diligence rather than a liability risk.

The Federal Trade Commission, joined by California and Utah, has sued telehealth company Hims & Hers Health, Inc. in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company shared sensitive health data with advertising platforms including Meta and Snap while marketing itself as private and discreet. The complaint also charges Hims with deceptive subscription practices, including charging customers immediately after intake forms were submitted—before any medical consultation occurred—and making cancellation unreasonably difficult. The FTC alleges violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, while California invokes its False Advertising and Unfair Competition Laws and Utah cites its Consumer Sales Practices Act.

The FTC, joined by Utah and California, filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Hims & Hers Health, Inc., alleging the telehealth company shared consumers' sensitive health information with third-party advertising platforms including Meta and Snap while publicly promising privacy protection. The complaint also charges that Hims & Hers misled users about billing and cancellation practices. According to the filing, the company disclosed health-related data and customer lists through tracking technologies embedded on its website, charged consumers for prescriptions immediately after intake forms were submitted—before any provider consultation occurred—and deliberately made subscriptions difficult to cancel. The FTC alleges violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), while Utah invokes the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act and California cites its False Advertising and Unfair Competition laws.

CoStar is urging a California federal court to reject CREXi's request to pause their copyright dispute while CREXi appeals the disqualification of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Judge Consuelo B. Marshall of the Central District of California ruled on July 14, 2026, that Quinn Emanuel violated its duty of loyalty to CoStar by simultaneously representing CREXi in the same matter without CoStar's consent. CoStar argues the stay request lacks legal merit and should be denied outright.

Meta faces a sprawling litigation campaign alleging that Facebook and Instagram were engineered to addict minors and that the company concealed safety and privacy risks from users. State attorneys general from New Mexico, Vermont, Massachusetts, and a coalition led by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey have filed suit alongside individual plaintiffs and school districts in federal and state courts. Related defendants including Google/YouTube, Snap, and TikTok face similar claims in some actions.

CREXi has petitioned the Ninth Circuit to reverse a federal judge's disqualification of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and to stay district court proceedings while the appeal proceeds. U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall ruled that Quinn Emanuel could not represent CREXi because the firm simultaneously represented CoStar in a separate federal matter, creating an impermissible concurrent conflict of interest.

Blank Rome LLP, a Philadelphia-based law firm, faces two proposed class-action lawsuits over a data breach that exposed sensitive information on 57,554 current, former, and prospective clients. The breach occurred in May 2026 when a cybercriminal impersonated the firm's IT department and convinced an attorney to upload client files to an external Google Drive account. The exposed data includes names, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, medical records, and health insurance information. Blank Rome announced the breach to affected clients on June 26, 2026—nearly a month after the incident occurred. The firm stated it will "aggressively defend" against the suits and claims they lack merit.

American Healthcare Systems Corp. and its founder Mike Sarian filed an amended complaint in California state court on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, accusing their former in-house counsel Faisal Gill of orchestrating an extortion and takeover scheme. The complaint also names Dr. Aramais Paronyan, a minority shareholder and director, as a participant in efforts to remove Sarian from control and restrict his access to company finances. AHS operates five Florida hospitals, including Palmetto General and Coral Gables Hospital.

A federal court has allowed privacy class actions against Shopify and the NBA to proceed, signaling stricter judicial scrutiny of how embedded website technologies collect user data before obtaining clear consent.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 20 other state attorneys general, joined by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California challenging a Trump administration rule governing the ACA marketplace for 2027. The lawsuit targets the Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters, alleging it unlawfully expands catastrophic health plan eligibility, allows catastrophic and bronze plans to exceed ACA out-of-pocket limits, and resurrects income verification requirements and tax-credit penalties that a federal court previously vacated. The coalition contends the rule will increase insurance costs, reduce enrollment, and make coverage harder to obtain.

Sophie Mancall-Bitel, a litigation partner at Mayer Brown, has been named a 2026 Rising Star by Law360 Pulse for her defense of major technology companies in privacy and wiretapping class actions. Her clients include TikTok, Google, and YouTube. Mancall-Bitel's practice centers on internet and technology companies defending claims under the federal Wiretap Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, and biometric privacy statutes. She has handled wiretapping litigation and internet data privacy matters for tech and financial-services clients.

A federal judge in California has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Christopher Ricci, former deputy general counsel at Flextronics AP LLC, of orchestrating the transfer of company patents to AutoConnect, a Virginia startup he secretly co-founded. The decision allows Flextronics' claims of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and trade secret misappropriation to proceed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under case number 5:26-cv-00117-PCP.

Ogletree Deakins has published guidance arguing that AI-assisted workforce analytics can convert routine timekeeping, payroll, scheduling, and HRIS data into a preventive compliance tool. The firm frames the approach as a progression from basic reporting to continuous monitoring designed to identify wage-and-hour risks before they crystallize into violations—a particular concern for employers operating under California's strict labor standards.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 13 state attorneys general filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California asking the judge to enforce and clarify a hold-separate order in the Nexstar Media Group–TEGNA Inc. merger case. The filing alleges that recent board changes at TEGNA may allow Nexstar to exercise improper control over the company despite the court's injunction requiring both broadcasters to operate independently during litigation. The states argue that current or former Nexstar personnel should be barred from TEGNA's board to prevent the companies from coordinating merger-related activities.

California's AI Transparency Act took effect this week, requiring major generative AI developers and online platforms to embed machine-readable provenance data in AI-generated or AI-altered images, video, and audio, along with visible disclosures and a free detection tool. The law targets OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and large social platforms. State Senator Josh Becker sponsored the original bill, SB 942, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed in 2024. A follow-up measure, AB 853, delayed the enforcement date to August 2, 2026, and expanded platform obligations to include some capture-device manufacturers.

OpenAI has retained Brad Bondi, a Paul Hastings partner and co-chair of the firm's investigations and white-collar defense practice, to bolster its legal team in Florida's lawsuit. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed the case on June 1, 2026, in state court, accusing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of misleading the public about ChatGPT's safety and contributing to harms including violence and self-harm. The complaint alleges gross negligence, public nuisance, strict liability, and violations of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, claiming OpenAI knowingly released the product while concealing safety risks and suppressing internal warnings.

On July 13, 2026, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport joined a 12-state coalition filing an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to block Paramount Skydance Corporation's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The states argue the merger violates federal antitrust law by substantially lessening competition in film and television. The coalition—led by attorneys general from California, New York, and Pennsylvania—is demanding that Paramount and Warner Bros. pause the transaction and has threatened to seek a temporary restraining order if the companies attempt to close the deal.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 21 state counterparts filed a formal comment letter with the SEC opposing the agency's 2026 proposal to rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rules. The rules require public companies to disclose climate-related financial risks, greenhouse gas emissions, and risk management strategies to investors. The SEC adopted the disclosure framework in March 2024 to standardize reporting on material climate risks, board oversight, and mitigation efforts. The agency's rescission proposal, filed in 2026, argues the rules exceed its statutory authority and impose excessive compliance costs.

Twenty-six current and former Meta employees filed a federal lawsuit Monday in the U.S. Northern District Court of California alleging the company used artificial intelligence systems to systematically target workers with disabilities or those on protected medical, parental, or family leave during its May 2024 mass layoff. The plaintiffs claim Meta replaced managerial discretion with AI-driven metrics—including productivity scores, keystroke monitoring, and AI token consumption data—to generate termination lists, effectively penalizing employees for approved absences. The complaint names specific tools including Metamate, Meta's internal AI assistant, and employee-built monitoring dashboards that allegedly recorded absences as "disengagement" and suppressed performance ratings. One plaintiff was terminated while on approved pre-birth leave; another alleges a manager discouraged medical leave by warning that leadership would "definitely" fire them if they took it.

A coalition of 12 states filed suit in federal court on July 13, 2026, to block Paramount Skydance's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the states—California, New York, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon—argue the merger violates the Clayton Act by creating monopolies in film distribution and cable news. The lawsuit represents the first major legal obstacle to the deal since the Department of Justice cleared it on June 12 after an eight-month antitrust review.

The Writers Guild of America filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on July 14, 2026, to block the $111 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. The union alleges the deal violates the Clayton Antitrust Act by creating a "single mega-buyer" that would suppress wages and reduce competition across episodic television, streaming series, and theatrical screenwriting markets. The filing came one day after twelve Democratic-led states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, announced their own federal antitrust challenge to the same transaction.

Twelve states led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an antitrust lawsuit Monday to block Paramount Skydance Corp.'s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, challenging an $81–$111 billion transaction. The states argue the merger would eliminate competition, raise prices for TV bundles, reduce content output and quality, and harm movie theaters and basic cable distributors. The defendants are Paramount Skydance, backed by David Ellison and sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO, CNN, and other major media properties. Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington joined California in the suit.

Nike and Lululemon face separate class action lawsuits alleging "phantom discount" pricing schemes on their online platforms. Both companies are accused of displaying artificially inflated struck-through prices to exaggerate the depth of sales discounts and mislead consumers about actual savings. Nike was sued on July 21, 2026 by Corinne Pearson in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California over pricing on its website and mobile app. The complaint cites specific examples, including Air Max 2017 sneakers allegedly kept on discount beyond the 90-day window permitted under California's False Advertising Law without proper disclosure of when the original price was actually in effect. The proposed class covers California purchasers who bought Nike products at a discount since July 21, 2022. Lululemon faces a parallel suit filed by Annette Cody in Los Angeles Superior Court, which alleges the company listed products with fictitious regular prices. One example cited involves Wunder Train high-rise tights marked down from $98 to $59, allegedly without having sold at the higher price for months.

The Church of Scientology International has petitioned the California Supreme Court to review an appellate court's decision not to sanction Boies Schiller Flexner LLP over citation errors in a brief filed during a harassment and retaliation suit. The errors—mischaracterized authorities and a completely fabricated case—were generated by artificial intelligence. Partner John Kucera acknowledged failing to verify the AI-generated citations and sought to withdraw the brief, but the lower court denied the request. The appellate court subsequently declined to impose monetary sanctions, prompting Scientology's legal team to escalate to the state's highest court.

Amazon has asked a federal judge in Washington to reject California attorney Kathy Hao's renewed motion to dismiss a trademark fraud lawsuit, claiming she is simply restating arguments from a prior motion that relied on AI-generated hallucinations. The company filed its opposition to keep the case alive, asserting that Hao's latest filing presents no new legal ground and merely recycles previously rejected content.

On June 22, 2026, a coalition of 17 Republican-led states led by Nebraska, joined by the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California challenging California's Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (SB 54). The plaintiffs seek to block enforcement of the law, claiming it violates the Commerce Clause, the Import-Export Clause, the First Amendment, and federal due process protections by discriminating against out-of-state manufacturers and improperly delegating regulatory authority to a private entity. The defendants are CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller and the Circular Action Alliance, the producer responsibility organization selected to implement the statute. Critically, filing the lawsuit does not suspend SB 54 compliance obligations—producers must continue meeting registration, reporting, and implementation requirements unless a court orders otherwise.

A California federal lawsuit alleges that Granola, an AI meeting-notetaking tool, secretly recorded virtual meeting participants without notice or consent and used the captured content for commercial purposes, including AI model training enabled by default. The case, Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., filed in the Northern District of California, centers on wiretapping and consent violations under state and federal privacy law. According to the complaint, Granola distinguished itself from competitors by joining meetings invisibly, announcing no presence, and providing participants no mechanism to remove the notetaker from the call.

A federal judge in California has denied Meta Platforms' motion for summary judgment, clearing the way for a multistate lawsuit over youth mental health to proceed to trial in August 2026. The ruling, issued June 29 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, rejects Meta's attempt to have the case dismissed and confirms that the attorneys general's claims have sufficient legal merit to survive pretrial scrutiny.