'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the payback / Some buck that I roughed up way back / Comin' back after all these years / ‘Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat,’ that's the way it is — 2Pac’s “Changes”

A trio of rap-related shooting cases spanning three decades were thrust back into the spotlight this month.

Chief among them was the murder trial for the suspect in Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who prosecutors say sought revenge for his nephew’s beating earlier that September night in Las Vegas.

While the street code of silence toward authorities helped Davis avoid criminal charges for a quarter-century, struggles to keep his own lips sealed ultimately revived the infamous case.

Davis denied involvement in the shooting until 2008, when he was brought in for an off-the-record interview with a task force investigating the murder of Christopher Wallace, otherwise known as Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls.

“At that time, he said, no, we didn’t have anything to do with that one,” former LAPD Detective Daryn Dupree testified last week. “We were like, ‘That one? What do you mean?’”

“He said, ‘We did the other one,’” Dupree added.

When asked if he knew what Davis meant, Dupree said, “Me, personally — the only other one was Tupac.”

At a later proffer session, Davis told investigators he passed a gun to the backseat, where his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson fired the shots that killed Shakur and wounded Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight. Officers reminded Davis “nothing leaves this room,” but the Nevada state judge overseeing his trial allowed off-the-record audio tapes to be played for the jury, citing similar statements he made in a BET docuseries and his 2019 memoir.

James McDonald, a former gang affiliate who worked security for Knight, brought his version of street code into the courtroom when he refused to answer some questions, saying they’d reflect badly on Davis.

“I don’t want to send him to prison, even though we don’t like each other,” the 61-year-old said. “I changed my life. I’m raising my grandkids, teaching them not to be like their paw paw.” [Alan Riquelmy]

Knight is also scheduled to testify in the coming weeks as a hostile witness.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the murder-for-hire trial of Lil Durk kicked off Monday. The Grammy-winning rapper is accused of paying five men to murder a rival, Quando Rondo, in retaliation for the death of another Chicago rapper, King Von. The shooters missed Rondo but killed his cousin in 2022. [Hillel Aron]

And in Atlanta, Young Thug and Birdman are trying to dodge a civil trial over the 2015 shooting of Lil Wayne’s tour bus. Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, paid $25,000 to cover the shooter’s legal fees, but he insists he was merely helping out a childhood friend who was never employed by his record label. [Megan Butler]

All three cases involve accusations of violent retribution carried out by hip-hop label crews functioning as quasi-criminal organizations.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Ballpark figure

  • A Florida lending company fired a heater at the Atlanta Braves, suing the MLB team and its star player, Ronald Acuña Jr., over a $3.2 million loan due for repayment last month. [Megan Butler]

• Miss Conduct

  • The former 2026 Miss North Carolina USA is bringing defamation claims against the Miss USA organization after she was stripped of her title over a series of controversial social media posts, which included racial slurs and once calling the Tate brothers’ mentality “essential.” [Sydney Haulenbeek]

• Fifth-year fuss

  • The 10th Circuit restored an NCAA eligibility change that effectively cut short the careers of some athletes who started college in 2022, but the ruling doesn’t impact dozens of individuals who already won relief in state courts across the country. [Amanda Pampuro]

Locker room talk 🎤

On the first day of a blockbuster trial against Meta over the damage social media has done to teens’ mental health, recently promoted Chief U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers tried to bring some levity during a break due to technical difficulties.

Pointing to a very large whiteboard for demonstratives that was now too large to remove from her Oakland courtroom, the Barack Obama appointee joked: “Maybe I should put it on Facebook Marketplace.” [Carly Nairn]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Atlanta Braves sued over star player’s $3.2 million loan default 🥇 [Megan Butler]

2. Young Thug attorneys back in court over Lil Wayne bus shooting 🥈 [Megan Butler]

3. Online streamers sue Twitch, Amazon over generative AI training 🥉 [Margaret Attridge]

From the vault 🔒

In 2018, Johnny Depp was sued by a location manager on “City of Lies,” a movie about the murder investigations of Tupac and Biggie, who claimed the actor punched him twice in the ribs after a fight over extending the hours of a filming permit.

When the location manager didn’t react, Depp purportedly shouted: “I will give you $100,000 to punch me in the face right now!” They ultimately reached a settlement just before trial in 2022.

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• And, of course, our news site

A Los Angeles judge on Monday ordered the 21-year-old singer known as D4vd to stand trial in the murder of a 14-year-old girl, setting the stage for one of the biggest murder trials of the internet age.

Across a five-day preliminary hearing, prosecutors laid out evidence that David Burke started having sex with Celeste Rivas Hernandez when she was 13, sent a car to pick her up on the night of her death in April 2025 — two days before the release of his debut album — and later dismembered her body, which was found in the trunk of the pop star’s Tesla in September 2025.

Investigators found Hernandez’s blood in Burke’s garage, traced online purchases of chainsaws under a fake name and one criminologist even testified that blue fragments from her body matched missing parts of an inflatable pool in his garage like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

But as the Robert Durst case showed, mutilation doesn’t necessarily mean murder, at least according to one Texas jury. Burke’s attorney signaled the pop star’s likely defense when she asked a detective if he was aware that Hernandez referred to wanting to kill herself on multiple occasions.

Prosecutors say Burke stabbed Hernandez and watched her bleed out, but their evidence — so far — is purely circumstantial. The murder weapon remains a mystery, though prosecutors have suggested Burke hid it near Santa Barbara’s Lake Cachuma based on three trips his Tesla made to the isolated area and the nearby discovery of her passport card.

As Courthouse News reporter Hillel Aron listened to the long series of text messages between Burke and Hernandez unveiled Friday, he was reminded of Soulja Boy’s sexual assault civil trial from last year — specifically, the difference between the two cases.

“Soulja Boy was accused of being a horribly abusive person, and the text messages bore that out: He appeared to be a horribly abusive person — sexually abusive, physically abusive, all this stuff,” Aron recalled. “I was surprised, all the text messages that the prosecutors brought out, this guy D4vd really didn’t seem like that. There was not a single text message where he sounded abusive or angry at her. That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it or anything, but it was surprising.”

Although there are a few factors that could complicate the case, Aron still believes it’s “pretty much a slam dunk” for the prosecution.

Once a rising star who played Coachella, created Fortnite’s first official anthem and opened for SZA’s stadium tour with songs like “Romantic Homicide,” Burke may now face the death penalty due to special circumstances like killing for financial gain and silencing a witness.

Aron predicts LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman will ultimately pursue life without parole instead of capital punishment for Burke.

“Hochman is definitely to the right of (former District Attorney George) Gascón, but he’s very sensible,” Aron said. “He’s very level-headed and fair when he talks. I just don’t see it, but I could be wrong.”

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Deleted tweets

  • Elon Musk’s X must turn over deleted posts in its defamation case against Media Matters, a watchdog group that exposed the tech billionaire’s social media platform for advertising major brands next to white nationalist and pro-Nazi content. [Christina van Waasbergen]

• King’s ransom

  • DraftKings is in hot water after a California federal judge indicated the daily fantasy sports site likely violates the state’s ban on commercial gambling, opening the door for a preliminary injunction that could block the popular app. [Margaret Attridge]

• Victim blaming

  • An NFL employee injured during a mass shooting at the league’s New York City headquarters last year sued the city for $24 million, pointing to newly reviewed security footage as proof that a slain NYPD detective is to blame for the deadly rampage. [Erik Uebelacker]

Locker room talk 🎤

“It’s not different to the 20-year-old sitting in his basement, to the 20-year-old kid who emptied his savings on the outcome of a World Cup game. The fact that it might not fit a particular set of language means very little,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez said, rebuking prediction markets’ argument that they’re structurally different from traditional sports betting sites.

But despite sympathy for Minnesota’s effort to crack down on predatory gambling apps, the Joe Biden appointee ultimately granted Kalshi and Polymarket’s request to block the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on prediction markets just days before it was set to take effect. [Ryan Luetkemeyer]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Judge cautions Melania Trump against trying to sanction journalist Michael Wolff 🥇 [Erik Uebelacker]

2. Text messages shine light on illicit relationship between D4vd and murdered teen 🥈 [Hillel Aron]

3. Former Epoch Times executive pleads guilty to multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that funded newspaper 🥉 [Erik Uebelacker]

From the vault 🔒

The last defendant as famous as D4vd to stand trial for murder was likely New England Patriots star tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was found guilty in 2015 and died by suicide in prison two years later. However, under an arcane process known as abatement ab initio, a Massachusetts judge said she had no choice but to vacate his guilty verdict because he died while his appeal was pending.

“The defendant should not be allowed to accomplish in death what he was not able to accomplish in life,” Bristol District Attorney Tom Quinn said afterward.

Ultimately, the decision sparked so much backlash that the state’s high court abandoned the practice and reinstated Hernandez’s conviction.

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• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

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• And, of course, our news site

Hollywood’s ultimate power couple already hashed out the terms of their divorce during an eight-year legal battle that ended in 2024, but the lawsuit that exposed the details of Angelina Jolie’s rocky marriage to Brad Pitt is just getting started.

At issue is the French estate and vineyard Château Miraval, purchased by Pitt and Jolie back in 2008 and the site of their 2014 wedding. After their 2016 split, Jolie sold her half of the rosé powerhouse in 2021 to Yuri Shefler, a Russian-born billionaire living in Switzerland.

Pitt, 62, sued Jolie accusing the actress of breaching contract by selling her half without his permission. Jolie, 51, hit back with a countersuit claiming she tried to sell her half to Pitt first, only for the A-list actor to demand she keep quiet about purported abuse as a condition of the deal.

The showdown isn’t set for trial until next year, but Pitt tallied a pair of legal victories this month that could help his case in the discovery phase. Shefler had convinced a Los Angeles trial judge that he wasn’t involved enough in the purchase to justify being dragged into the lawsuit. But a California appeals court disagreed last week, putting him back on the hook for interference with Pitt’s business. [Quinn Welsch]

“It defies credulity that Shefler, a sophisticated businessman, would risk almost $40 million on a transaction about which he knew nothing and with which he had no involvement,” Second Appellate District Associate Justice Gail Feuer wrote.

Earlier in June, Pitt also won a court order compelling Shefler’s business associate, Alexey Oliynik, to turn over relevant documents and sit for a deposition in London by Sept. 30. However, the court has yet to consider the core questions at the heart of the dispute.

When that time comes, Pitt may have a problem with his argument that Jolie’s sale to a Russia-linked spirits conglomerate damaged Miraval’s reputation.

After all, the explosive accusations unearthed during this legal battle — namely, that Pitt got physical with Jolie, choked one of his children, hit another and poured beer and wine on their kids during a flight from the French estate to LA in 2016 — might appear more damaging to Miraval’s reputation than doing business with an exiled Russian oligarch.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Trans bans stand

  • The Supreme Court determined states’ anti-trans sports bans are constitutional, ruling 6-3 that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment allows schools to provide separate men’s and women’s sports teams based on biological sex. [Kelsey Reichmann and Megan Butler]

• Fatal fandom

  • A California woman who accidentally killed a man while filming OnlyFans fetish content was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. [Quinn Welsch]

• Sharpshooter

  • Federal prosecutors charged 29-year-old NBA veteran Malik Beasley with taking bribes to rig his performance related to certain prop bets on scoring and rebounding, joining former Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier as the most accomplished players to be taken down by recent gambling probes. [Nina Pullano]

Locker room talk 🎤

“The Big 12 and its member institutions (apparently save TTU) have no interest in being required to endorse or even appearing to endorse unethical and indeed unlawful conduct that strikes at the heart of athletic integrity,” the conference wrote in a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who threatened the Big 12 if it sought to sanction Texas Tech for supporting quarterback Brendan Sorsby amid an NCAA-imposed gambling suspension that was later nullified by a local judge. [Kirk McDaniel]

After a wave of uproar over the ruling, Sorsby left college sports behind and applied for the NFL supplemental draft, only to be rejected by the league. Now his future is up in the air.

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Prosecutors rest in Karmelo Anthony murder trial after testimony on track meet stabbing 🥇 [David Lee]

2. Defense rests in Karmelo Anthony murder trial after student witness grilled over inconsistent statements 🥈 [David Lee]

3. Danny Masterson asks appeals court to overturn rape conviction 🥉 [Hillel Aron]

From the vault 🔒

When U.S. women’s soccer players brought a class action against the U.S. Soccer Federation over gender discrimination in 2019, the governing body insisted they should earn less money because their game requires less skill than the men’s game. Those claims drew heavy backlash, leading to the USSF president’s resignation and the federation’s retraction of that legal argument.

“USSF no longer disputes that the jobs of the WNT and MNT players require equal skill, effort, and responsibility — and therefore has necessarily conceded that they perform equal work,” the federation’s 2020 filing said. “USSF also does not dispute that the men’s and women’s teams perform their jobs under similar working conditions.”

More from Courthouse News:

• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

• Our podcast, Sidebar

• And, of course, our news site

And for more background on the “Brangelina” drama:

It may only be the first quarter of UCLA’s legal battle over its future football home, but the Bruins are already staring at a sizable deficit.

The Rose Bowl, located in Pasadena, California, sued UCLA last year after whispers the Bruins were ditching the iconic venue in favor of the high-tech SoFi Stadium, also closer to campus. UCLA, which has played home football games at the Rose Bowl since 1982, is under contract to stay there for the next 18 seasons.

Although UCLA never formally announced a move to SoFi, texts and emails uncovered during discovery indicated the decision was imminent. In one August 2025 text from the president of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment — which owns SoFi — he told a since-terminated university official, “good luck tonight, next year at SoFi!”

Then in February, the Kroenke chief followed up about playing the 2026 season at SoFi, to which the university official responded: “Yes will make whatever work.” Later that month, UCLA announced it would remain at the Rose Bowl this fall.

UCLA has argued the Rose Bowl and the city of Pasadena brought their lawsuit prematurely before any final decision was made, but threatened future breaches of contract can be treated the same as standard violations. Last week, a judge denied the university’s attempt to get the case tossed because it relies on privileged communications. [Edvard Pettersson]

The Rose Bowl and Pasadena are asking an LA County Superior Court judge to enforce the terms of UCLA’s lease through 2044, claiming a breach could cost the city and taxpayers more than a billion dollars in damages. Kroenke could also be on the hook for tortious interference with a third-party contract.

“It’s not an uncommon issue: This is a situation where you have a landlord and a tenant,” said University of Oregon law professor David Weber. “And the tenant has such a unique aspect to who it is that, in a case like this, you’re going to see much more available the remedy of specific performance, which is a remedy that the judge can then compel UCLA to a performance contract and not just monetary damages, which would be the typical remedy for a breach-of-contract claim.”

For Weber, a sports law expert from Minnesota, the case reminded him of the MLB’s attempt to eliminate the Twins nearly 25 years ago. A state judge ultimately ordered the Twins to honor their lease at the Metrodome, thwarting the league’s plans and saving the beloved Minneapolis franchise.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Mayday

  • Floyd Mayweather Jr. — the undefeated boxing champion also known as “Money” — accused his investment manager of stealing $175 million through a series of shady transfers and jewelry sales. [Josh Russell]

• Gaming or gambling?

  • The makers of the popular video game Counter-Strike 2 defended its so-called “loot boxes” against charges of unregulated gambling in New York, likening the virtual prizes to mystery collectible packs such as baseball cards. [Erik Uebelacker]

• Hater-ade

  • In a new class action, disgruntled Gatorade consumers challenge the sports drink’s claims that it “hydrates better than water” and is free from artificial flavors. [Nina Pullano]

Locker room talk 🎤

Former MLB pitcher Scott Erickson got grilled on the witness stand for withholding information from police regarding his role in a 2020 car crash that killed two young brothers.

“You have no problem lying under oath and committing perjury,” a family attorney pressed the former World Series winner on cross-examination.

“Yes I do,” Erickson insisted, trying to stand his ground. “I made a mistake.” [Hillel Aron]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. San Diego artist reaches $450K settlement over bubble show citation 🥇 [Quinn Welsch]

2. Valve moves to dismiss Counter-Strike gambling lawsuit in New York 🥈 [Erik Uebelacker]

3. Boxer Floyd Mayweather accuses ex-manager of $175 million swindle 🥉 [Josh Russell]

From the vault 🔒

Floyd Mayweather Jr. is no stranger to litigation, having appeared in the Courthouse News database dozens of times before his most recent $175 million fraud suit.

Ahead of his eventual fight with Manny Pacquiao, the two boxers duked it out in court over Mayweather’s claims that Pacquiao used performance-enhancing drugs. But Mayweather refused to sit down for a deposition in his countersuit against Pacquiao’s defamation claims, gifting the Filipino fighter $113,000 in legal fees.

When Mayweather was supposed to sit for deposition between June and October 2011, he never showed. In a demand for sanctions, Pacquiao told the court that Mayweather was photographed at nightclubs across the country, dancing, drinking and burning money, all while claiming that he was too busy training.

More from Courthouse News:

• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

• Our podcast, Sidebar

• And, of course, our news site

Jimmy Donaldson is famous for orchestrating high-stakes challenges, but the YouTube giant better known as MrBeast didn’t script this one: a lawsuit from his social media manager accusing his cousin of sexual harassment and his mom of burying the claims.

Brazilian vlogger Lorrayne Mavromatis was hired by Beast Industries in 2022 to run the company’s Instagram team. She got promoted twice during her first year, but ran into issues working with former CEO James Warren, who is also Donaldson’s cousin.

Mavromatis says Warren, her direct supervisor, would make her meet him in his home for one-on-one meetings, commenting on the “way she looked in her clothes.” When a wealthy client began flirting with her, she claims Warren refused to interfere and even said she should be honored to be the subject of a billionaire’s attention.

Warren also told Mavromatis that MrBeast wouldn’t meet with her for projects because “her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” she says. Additionally, she notes she was excluded from all-male meetings and cites an employee handbook with instructions such as “do everything you can to empower the boys” and “no does not mean no.”

In November 2023, Mavromatis filed a complaint over sexual harassment and hostile work environment, but the company’s human resources department was run by MrBeast’s mother, Susan Parisher. She says she was demoted after the company found her claims to be unsubstantiated.

Mavromatis took maternity leave after giving birth in March 2025. Less than three weeks after returning to work, she says her position was eliminated.

A spokesperson for MrBeast denied the accusations and called the lawsuit a “clout-chasing complaint.” [Sydney Haulenbeek]

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• D4vd disgraced

  • Seven months after the body of a 14-year-old girl was found in the trunk of D4vd’s Tesla, the Gen Z pop singer was charged with first-degree murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child and mutilation. Ahead of Friday’s preliminary hearing, a prosecutor revealed the musician behind the Fortnite anthem had “a significant amount of child pornography” on his cellphone. [Hillel Aron]

• First to flip

  • Former NBA journeyman Damon Jones changed his plea to guilty over his role in two gambling schemes — one using cheating technologies to defraud poker players out of millions of dollars, another sharing insider information with bettors in exchange for kickbacks — making him the first of more than 30 defendants across both cases to admit guilt. [Erik Uebelacker]

• Trans triumph

  • An Eighth Circuit panel — featuring a George W. Bush appointee and two Donald Trump appointees — backed Minnesota’s law allowing transgender girls to compete in high school sports, determining Trump’s executive orders cannot be relied on to prove Title IX violations. [Ryan Luetkemeyer]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. With just weeks until trial, Justin Baldoni PR firm loses bid to toss Blake Lively suit 🥇 [Josh Russell]

2. TMZ in DC: How congressional staff are bracing for the gossip outlet’s descent on Washington 🥈 [Benjamin S. Weiss]

3. Rappers Pooh Shiesty, Big30 charged in music studio robbery, kidnapping of Gucci Mane 🥉 [David Lee]

From the vault 🔒

A decade ago, the former Florida Panthers mascot sued over discrimination and wrongful termination, claiming the NHL team fired the longtime hype man because of his “attitude” after a brief hospitalization due to severe depression.

“Estevez was told by his supervisors … that he was being terminated because he allegedly took part in a post-game photograph that was not approved by management, and because of his ‘attitude,’” the complaint says.

He says that the Panthers’ reasons for his termination were false and nothing but a pretext to terminate him because of his disability.

They ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount.

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• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

• Our podcast, Sidebar

• And, of course, our news site

Thanks to more than 30 states continuing their lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation despite a soft Justice Department settlement, employees’ private boasts about their power over fans are now entered into the public record.

As the antitrust trial winds down with closing arguments expected late next week, we’re ranking the most barefaced brags by the ticketing giants accused of monopolizing the concert industry.

5. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino once talked about building “an incredible moat around the castle” of his company, which had a promotion business “larger than every other promoter in the world combined” in 2011 — one year after the Ticketmaster merger. “We tend to be recession-proof.”

4. “I can charge $50 to park in the grass lmao,” wrote Ben Baker, then a regional director of ticketing for venues in Florida. “I charge $60 for closer grass.” He added that he lists “oversize” parking for $100, “which doesn’t give you ANY benefits” and is still three-quarters of a mile away from the venue.

3. When rock band Alabama Shakes complained about exorbitant Ticketmaster fees, Rapino didn’t even attempt to justify them: “Our fees are too high. We can’t defend them.”

2. “These people are so stupid,” Baker wrote after charging fans $199 for parking at a Kid Rock concert in 2022. ““I almost feel bad taking advantage of them. BAHAHAHAHAHA.”

1. “Robbing them blind baby,” Baker told a colleague in 2022. “That’s how we do.”

Live Nation downplayed Baker’s comments as coming from a “junior staffer.” But perhaps most damning of all, Baker testified that he hasn’t been punished since the messages went public. In fact, he was promoted to head of ticketing for all Live Nation venues.

This week, Live Nation defense attorneys are bringing satisfied business partners to the witness stand — including Drake’s manager, Adel “Future the Prince” Nur — as they aim to convince jurors of legitimate competition in the live event industry.

Follow Courthouse News reporter Erik Uebelacker on Bluesky and X for the latest updates on the case.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• King in cuffs

  • Joseph “Joe Exotic” Maldonado-Passage will remain behind bars for the next decade after the Supreme Court denied the “Tiger King” star’s last-ditch appeal over recanted witness testimony. [Steve Garrison]

• Home run?

  • A freshman runner sued the Virginia High School League over its ban on homeschooled athletes competing in public school competition. [Joe Dodson]

• Disney deal

  • Up to 28 million DirecTV and YouTube TV subscribers can claim a piece of a $50 million settlement against Disney, but less than 5% of customers who overpaid for the services are expected to cash in, puzzling the judge presiding over the case. [Carly Nairn]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Aggrieved handyman gets $140,000 payback in civil trial against Kanye West 🥇 [Hillel Aron]

2. San Francisco jury finds Elon Musk defrauded Twitter investors during $44 billion takeover 🥈 [Margaret Attridge]

3. Judge unseals documents in Charlie Kirk murder case 🥉 [Alan Riquelmy]

From the vault 🔒

With a new baseball season beginning this month — and the Athletics still without a Major League stadium to call home — here’s a look back at when the city of San Jose tried to sue the MLB for blocking the A’s move from Oakland. Ultimately, a George H.W. Bush appointee reluctantly tossed the 2013 lawsuit due to the league’s antitrust exemption.

The exemption, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 1922, found that baseball games are local affairs and not interstate commerce. While agreeing with other jurists that the exemption is “unrealistic, inconsistent, or illogical,” and an “aberration” that makes “little sense given the heavily interstate nature of the ‘business of baseball’ today,” U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte noted it has lived on because of congressional inaction.

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• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

• Our podcast, Sidebar

• And, of course, our news site

In a desperate attempt to dodge a racial discrimination lawsuit, the NFL ended up more exposed than ever.

Four years after former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores accused the league of being “rife with racism” and orchestrating sham interviews to comply with diversity recruiting requirements, his claims finally are cleared for takeoff. And in a twist of fate, his class action now has more momentum thanks to the NFL’s pushback.

In March 2023, a federal judge said Flores could take the New York Giants, Denver Broncos and Houston Texans to court over their hiring practices because he wasn’t under contract involving an arbitration clause with those teams. However, she sided with the NFL on arbitrating Flores’ claims against the Miami Dolphins, Steve Wilks’ claims against the Arizona Cardinals and Ray Horton’s claims against the Tennessee Titans, effectively keeping those disputes private.

Hungry for an ironclad shield from civil liability, the NFL appealed — and it backfired miserably. The Second Circuit deemed the league’s arbitration process unfair due to Commissioner Roger Goodell’s involvement in August 2025, leading the lower court judge earlier this month to send all of the coaches’ discrimination claims to open court instead of secret arbitration [Erik Uebelacker].

“An arbitration agreement where the person in charge of the organization you’re suing is the ultimate adjudicator — that’s just fundamentally an unfair process,” said Arizona State law professor David Lopez, who served as general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Barack Obama.

Flores’ Dolphins case switching from arbitration to federal court figures to be particularly troubling for the NFL. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is accused of offering Flores $100,000 per loss in pursuit of the top draft pick in 2020 and orchestrating a yacht meeting with a rival quarterback — Tom Brady, reportedly — while he was under contract with another team. Flores, who led the Dolphins to consecutive winning seasons before being ousted in 2022, says he was fired for refusing to tank or tamper.

Discovery would be potentially disastrous for the league, but educational for the public.

“We want to know how discrimination cases are adjudicated,” said Lopez, who founded ASU Law’s Civil Rights, Migration and Workplace Law Initiative. “It really guides companies in terms of understanding their responsibilities and workers in terms of understanding their rights.

“One wonders how many of these learning opportunities are out there bottled up in private arbitration,” he added. “Certainly the NFL is a very high-profile employer and this is a very high-profile issue, which is probably why they wanted to do an arbitration, but I think many would argue that’s the reason it should not be in arbitration — that we need to understand how the NFL functions. And for an African-American who wants to apply for a coaching position or other sports leagues, I think it’s important to understand the facts of the case and what lessons can be gleaned from the case.”

Of course, the NFL’s not done fighting — last month, it petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Second Circuit’s arbitration ruling. And if the league can’t complete a Hail Mary to the high court, it could try to avoid public scrutiny via settlement.

But this isn’t the Flores of four years ago, freshly fired from the Dolphins with his coaching career hanging in the balance. Over the past three seasons in Minnesota, his work with the Vikings’ defense has turned him into one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in football. Perhaps he’s prepared to take this legal battle all the way to trial just to prove a point.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Not-so-free samples

  • The family of a funk songwriter settled a dispute over unpaid royalties from the 1973 single “Impeach the President,” which features an iconic drum break that has been sampled hundreds of times by Tupac, Biggie, Nas, J. Cole and more. [Josh Russell]

• Fix for tix

  • The Justice Department’s bid to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s monopoly across the concert industry will head to trial next month in Manhattan federal court, overseen by the same judge who heard last year’s “Diddy” case. [Josh Russell]

• Cleavage caution

  • An LA Superior Court judge warned there would be no “revealing clothing” or “drama” allowed ahead of Kanye West’s upcoming civil trial over unpaid wages to a former contractor, where his wife Bianca Censori is also expected to testify. [Hillel Aron]

Locker room talk 🎤

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” a federal judge said to begin a hearing on salmon protections in the Columbia Basin — the first of three Yogi Berra quotes referenced in court that day — before ending with a bang from the legendary New York Yankees catcher: “If you don’t know where you’re going, when you get there you will be lost.” [Monique Merrill]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. California imposes sweeping changes to blackjack in cardrooms 🥇 [Alan Riquelmy]

2. 10 Things I Hate About Section 230: Joseph Gordon-Levitt urges rollback of Big Tech protections 🥈 [Benjamin S. Weiss]

3. FBI charges man with making phony ransom demand in Guthrie kidnapping case 🥉 [Joe Duhownik]

From the vault 🔒

With the Winter Olympics in the rearview and the Paralympics around the corner, we’re winding the clock back to when a group of wheelchair racing Paralympians sued the U.S. Olympic Committee seeking the same benefits as their Olympic counterparts.

A 10th Circuit panel sided against the disabled athletes in 2008, but one judge wrote a fiery dissent insisting the funding disparity is discriminatory.

“What the statute forbids is exactly what has occurred and is occurring here,” wrote the late U.S. Circuit Judge William Holloway, a Lyndon Johnson appointee. “This defiance of plain legislative intent is crystal-clear from the congressional statement that the Paralympics are ‘the Olympics for disabled amateur athletes.’”

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With so many sports gambling scandals swirling in the news, you’re forgiven if you forgot about the case against former MLB slugger Yasiel Puig.

Quick refresher: Puig faces up to 20 years in prison over accusations he lied to federal investigators in January 2022 about his involvement in an illegal gambling ring. He agreed to a plea deal in August 2022 — which likely would have spared him jail time — only to back out of that agreement a few months later and fight the charges.

At trial last week in Los Angeles, star government witness Donny Kadokawa took the stand to recall his time as the middleman between Puig and his bookie. Kadokawa said he was haunted by Puig’s gambling debts, which ballooned to nearly $300,000 during the summer of 2019 as the man nicknamed the “Wild Horse” placed hundreds of bets on tennis, football and basketball games.

But there’s another side of the story, one perhaps bolstered by tiny cracks in Kadokawa’s credibility. According to defense attorneys, Kadokawa took advantage of Puig to cash in on the Cincinnati Reds outfielder’s gambling losses.

Although Kadokawa admitted to earning a 25% commission on Puig’s net losses, the Hawaiian baseball coach insisted most of it went toward paying off Puig’s debts because he worried they’d fall back on him. However, his unreported taxes from 2019 reportedly showed far more income ($257,044) than years prior.

Kadokawa faces two counts of filing a false tax return, and his sentence depends on how much his testimony at Puig’s trial helps the government. Conveniently, his memory seemed to fade on cross-examination.

Despite questions about Kadokawa’s credibility, Courthouse News reporter Edvard Pettersson believes Puig still needs some ninth-inning magic to evade punishment. Fortunately for the 35-year-old Cuban, the judge prevented a video of Puig speaking English in 2019 from being played in front of the jury, which could have undermined his argument that a language barrier clouded his January 2022 interview with federal investigators.

Puig’s trial is expected to wrap up this week, but defense attorneys remain unsure whether they’ll call him to testify and risk cross-examination.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Cop flop

  • New York City sued Dr. Phil’s son, Jordan McGraw, claiming his production company was supposed to create a pro-cop TV series for former Mayor Eric Adams but instead edited episodes that “pose an imminent threat to the lift and safety of active NYPD officers” if released. [Erik Uebelacker]

• Spare change

  • A jury sided with a struggling swimming league fighting against an anticompetitive boycott by the international federation World Aquatics, but awarded just $1 in damages. [Monique Merrill]

• Seeing ghosts

  • The owners of the Los Angeles home where Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 challenge the property’s historic designation so they can redevelop it. [Edvard Pettersson]

Locker room talk 🎤

“He leans in, puts his face on her face, kisses her, nuzzles up against her, strokes her,” Blake Lively’s attorney, Esra Hudson, said last week as she described how Justin Baldoni’s improvised touching during the slow dance in “This Ends With Us” was a surprise that was recorded in behind-the-scenes footage. “You can see the look on her face in the video … she is clearly having her boundaries pushed.” [Josh Russell]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Justin Baldoni asks New York judge to toss out Blake Lively’s ‘It Ends With Us’ harassment suit 🥇 [Josh Russell]

2. NYC sues Dr. Phil’s son to block release of ‘extremely problematic’ NYPD footage 🥈 [Erik Uebelacker]

3. Judge likely to toss Chris Brown’s defamation lawsuit over HBO doc 🥉 [Hillel Aron]

From the vault 🔒

After the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014, one fan attempted an unsuccessful class action seeking to hold the NFL accountable for making just 1% of tickets publicly available — well short of the 5% required by New Jersey law:

The 19-page ruling notes that, as difficult as it is to score Super Bowl tickets in the NFL’s lottery, nothing guarantees a fan the opportunity to buy tickets at face value.

“Nothing in [the ticket law] or its legislative history suggests that in order for a release of tickets to constitute a ‘release for sale to the general public,’ tickets must be available to any member of the public who wants to purchase them,” Justice Anne Patterson wrote for the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Good luck scoring a seat next month…

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Our reporters were busy with major sports trials in December, beginning with a settlement in NASCAR’s antitrust feud and ending with a last-minute deal between the Los Angeles Angels and the family of former pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

But another sports trial produced the most surprising result of the month: Arizona State University and former athletic director Ray Anderson were cleared of retaliation in a wrongful termination lawsuit where nothing seemed to be going in their favor.

The case was brought by former senior associate athletic director David Cohen, who reported a wealthy donor for fondling three women at a basketball game in March 2019. ASU cut ties with the donor after finding evidence of sexual harassment, but the university didn’t start its investigation until after Anderson fired Cohen in August 2019.

Defense attorneys spent much of the six-day trial focused on a $690,000 check from Vivid Seats that Cohen deposited into his personal account before returning to the university a month later. However, Anderson admitted on the stand that he was “not aware” of that incident.

In front of a jury featuring six women and two men, Anderson minimized the reported harassment as “inappropriate touching,” calling it a “two or three out of 10.” An HR manager also testified that Anderson was warned not to fire Cohen because it seemed like retaliation.

But none of that mattered in the end. Cohen’s positive performance reviews, bonuses and raises were overshadowed by a culture assessment from years prior that asked colleagues which administrators they’d want “in their bunker.” No employees chose Cohen to be in their hypothetical bunker, and 12 wrote that they specifically would not want him in their bunker. 

“It doesn’t mean the person’s not good at their job, but it means there’s a real problem,” said juror Austin Seigel, who spoke with Phoenix-based reporter Joe Duhownik after the verdict.

Seigel added that Cohen offered inconsistent testimony and should have gone over Anderson’s head to begin with because Cohen was also a mandatory reporter.

One last note on the Skaggs trial, which we examined here in October: The settlement was seemingly sparked by a note to the judge during deliberations that tipped the jury’s hand.

The jurors asked whether they were responsible for awarding punitive damages — which they were, but not until the second phase of the trial. They were already deliberating punitive damages even though there was no place for them on the verdict form.

“To me, it’s just a reminder that jurors often miss the small legalistic details that lawyers spend hours obsessing over,” said Hillel Aron, who covered the lengthy trial in Santa Ana, California. “But they do get the big picture.”

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Crummy gummy

  • Surinamese sprinter Issam Asinga — the fastest teen ever in the 100-meter dash before his record was wiped from the books by a doping suspension — is seeking another chance to hold Gatorade accountable for recovery gummies he says were tainted with a banned substance. [Josh Russell]

• Buzzer beater

  • Michael Jordan settled his antitrust suit against NASCAR toward the end of a two-week trial, winning permanent charters for his 23XI Racing franchise and 14 other Cup Series teams. [Sydney Haulenbeek]

• Roblox reckoning

  • Florida and Iowa sued the online gaming platform, calling it a hunting ground for sexual predators. Meanwhile in California, a federal judge refused to toss a proposed class action on behalf of children who gambled away their virtual Robux. [Alex Pickett, Rox Laird, Edvard Pettersson]

Locker room talk 🎤

“I have to decide as a matter of law for one side or the other when there’s an army of experts basically shooting at each other,” said U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr., a former college DJ preparing to decide whether to let a copyright battle brought by two Jamaican producers against dozens of reggaeton artists — including Bad Bunny — proceed to a jury. [Edvard Pettersson]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Former Cornhusker football coach sues school over tax liability 🥇 [Alan Riquelmy]

2. Denny Hamlin opens NASCAR antitrust trial with emotional testimony 🥈 [Sydney Haulenbeek]

3. Racing teams scrutinize NASCAR exec texts in antitrust trial 🥉 [Sydney Haulenbeek]

From the vault 🔒

In 2018, California officials denied a USC professor’s request for a custom license plate with “COYW” — short for “Come on, you Whites,” a common Fulham soccer cheer — claiming the phrase contains “connotations offensive to good taste and decency.” So the die-hard soccer fan took the DMV to court and won a settlement:

The settlement between Jonathan Kotler and the Department of Motor Vehicles comes months after a federal judge ruled the Golden State must face claims the denial violated First Amendment protections.

Under the settlement, the DMV will agree the personalized plate complies with California law and that the “COYW” phrase is not racist.

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Seven years after the Supreme Court lifted a federal ban on sports gambling, major leagues are finally starting to restrict which bets can be offered in the 38 states that allow them.

All it took was the FBI detailing a Mafia-backed scheme to rig basketball bets and high-stakes poker games featuring former NBA players, along with accusations weeks later that MLB pitchers fixed pitches for money.

The integrity crisis prompted the NBA, MLB and NFL to crack down on “prop” bets, which offer odds on stats for individual players instead of traditional win/loss outcomes. On Capitol Hill, some lawmakers are pushing for a nationwide ban on prop bets.

But with the attention of the sports world firmly focused on the latest betting scandals, so-called prediction markets quietly took another step toward the mainstream, offering bets masquerading as “event contracts” on everything from elections to weather and even what words would be said at last week’s Trump-Mamdani meeting.

These event contracts are practically the same as wagers, but they’re shielded from state oversight and available to all adults across the country because they’re treated as financial instruments by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC. Insider trading laws don’t apply and markets can be easily manipulated, as one CEO illustrated last month.

Everyone has a new casino in their pocket — but nobody’s sure whether the states or the feds have authority over it.

The CFTC targeted prediction markets by banning election contracts under the Biden administration, but it lost a legal battle against leading prediction market Kalshi in September 2024. Then the CFTC pivoted to a hands-off approach to enforcement in Trump’s second term, Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi as a strategic adviser in January and Kalshi spread like wildfire with event contracts approved for February’s Super Bowl and March Madness soon after.

A handful of states responded by sending cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi, claiming it’s an illegal gambling operation siphoning tax dollars from licensed sportsbooks. However, Kalshi beat most states to the punch in court by securing preliminary injunctions that allowed them to continue operating amid the ongoing legal battle.

Despite early success in court, the losses are now piling up for Kalshi: First it failed to get a preliminary injunction in Maryland, though the company continues operating in the state pending an appeal in the Fourth Circuit. Then Massachusetts went on offense with a pending preliminary injunction motion to block Kalshi from offering any contract in the state.

And on Tuesday, a federal judge in Nevada gave state gaming regulators the green light to go after Kalshi, which vowed to appeal to the Ninth Circuit fearing “imminent threat of criminal enforcement.”

Ultimately, experts believe the question of whether prediction market oversight belongs to the CFTC or the states will be decided by the Supreme Court in the next few years. Although it’s easy to guess which way Trump leans on the issue, it’s trickier to predict where the high court and its conservative supermajority will fall.

“I don’t know which way the federalism element here is going to cut for a lot of these justices,” said Andrew Kim, a partner at Goodwin who specializes in gambling law with the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court division.

“I don’t think it’s good to assume that there will be a knee-jerk reaction in favor of the administration,” Kim explained. “What’s going to drive all of this is how the justices will view the federalism question in the context of: the states, on the one hand, being able to regulate in a space they have long regulated in; on the other hand, the CFTC not being interrupted and not being interfered with in how it regulates these federally backed, federally regulated derivatives markets.”

Either way, it seems betting on politics is here to stay — and with less safeguards than sports gambling.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Slippery slope

  • Federal prosecutors accused Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding of ordering at least three killings, including the murder of a federal witness, on top of running a cocaine smuggling ring that landed him on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. [Hillel Aron]

• Musicians vs. machines

  • A Munich court found ChatGPT violated German musicians’ copyrights, marking the first major European ruling on AI training in what figures to be a lengthy legal battle. [Cain Burdeau]

• Sunk

  • A federal judge in New York torpedoed an antitrust lawsuit from Enhanced Games, an Olympics-style competition that encourages doping, over a World Aquatics prohibition on anyone who participates in sports events that embrace banned substances. [Josh Russell]

Locker room talk 🎤

“NASCAR wants to (but cannot) have it differently on each side of the same coin — heads we win, tails you lose,” U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell wrote in a ruling favoring Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing in their fight against the motorsports giant. [Sydney Haulenbeek]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Rapper Lil Durk can’t duck murder-for-hire charges 🥇 [Edvard Pettersson]

2. Influencer Dan Bilzerian says he was illegally ousted from company he founded 🥈 [Dustin Godfrey]

3. Supreme Court won’t review loudspeaker prayers at state football championship 🥉 [Kelsey Reichmann]

From the vault 🔒

Eight years ago, rapper Drake prevailed in a copyright lawsuit over his sample of jazz musician Jimmy Smith on his 2013 track “Pound Cake.”

On a 1982 spoken word album, Smith declared that “jazz is the only real music that’s gonna last” — but Drake cut “jazz” from his sample, transforming the meaning enough to qualify as fair use in the eyes of a Bill Clinton-appointed judge.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley III called it indisputable that Smith had been making “an unequivocal statement on the primacy of jazz over all other forms of popular music.”

Drake’s song “by contrast, transforms Jimmy Smith’s brazen dismissal of all non-jazz music into a statement that ‘real music,’ with no qualifiers, is ‘the only thing that’s gonna last,’” Pauley wrote in a 21-page opinion.

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Six years after the accidental overdose death of Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, the question of the team’s culpability in the tragedy will soon be answered by a jury.

The $785 million wrongful death lawsuit began with testimony from three Angels employees — including star slugger Mike Trout — all of whom denied knowing that former communications director Eric Kay was dealing pills to players. Kay is serving a 22-year prison sentence for supplying Skaggs with the fentanyl-laced oxycodone pill that ended his life during a team trip to Texas in July 2019.

On Oct. 21, Trout testified that a clubhouse attendant warned him to stop paying Kay for humiliating dares — including eating a pimple plucked from Trout’s back — because the money was going toward drugs.

ESPN thought Trout’s testimony helped the Skaggs family’s case, declaring it “one step closer to establishing that Kay’s behavior was raising enough red flags to warrant team intervention.” But Courthouse News reporter Hillel Aron left Santa Ana with a different outlook.

“It doesn’t seem that relevant to me when they knew he was a drug addict,” Aron said. “There is a world of difference between abusing drugs and selling drugs to players.”

However, the Skaggs family brought a key witness out of the bullpen on Monday — Kay’s ex-wife, Camela — who singlehandedly scorched the Angels’ legal defense.

Camela testified that former VP of communications Tim Mead found 60 pills separated into “six or seven” baggies in Kay’s bedroom in 2017 — an incident Mead couldn’t recall on the stand. And in April 2019, Camela said she told longtime Angels traveling secretary Tom Taylor that some pills they found at the house were intended for Skaggs.

“He just blows me off,” Camela remembered of Taylor’s reaction. “Just changes the subject.”

Camela also testified that she saw pills being passed around on the team plane, and that both Mead and Taylor knew of her ex-husband’s opioid addiction since at least 2013. Due to spousal privilege, the judge ruled Camela couldn’t say that Kay told her he was selling pills to players.

“Camela Kay didn’t want to be there, but she looked like she wanted to tell the truth — she was the first witness without a dog in the fight,” Aron said. “Her testimony was the first time the Skaggs family put forward evidence that the Angels knew Eric Kay was selling pills to players. And she also made it seem like Tim Mead and Tom Taylor were lying. The jury will surely wonder why they were lying and what they were trying to cover up.”

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• More bucks for Buckeyes

  • High school athletes in Ohio are now free to ink endorsement deals after a judge temporarily sided with an Ohio State football recruit seeking to cash in on his name, image and likeness before college. [Destiny DeVooght]

• Powerlifting prejudice

  • The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that USA Powerlifting’s ban on transgender women competing in the women’s division is discriminatory, but it sent the case back to a lower court to decide whether the policy serves a legitimate business interest. [Joe Harris]

• Last lap

  • Two racing teams — including one co-owned by basketball legend Michael Jordan — are on course for a December trial in their antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR after settlement talks fell through last week. The teams also scored a win on Tuesday when a judge tossed NASCAR’s countersuit against them. [Sydney Haulenbeek]

Locker room talk 🎤

“The average listener is not under the impression that a diss track is the product of a thoughtful or disinterested investigation, conveying to the public fact-checked verifiable content,” a judge wrote in her opinion tossing Drake’s defamation lawsuit over his record label’s promotion of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” diss track. [Erik Uebelacker]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Author Neil Gaiman evades Wisconsin sexual assault case 🥇 [Destiny DeVooght]

2. Live Nation loses SCOTUS appeal, forcing ticket seller to face antitrust suit [Kelsey Reichmann and Megan Butler] 🥈

3. Judge tosses ‘Nirvana baby’ child porn suit out with the pool water 🥉 [Hillel Aron]

From the vault 🔒

In honor of the beginning of the NBA season, here’s a look back at the time when Spurs legend Tony Parker filed a $20 million lawsuit over a nightclub brawl sparked by Drake’s beef with singer Chris Brown.

There was a dispute between the two stars, who had both dated the pop singer Rihanna … Parker says he was sitting at a separate table from Brown and Drake, but he suffered a corneal laceration and other injuries from the brawl, which left him “unable to attend to his usual duties and vocation.”

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The nephew of the Vancouver Canucks owner is trying to send his uncles and grandfather to the penalty box over claims they conspired to deny certain family members their slice of the Aquilinis’ multibillion-dollar empire.

The 37-page lawsuit features enough drama to fuel its own HBO series — call it “Canucksession.”

To recap the characters involved: There’s the powerful patriarch, Luigi Aquilini, an Italian immigrant who built an empire on real estate, hospitality and berry farms, but is now accused of wresting control of the family trust away from his late wife, Elisa, by adding himself as a trustee and beneficiary right before her death in 2015.

Luigi’s eldest boy, Francesco, bought the Canucks two decades ago and is widely regarded as one of the most unpopular owners in the NHL. He’s no stranger to legal controversy, either, having twice been taken to court over failure to financially support the children of his ex-wife, who said he abused them.

Francesco ran the Canucks with his brothers, Paolo and Roberto, until Paolo resigned as co-owner this summer. Paolo’s son, Matteo, says his dad was pushed out of the business as retaliation for a member of Paolo’s family reporting sexual assault against a member of Roberto’s family during their childhood.

Matteo sued Luigi, Francesco and Roberto earlier this month, accusing them of plotting to exclude Paolo and his lineage from the family trust starting in February 2020, one month after the relative’s assault report first surfaced. Matteo also claims his uncles threatened his autistic brother Christian, a team employee of the Canucks, with workplace discipline for reporting bullying by coworkers in 2022.

Not only do Matteo and his siblings want their fair share of the family inheritance, but as Dustin Godfrey reports, they’re also seeking to oust Luigi, Francesco and Roberto from controlling the trust. The trust’s assets could be worth more than $320 million, according to Matteo.

See what else fell under the lights this month:

Quick hits ⚡

• Chase for charters

  • Two teams suing NASCAR — Front Row Motorsports and Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing — were denied charter status for the 2025 season, but they can remain racing as open teams ahead of their December trial. [Sydney Haulenbeek]

• Ticketmaster ‘triple dip’

  • The FTC is going after Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster for their “triple dip” ticket resale scheme that earned them $3.7 billion from fees alone between 2019 and 2024. [Hillel Aron]

• Facing the music

  • Musixmatch must face claims that the lyric licensing company leaked confidential info to prevent competitor LyricFind from taking over its lucrative Spotify deal. [Matt Simons]

Locker room talk 🎤

“It seems to me that everything you argue about is beside the point,” a judge told the attorney for Meghan Markle’s estranged half-sister before declining to revive a defamation case against the Duchess of Sussex. [Kayla Goggin]

Leaderboard 🏆

1. Meghan Markle defamation case falters at 11th Circuit 🥇 [Kayla Goggin]

2. Vancouver Canucks owners embroiled in family fight over multibillion-dollar empire 🥈 [Dustin Godfrey]

3. Second Circuit rejects George Santos’ copyright suit against Jimmy Kimmel 🥉 [Erik Uebelacker]

From the vault 🔒

What not to do at your office Halloween party, courtesy of the California Judicial Council in 2016:

In photos posted to the council’s intranet, staff for the state judicial rulemaking body were seen posing in cubicles made up to look like prison cells, darkening their faces, and wearing wigs with dreadlocks in imitation of the TV show “Orange Is the New Black.” In one photo, a man posed in a woman’s wig, impersonating a transgender actress on the show. The costumes were an apparent hit, as the employees ended up winning a “best decorations” award.

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• Our weekly newsletter, Closing Arguments

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