Insights

Orange County – October 18, 2024: The Recorder honored Crowell & Moring partner Chahira Solh with the Distinguished Leader Award at the annual California Legal Awards event in Los Angeles on Oct. 15. The award recognizes lawyers who have implemented major achievements in the last year. Solh was also named a finalist for the Mentorship Award in honor of the impact she has made on attorneys at the start of their careers and in the legal profession.

Despite other sweeping changes to the federal government under the Trump administration, the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA), passed under former President Biden, remains good law. Below, we report on recent trends in FDA’s implementation and enforcement of MoCRA in the early months of Trump’s presidency.

On March 18, President Trump fired the Federal Trade Commission’s two Democratic Commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. The move represents the latest effort by the Trump administration to exert greater control over executive-branch agencies, including bi-partisan independent agencies like the FTC.

In 2023 and 2024, several U.S. states enacted extensive “Right to Repair” laws, reflecting a growing legislative focus on ensuring consumers have access to the parts and resources needed to repair their own products without relying on the product’s original manufacturer. Most recently, California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon implemented comprehensive regulations aimed at providing consumers direct access to tools, parts, and information for the repair of various electronic devices and equipment, including digital products and agricultural machinery. As the “Right to Repair” movement continues to gain significant traction across the United States, it is critical that manufacturers understand these laws and how these laws will impact their individual businesses.

In August 2024 judge’s decision to dismiss a major class action claim against bottled water makers will likely do little to stem the flow of microplastics litigation in the year ahead, says Meshach Rhoades, managing partner of Crowell & Moring’s Denver office.

A nascent trend is forming in the world of health care class actions. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are taking the excessive-fee concept pioneered in retirement plan litigation and applying it to self-funded corporate health insurance plans.

After a surge in privacy class action lawsuits in 2024, San Francisco-based Crowell & Moring partner Kristin Madigan says she expects to see more of the same in the year ahead, as plaintiffs’ lawyers continue testing out new legal theories to bring claims against any company that collects, uses, or sells customer data.