NAM Legal Center

Pushing back on securities fraud claims: On Tuesday, the Legal Center asked SCOTUS to overturn a 9th Circuit decision that watered down the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act’s heightened pleading standard—that standard is critical for preventing baseless class actions brought solely to extract windfall settlements.

"[T]he Court concludes that the FTC lacks statutory authority to promulgate the Non-Compete Rule, and that the Rule is arbitrary and capricious. Thus, the FTC’s promulgation of the Rule is an unlawful agency action." A HUGE win for manufacturers and the rule of law!

This week, the Legal Center urged the 6th Circuit to vacate the FCC’s net neutrality regulation—an attempt to regulate internet service providers with a 90-year-old law used during the rotary phone era. Net neutrality exceeds the FCC’s statutory authority and would undermine American business’s ability to compete in a global economy. 

Last week, the Legal Center urged the 7th Circuit to reject a fraud-on-the-FDA theory of False Claims Act Liability. Enterprising qui tam plaintiffs should not be allowed to override FDA’s expert judgment and express statutory authority to make drug approval decisions. Fantastic work by our outside counsel Ropes & Gray LLP.

New Amicus Filing! On Monday, the Legal Center urged the Colorado Supreme Court to reject state law climate change claims brought by Boulder against energy manufacturers after a lower court denied the manufacturers’ motion to dismiss. This case is part of the trial bar’s campaign to transform social, political and environmental public policy matters—in this case, climate change—into state court public nuisance and consumer protection lawsuits targeting manufacturers. Tremendous work by our outside counsel Phil Goldberg from Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.

The NAM Legal Center supports third-party litigation funding reform to restore some sanity to the civil justice system.

Yesterday, the NAM Legal Center proudly secured a victory for manufacturers when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down the SEC’s unlawful about-face, preserving important provisions from the 2020 proxy advisory firm rule designed to protect manufacturers and Main Street investors from proxy firms’ outsized influence. Learn more about our big win in NAM v. SEC --> https://bit.ly/4cwAwTO

We’re celebrating another amicus win today after SCOTUS agreed 8-1 that the National Labor Relations Board should be subject to the same standard for preliminary injunctive relief as every other litigant in federal court. The Court concluded that "[n]othing in [the National Labor Relations Act] overcomes the presumption that the four traditional criteria govern a preliminary-injunction request by the Board." Check out our brief here: https://lnkd.in/exuuZMdr

“Manufacturers support commonsense regulations on PFAS that recognize the criticality of these substances across several industrial sectors—for many of these critical applications, there are no viable alternatives,” said NAM Chief Legal Officer Linda Kelly. “What the EPA did, however, was to bulldoze ahead with standards that set an acceptable level for PFAS at near zero—which is wholly infeasible and threatens these vital substances’ continued application in manufacturing processes. In doing so, the EPA relied on a deeply flawed cost-benefit analysis and failed to follow the clear-cut statutory procedures required by the Safe Drinking Water Act, among other substantive and procedural deficiencies. The NAM Legal Center is filing suit to overturn this unachievable standard and protect manufacturing operations and jobs across the country.”

Amicus Win! The Texas Supreme Court handed manufacturers an important victory last Friday in Ford v. Parks, holding that an auto manufacturer need not prove the exact date a dealer purchased a vehicle from the manufacturer to invoke the State's statute of repose (which bars product liability lawsuits brought 15 years or more after the sale of a product). The court properly concluded, as the NAM and its industry allies argued in our amicus brief, that "a sale can — and often does — occur before payment is made" and that "it is enough for the defendant to prove that the sale must have occurred outside the statutory period." https://lnkd.in/es6sDSXs