Insights

Chicago – August 06, 2025: Crowell & Moring today announced that a group of 16 highly regarded health care litigation partners is joining the firm, together with their team, and led by accomplished trial attorney Martin J. Bishop. The strategic combination creates one of the largest health care practices in the country and expands the firm’s ability to provide clients across the industry with the full spectrum of litigation, investigations, regulatory, transactional, and recovery capabilities. The team joins from Reed Smith, where Bishop served on the firm’s executive committee.

San Francisco – July 17, 2025: Crowell & Moring has added two experienced in-house counsel from Amazon to its Litigation Group, expanding the firm’s abilities to serve clients facing complex consumer product liability issues. Clay Marquez, former Senior Corporate Counsel for WW Stores at Amazon, and Meghan McMeel, former Senior Corporate Counsel for Devices at Amazon, join the firm as partners in San Francisco.

On July 25, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in United States ex. rel. Sedona Partners LLC v. Able Moving & Storage Inc. et al., holding that a district court cannot ignore new factual allegations included in an amended complaint filed by a False Claims Act qui tam relator based on the fact that those additional facts were learned in discovery, even while a motion to dismiss for failure to comply with the heightened pleading standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) is pending.  Under Rule 9(b), allegations of fraud typically must include factual support showing the who, what, where, why, and how of the fraud to survive a defendant’s motion to dismiss.  And while that standard has not changed, Sedona gives room for a relator to file first and seek out discovery in order to amend an otherwise deficient complaint and survive a motion to dismiss, at least in the Eleventh Circuit.  Importantly, however, the Eleventh Circuit clarified that a district court retains the discretion to dismiss a relator’s complaint before or after discovery has begun, meaning that district courts are not required to permit discovery at the pleading stage.  Nevertheless, the Sedona decision is an about-face from precedent in the Eleventh Circuit, and many other circuits, where, historically, facts learned during discovery could not be used to circumvent Rule 9(b) by bolstering a relator’s factual allegations while a motion to dismiss was pending.  While the long-term effects of the decision remain to be seen, in the short term the decision may encourage relators to engage in early discovery in hopes of learning facts that they can use to survive otherwise meritorious motions to dismiss.

Historically, SEC-registered investment advisers have not been subject to comprehensive AML regulation under the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) unless they also qualify as a broker-dealer or other BSA-regulated financial institution. Notwithstanding the absence of a formal requirement to date, many SEC-registered investment advisers have voluntarily adopted AML programs in line with industry expectations and investor demands. However, on August 28, 2024, FinCEN issued its Final Rule, establishing anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (“AML/CFT”) requirements for Covered Advisers similar to those that apply to broker-dealers. The Final Rule, which was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026, required Covered Advisers to maintain written AML programs, perform customer due diligence, file Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”) and other reports required of BSA-regulated financial institutions, and retain standard AML records.  

Threat actors have targeted insurance companies in a recent string of cyber-attacks, exposing patients’ personal information, including Social Security numbers, claims information, and health reports.

You’re invited to join Crowell & Moring for a day-long program focused on providing an overview of the fundamentals of contracting with the federal government.

Click below to listen or access from one of these links:

This week’s episode covers developments involving DOJ’s guidance for federal funding recipients regarding DEI and the White House AI Action Plan, and is hosted by Peter Eyre, Katie Erno, and Matthew F. Ferraro. Crowell & Moring's "Fastest 5 Minutes" is a biweekly podcast that provides a brief summary of significant government contracts legal and regulatory developments that no government contracts lawyer or executive should be without.

Crowell's Rebecca Springer and Glenn Grant discuss the requirements of Washington state's new mini-WARN Act. The Lightning Round podcast is Crowell’s biweekly rundown on developments and trends in the Labor and Employment space.