Britney Spears’ conservatorship dispute brought the guardianship system to the public eye. It’s a system that entraps thousands more Americans without a platform to fight back.

The industry is regulated loosely and ripe for exploitation of elderly and disabled people, Bloomberg Law found in a six-month investigation.

Read the full 5-part series: https://www.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberglawnews/us-law-week/BNA%2000000186a58cdac2afe7e7ecdc9b0001

Suing your own customers usually isn't a wise business strategy. But that's what some insurance companies are doing as litigation over PFAS continues to flood the courts.

Many of the companies that are, themselves, facing lawsuits over allegedly exposing people to the so-called "forever chemicals," are saying their insurers should be footing the costs of defending these suits. However, not only are the insurers rejecting these claims, but they're taking their own clients to court in the hopes of getting a judge to rule that their policies don't cover PFAS litigation.

Bloomberg Law's Daphne Zhang has been reporting on this, and she joins this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits. Daphne explains what's a stake for insurers in these suits and why, in the very near future, it may be all but impossible to find an insurer willing to cover PFAS.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping his friends close, and his caucus closer.

At least, that appears to be the intent behind what the California Republican is calling his "Five Families" strategy—a not-so-subtle reference to the classic 1972 film "The Godfather." In the hopes of avoiding the infighting that preceded his raucous Speakership vote, McCarthy is giving five different ideological factions within the House Republican caucus a much larger say in the legislation that makes it to the chamber's floor.

On this episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Government's Emily Wilkins explains what McCarthy is doing and how his strategy represents a break with his predecessor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Emily also talks about whether this power sharing agreement will make it more or less likely that Congress will breach the debt ceiling later this year.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

A Massachusetts inmate says he deserves a new trial because his lawyer was racist, and the justices on his state's highest court aren't sure what to make of this argument.

That was the takeaway from last week's oral argument in the closely-watched appeal of Anthony Dew. Dew is a Black Muslim man who says the discovery of extremely racist Facebook posts from his court-appointed lawyer should invalidate his 2016 guilty plea.

Bloomberg Law's Allie Reed is covering this first-of-its-kind trial. She joins our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, to talk about what it would mean if an attorney's personal animus toward their client could, by itself, create a conflict of interest.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Back in the 1920s, the Supreme Court granted Major League Baseball an exemption from US antitrust rules. But since then, some members of the Court—including several current justices—have said they think they may have made a mistake.

Now, the Department of Justice is joining the club. Last week, it asked an appellate court to apply this exemption as narrowly as possible in an amicus brief on behalf of several defunct minor league teams that are suing MLB.

On today's episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, we talk with Bloomberg Law reporter Mike Leonard about why this policy has persisted for a century if a growing number of those serving in the judicial or executive branches seem to dislike it. Mike also talks about how the Supreme Court seems eager to take on sports-related cases and whether this means MLB's exemption is down to its last strike.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Have you seen the ads recruiting plaintiffs in the Camp Lejeune case? If you haven't, you've surely seen ones for mesothelioma, pesticides, talcum powder, or any number of big mass tort cases in recent years.

The marketing used to find clients for these cases has become much more sophisticated, and the budgets used to identify potential clients have been growing exponentially. For the Camp Lejeune case, which involves decades of contaminated drinking water at a military installation in North Carolina, the spending could shatter records.

Bloomberg Law reporter Roy Strom dug into how this type of legal marketing works and who benefits from it. He joins our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, to talk about how the mass tort bar finds its clients and why this makes some people uneasy.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

A trial is currently underway against the former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives over allegations he accepted millions in bribes. But he says the money was political speech protected by the First Amendment - and that he has Supreme Court cases to back him up.

One case, 2010's Citizens United vs. FEC, reversed longstanding campaign finance restrictions as violating the First Amendment. Today, former Ohio speaker Larry Householder's trial is a test of how money works in politics in a post-Citizens United world. If Householder is ultimately acquitted, it may set a new precedent for just how far prosecutors must go to win a political corruption case.

On this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law correspondent Alex Ebert explains how Householder got in this legal trouble in the first place and also why his novel defense is worrying some campaign finance watchdogs.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Investors may have a lot more opportunity to sue their boards of directors for mismanagement after a ruling last month in a Delaware opioid case.

The ruling from Delaware Chancery Court, the country's premiere venue for corporate law disputes, was in a case against drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen that centered on allegations its reckless opioid selling damaged the company's stock price. The court found that investors can introduce evidence of mismanagement dating back years—a much longer time period than AmerisourceBergen had wanted.

Bloomberg Law reporter Jennifer Kay wrote a story about the implication of this ruling on shareholder suits and on corporate accountability. She spoke about these topics to Washington & Lee University School of Law professor Carliss Chatman on our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The FDA has known for years that baby food can contain alarming amounts of toxic metals, including lead, arsenic, and cadmium. But why has it been slow to act?

A team of Bloomberg Law reporters set out to answer this question, and to see how bad the baby food problem really is. For their project, Bloomberg Law independently tested more than two dozen products for contaminants.

Two of those reporters, Gary Harki and Celine Castronuovo, join our weekly podcast, On The Merits, to talk about why they launched this investigation and answer why regulators may be behind the curve on this issue.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

On Oct. 31, 2022, the Supreme Court heard arguments that Harvard's and the University of North Carolina's use of race in admissions goes too far. Given the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court, it's almost certain the justices will overturn more than 40 years of precedent and declare affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional.

But, as Bloomberg Law's Matthew Schwartz explains, there is a remote-but-not-impossible chance that the court may issue a surprise ruling upholding affirmative action but further limiting how it can be used.

In this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, Matthew joins us to speculate on the court's ruling in this potentially landmark case and to talk about his recent four-part podcast series on affirmative action. Matthew also talks about the anti-affirmative action activist driving this case and what is behind his motivations.

Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.