AMERICAN COUNSEL

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J.R. Howell

Ticket Price Caps, Antitrust Drift, and the Return of Regulation

There is a lesson for the United States in the Canadian province of Ontario’s 2026 cap on ticket resale prices. The willingness of legislators to enact even a low degree of price controls on discretionary consumer items reflects a growing instinct: when antitrust law fails to discipline concentrated market

When Trusted Healthcare Software Quietly Hands Private Health Information to Someone Else’s AI

You go to the clinic. You interface with clinic staff, nurses, and maybe even a doctor. You’ve grown accustomed to technology at the hospital—diagnostic tools, tablets, computers, note-taking. In the United States, you take comfort knowing that HIPAA keeps your health information safe. When clinic staff use software

Ambulance Roll-Ups, Consolidation, Private Equity and the Role of Antitrust

By J.R. Howell On April 11, 2026, Matt Stoller published “Emergency Prices: How Private Equity Captured the Ambulance Market” (available at https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/code-red-why-your-city-cant-affordor) (last visited April 13, 2026). This article takes a dive into the research and examines private equity consolidation in the emergency vehicles

Preemption: The White House AI Framework’s Real Design

by J.R. Howell Beneath the administration’s language of innovation and national leadership, the March 2026 AI framework is best read as a proposal to displace state law, narrow accountability, and reorganize the market on terms that favor scale. A link to the White House's policy paper

When Courts Adopt AI in the Dark: Privacy, Legitimacy, and the Democratic Stakes of Los Angeles’s Learned Hand Experiment

by J.R. Howell Introduction On March 18, 2026 the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC)—the nation’s largest trial court—quietly announced a limited pilot program with Learned Hand, a proprietary generative‑AI platform built specifically for judges. Court administrators described the tool as a “judicial sous chef” that

No Borrowed Crown: Supreme Court Holds Yearsley Is a Merits Defense, Not Immunity

by J.R. Howell The Supreme Court’s decision in GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), clarifies an issue that had become increasingly muddled in government-contractor litigation: Yearsley is a defense to liability, not an immunity from suit. That distinction has immediate procedural consequences. Because Yearsley does