Appellate

  • October 29, 2024

    6th Circ. Judge Rejects Flint Comparison In Benton Harbor

    A Sixth Circuit judge asked during oral arguments Tuesday if Michigan's government could have done more to monitor the response to lead contamination in a city's water supply, as another judge seemed to doubt that the allegations against the state rose to the level of constitutional violations.

  • October 29, 2024

    Ga. Court Says Apt. Must Face Shooting Death Suit

    The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court ruling holding that an apartment complex company's attempt to waive its liability for third-party crimes in a lease agreement with a tenant who was shot and killed is void and unenforceable under Peach State law.

  • October 29, 2024

    Ex-Cleveland Councilman Can't Cut 6-Year Fraud Sentence

    An Ohio federal judge will not allow a former Cleveland city councilman to get out of jail on compassionate release, ruling the ex-politician "has never demonstrated any remorse for his criminal conduct" and should serve the remainder of his six-year fraud sentence.

  • October 29, 2024

    7th Circ. Backs University of Illinois' Win In Retaliation Suit

    A former University of Illinois at Springfield adjunct professor cannot revive her retaliation claims because she couldn't defeat the university's assertion that it was her own retaliation against others that led the university to let her contract expire, the Seventh Circuit said Tuesday.

  • October 29, 2024

    FERC Botched Pacific NW Pipeline Approval, 5th Circ. Told

    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was wrong to approve a controversial TC Energy Corp. pipeline expansion project in the Pacific Northwest, Washington and Oregon officials and environmental groups told the Fifth Circuit.

  • October 29, 2024

    Feds Tell High Court To Deny Va.'s Bid To Revive Voter Purge

    The U.S. Supreme Court must leave in place a court order prohibiting Virginia from removing suspected noncitizens from its voting rolls this close to Election Day, the federal government and advocacy groups argued Tuesday, contending the risk of erroneously stripping eligible voters of their rights outweighs any purported harm to the state.

  • October 29, 2024

    2nd Circ. Revives Investor Suit Against Chinese News App

    The Second Circuit has revived a securities class action alleging that Chinese news aggregation app Qutoutiao hid changes in its advertising policies that allegedly spurred fraudulent advertisements on the app and eventually caused its share price to decline, finding that the lower court erred in determining that the suit's claims sound in fraud.

  • October 29, 2024

    Justice, Challenger Split On Backgrounds For The Bench

    Judge Patrick O'Grady, campaigning for the Michigan Supreme Court, says the current bench is sorely lacking the type of prior judicial experience he would bring. But sitting Justice Kyra Bolden argues the diversity of backgrounds among justices makes the court stronger.

  • October 29, 2024

    Ex-Development Director Asks 4th Circ. For Wage Ruling Redo

    A former development director for a North Carolina city urged the Fourth Circuit to rethink its opinion affirming the city's win on her unpaid overtime claims, saying it's not clear from the record that she was classified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

  • October 29, 2024

    Mich. Top Court Won't Halt Ethics Claims Against Trump Allies

    Michigan's Supreme Court has refused to stop disciplinary proceedings against Sidney Powell and other lawyers who advanced former President Donald Trump's election fraud claims.

  • October 29, 2024

    2nd Circ. Says FBI Agents Immune From Suit Over No-Fly List

    The Second Circuit on Tuesday upheld a lower court's decision finding immunity for FBI agents who were accused of placing four Muslim men on a no-fly database after they declined to become informants.

  • October 29, 2024

    4th Circ. Unclear On LeClairRyan Founder's Tax Liability

    A Fourth Circuit panel appeared confused and noncommittal Tuesday as it wrestled with a narrow question of contract interpretation that could determine whether Gary LeClair of defunct LeClairRyan PLLC is on the hook for massive tax bills tied to the firm's collapse.

  • October 29, 2024

    5th Circ. Revives Pilots Union's Dispute With Southwest

    The Fifth Circuit has revived a union's dispute with Southwest Airlines over alleged retaliation against a worker for his union activity and sent it back to Texas federal court, saying the legal fight qualifies for an exception to the Railway Labor Act's mandatory arbitration rule.

  • October 29, 2024

    1st Circ. Scraps Securities Fraud Case Against 3D Printing Co.

    The First Circuit has affirmed a ruling throwing out a securities fraud lawsuit against 3D printing business Desktop Metal, finding the investor behind the action abandoned one of her claims and failed to adequately allege the other. 

  • October 29, 2024

    Circuit Judge Rips Atty's 'Unearned Windfall' In Liability Case

    Although the Sixth Circuit has affirmed a decision awarding roughly $353,000 to a Texas attorney in a decadelong fee dispute over his representation of a client in a product liability case, one circuit judge expressed "extreme disapproval" over the lawyer's conduct in the matter.

  • October 29, 2024

    Military Reservist Not Exempt From Extra Pay, Justices Told

    Military reservists are owed top-up pay if they're called to serve during a war or national emergency, regardless of whether they're directly serving in those events, a U.S. Coast Guard reservist told the U.S. Supreme Court.

  • October 28, 2024

    Union Pacific Told To Face Injury Retrial With Reinstated Expert

    Railroad giant Union Pacific must face retrial against an injured worker after a California appeals court ruled that an expert with decades of rail experience but no formal accident-analysis training was wrongly blocked from telling a jury how a freight train behaves when starting up.

  • October 28, 2024

    CFPB Asks DC Circ. To Topple PayPal's Wallet Disclosure Win

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has urged the D.C. Circuit to reverse PayPal's latest win against an agency rule that subjected Venmo-style digital wallets to some of the same fee disclosure requirements as reloadable prepaid cards, defending its basis for regulating the two products similarly.

  • October 28, 2024

    DC Circ. Won't Revisit Quinn Emanuel's $486M Award Fight

    Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP lost its bid to get the D.C. Circuit to reconsider its decision in a dispute over the firm's authority to represent a port operating in a long-running legal spat with the Republic of Djibouti, according to an order issued Monday by a divided panel of judges.

  • October 28, 2024

    7th Circ. Signals Its Rulings Govern Citizens BIPA Policy Spat

    The Seventh Circuit seemed uninterested Monday in shifting focus from its own precedent to either newly certified questions or a state appellate decision to determine whether a district court correctly cleared Citizens Insurance Company of America of covering a biometric privacy suit.

  • October 28, 2024

    Handbag Cos. Turn To 2nd Circ. Over Pause On $8.5B Merger

    The owners of Michael Kors and Coach plan to ask the Second Circuit to review a New York federal judge's order granting the Federal Trade Commission's bid to halt an $8.5 billion merger between the companies while the agency conducts an in-house merger challenge, according to a notice filed Monday.

  • October 28, 2024

    Calif. High Court Says Judicial DQ Bids Must Be Timely

    The California Supreme Court on Monday held that an appellate court got it wrong by determining a timeliness requirement doesn't apply when a party alleges that a judge is disqualified due to bias, in a case that resulted in a $43.5 million judgment for hundreds of title company employees.

  • October 28, 2024

    9th Circ. Nixes Arbitration In Live Nation Ticket Sale Suit

    The Ninth Circuit affirmed Monday that Live Nation and Ticketmaster can't force consumer litigation over allegedly exorbitant ticket prices into arbitration, ruling in a published opinion that the underlying arbitration agreement linking to "borderline unintelligible" arbitral rules is unenforceable.

  • October 28, 2024

    Consciousness Not A Factor In $15M Pain And Suffering Verdict

    A urological surgeon can't trim a $15 million jury verdict awarded to the wife of an octogenarian patient who died due to the doctor's alleged negligence, a Georgia state appeals court has ruled, rejecting arguments that a patient can't get pain and suffering damages because he was mostly unconscious.

  • October 28, 2024

    Judge Leaves Patent Case After Fed. Circ. Undoes Ruling

    A Minnesota federal judge has recused himself from a patent dispute between Teleflex and Medtronic he has handled since 2019, saying he was "at a loss" on how to proceed after the Federal Circuit faulted his interpretation of terms in Teleflex's catheter patents.

Expert Analysis

  • Bid Protest Spotlight: Debriefings, Timeliness, Documentation

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    ​James Tucker at MoFo examines three recent decisions from the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims concerning an agency's decision not to hold post-award discussions, a timeliness trap in certain Federal Supply Schedule procurements and the importance of providing contemporaneous documentation in price-evaluation protests.

  • Conn. Court Split May Lead To Vertical Forum Shopping

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    As shown by a recent ruling in State v. Exxon Mobil, Connecticut state and federal courts are split on personal jurisdiction, and until the Connecticut Supreme Court steps in, parties may be incentivized to forum shop, causing foreign entities to endure costly litigation and uncertain liability, says Matthew Gibbons at Shipman & Goodwin.

  • Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys

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    Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.

  • Fla. Insurer-Breach Cases Split On Unrepaired Property Issue

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    A Florida appellate court's recent decision in Universal v. Qureshi is directly at odds with a 2020 decision from another Florida appellate court, and raises important questions for policyholders and insurers about the proper measure of damages in breach claims involving unrepaired property, say Andrea DeField and Yaniel Abreu at Hunton.

  • Revisiting The Crime-Fraud Exception After Key Trump Cases

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    Evidence issues in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and classified documents cases involving former President Donald Trump offer an opportunity to restudy elements and implications of the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, noting the courts' careful scrutiny of these matters, say Robert Hoff and Paul Tuchmann at Wiggin and Dana.

  • Enviro Policy Trends That Will Continue Beyond The Election

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    Come October in a presidential election year, the policy world feels like a winner-take-all scenario, with the outcome of the vote determining how or even whether we are regulated — but there are several key ongoing trends that will continue to drive environmental regulation regardless of the election results, say J. Michael Showalter and Samuel Rasche at ArentFox Schiff.

  • 2 High Court Securities Cases Could Clarify Pleading Rules

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    In granting certiorari in a pair of securities fraud cases against Facebook and Nvidia, respectively, the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled its intention to align interpretations of the heightened pleading standard under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act amid its uneven application among the circuit courts, say attorneys at V&E.

  • Opinion

    Failure To Use Apportionment Has Distorted Patent Damages

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    Apportionment is the solution to the problem of inflated patent infringement damages, and courts should return to focusing on the smallest saleable unit as the starting point for apportionment analysis, say William Lee at WilmerHale and Mark Lemley at Stanford Law School.

  • Series

    Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.

  • A Look At Recent Case Law On Expedited Judgment In NY

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    A number of recent New York state court decisions clarify and refine the contours surrounding Civil Practice Law and Rule 3213, providing landlords, lenders and other payees guidance on how to seek accelerated judgment in certain litigation, says Alexander Lycoyannis at Holland & Knight.

  • Opinion

    Supreme Court Must Halt For-Profit Climate Tort Proliferation

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    If the U.S. Supreme Court does not seize the opportunity presented by Honolulu v. Sunoco to reassert federal authority over interstate pollution regulation, the resulting frenzy of profit-driven environmental mass torts against energy companies will stunt American competitiveness and muddle climate policy, says Gale Norton at Liberty Energy.

  • Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession

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    About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • Allergan Ruling Reinforces Value Of Patent Term Adjustments

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    The Federal Circuit’s recent ruling in Allergan v. MSN, which held that patent term adjustment awards for first-filed, first-issued patents cannot be stripped away by later-issuing child patents that expire earlier, means practitioners must consider the potential impact of any action that might reduce the adjustment amount, say attorneys at Cooley.

  • Opinion

    AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys

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    The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.

  • A Class Action Trend Tests Limit Of Courts' Equity Powers

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    A troubling trend has developed in federal class action litigation as some counsel and judges attempt to push injunctive relief classes under Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure beyond the traditional limits of federal courts' equitable powers, say attorneys at Jones Day.

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