Appellate

  • September 23, 2024

    RNC Urges NC Court To Block Digital Student IDs For Voting

    The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party urged a Tar Heel State appeals court to block the state's board of elections from allowing digital student and employee IDs from the University of North Carolina to be used as voter verification in the upcoming election, arguing the law already forbids them.

  • September 23, 2024

    Pa. Judge Commended For Admitting Error In Med Mal Case

    A Pennsylvania appeals court on Thursday signed off on a Philadelphia trial court judge's opinion acknowledging that his dismissal of two defendants from a medical malpractice suit used the wrong precedent. The appeals court also reversed the dismissal and praised the judge for recognizing his error.

  • September 23, 2024

    Mich. Justices Let Civil Servant Retirees Keep Benefits

    The Michigan Supreme Court has let stand a ruling that retired municipal employees in Allen Park, Michigan, are entitled to healthcare benefits on terms that outlast their collective bargaining agreements with the city.

  • September 23, 2024

    Legal Malpractice Suit Over Med Mal Case In Ga. Revived

    A Georgia state appellate court on Monday revived a legal malpractice lawsuit over a former attorney's handling of a medical malpractice case, saying a trial court improperly granted a dismissal motion after disqualifying the lawyer who filed it.

  • September 23, 2024

    Autism Played Role In Bankman-Fried Case, 2nd Circ. Told

    A group of experts on neurodiversity told the Second Circuit that Sam Bankman-Fried, who has said he has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may have been hurt at trial by a "cognitive and communication style" that at times frustrated the trial judge.

  • September 23, 2024

    5th Circ. Refuses Texas A Jury Trial For Border Buoy Case

    The Fifth Circuit refused Texas' request for jurors to decide the legality of barriers installed in the Rio Grande to deter migrants, saying the Seventh Amendment's right to a jury trial doesn't apply to the case.

  • September 20, 2024

    AGs Push To Can Google Privacy Deal With No Class Payout

    Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general are urging the Ninth Circuit to scrap a data privacy deal that requires Google to pay $62 million to plaintiffs' counsel and third-party organizations but gives no money to individual class members, arguing that consumers aren't adequately benefiting from the settlement.

  • September 20, 2024

    JBS Unit Owns Abandoned 'Pollo Picú' TM, 1st Circ. Says

    JBS USA unit To-Ricos Ltd. has the right to use the "Pollo Picú" trademark in its sale of poultry products, the First Circuit ruled Thursday, finding that the poultry company established that the mark had been abandoned by the previous trademark owner.

  • September 20, 2024

    Arbitration Unlikely For Nursing Home Poison Death Suit

    A California state appeals court has all but affirmed the denial of arbitration in a suit alleging a nursing home caused the poisoning death of a resident who was mistakenly served industrial cleaner left in a pitcher, saying the trial court must first review the validity of the arbitration agreement.

  • September 20, 2024

    3rd Circ. CFPB Ruling Threatens Securitization, Justices Told

    Two major trade groups for the securities industry have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Third Circuit decision allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exercise enforcement authority over a collection of student loan securitization trusts, slamming the ruling as wrong and dangerous.

  • September 20, 2024

    Retail Theft Wasn't Removable Crime, Immigration Board Says

    Retail theft is not necessarily a crime of moral turpitude that warrants an immigrant's removal, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Friday, saying its 2006 precedential reasoning runs afoul of the categorical approach articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  • September 20, 2024

    Cities Score Wins Over FCC Even In 9th Circ. Permitting Loss

    Even though the Ninth Circuit in a recent decision largely upheld a Federal Communications Commission policy that reined in municipal governments' power to impose zoning restrictions on wireless network siting, the court's ruling wasn't all bad news for city officials.

  • September 20, 2024

    EPA Defends Methane Rule At Supreme Court

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and green group allies on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject states' and fossil fuel industry players' effort to block the implementation of a rule strengthening methane emissions control requirements for oil and gas infrastructure.

  • September 20, 2024

    Law Professors Say Boulder Climate Suit Clearly Preempted

    Two law professors and a conservative legal nonprofit have urged Colorado justices to toss a city's climate tort lawsuit, arguing that the claims are clearly preempted by the Clean Air Act and that the city should not be allowed to make climate change policy decisions for the rest of the country.

  • September 20, 2024

    Utilities Group Wants In On 4th Circ. FERC Grid Policy Fight

    A coalition of municipal utilities and electricity cooperatives that rely on transmission facilities they don't own to deliver power urged the Fourth Circuit to let it intervene in an appeal challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's recent overhaul of its regional transmission policy.

  • September 20, 2024

    States Tell 10th Circ. To Back Colo. Interest Rate Opt-Out Law

    Attorneys general for 13 states and Washington, D.C., asked the Tenth Circuit on Friday to uphold a Colorado law imposing more restrictive interest rate caps on loans made to its residents by out-of-state banks, arguing that a federal judge's injunction "nullifies the authority granted to states by Congress" to protect consumers from abusive lending practices.

  • September 20, 2024

    NC Governor Defends Bar Closures During COVID

    North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper urged the state's highest court to overturn a decision finding he violated the constitutional right to make a living and the equal protection of bar owners with his COVID shutdown order, arguing the decision was reasonable given how the virus was spreading.

  • September 20, 2024

    NY Utilities Tell DC Circ. More Risk Should Equal More Return

    A D.C. Circuit panel on Friday weighed the differences between risks and costs in a dispute between a group of New York utilities and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over rates the power companies can charge after making infrastructure upgrades. 

  • September 20, 2024

    Okla. Says Precedent Doesn't Bar All State Immigration Laws

    Oklahoma told the Tenth Circuit that a district court wrongly extended U.S. Supreme Court precedent to block a law making it a crime for unauthorized immigrants to be in Oklahoma, saying not all state immigration measures have been deemed preempted.

  • September 20, 2024

    Media Ownership Needs More Oversight, 8th Circ. Told

    A coalition of media reform advocates, broadcast workers and public interest groups are coming to the defense of the Federal Communications Commission's updated broadcast ownership rules, telling the Eighth Circuit in a new brief Friday that the changes will promote competition and diversity in the TV and radio broadcast industry.

  • September 20, 2024

    3rd Circ. Rejects 'Close' Case For Preemption In Fosamax MDL

    A U.S. Food and Drug Administration letter denying changes to the label of Merck's osteoporosis drug Fosamax does not count as a final agency action triggering federal preemption of state law "failure to warn" claims, the Third Circuit ruled Friday in a precedential decision.

  • September 20, 2024

    Expert Witness's Change Of Tune Dooms Mich. Med Mal Suit

    A Michigan appeals court won't revive a woman's medical malpractice suit alleging she didn't receive post-operative care fast enough, saying the trial court was right to deny her bid to replace her expert witness after he abandoned his own opinion and exited the case.

  • September 20, 2024

    Justices Asked To Clarify IP Eligibility In Animation App Case

    App developer Plotagraph has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Federal Circuit decision that found its patents that allow users to create the illusion of movement within digital photos or videos were invalid because they were abstract under the high court's Alice decision.

  • September 20, 2024

    5th Circ. Says Tribunal Properly Slashed $10.6M Gas Award

    A lower court improperly vacated an arbitral tribunal's decision slashing some $4 million from a $10.6 million award issued to a Colorado-based exploration company following a dispute over a Cameroonian natural gas project, the Fifth Circuit ruled Thursday in a published opinion.

  • September 20, 2024

    Veteran High Court Litigator Warns Of Ethics Debate's Impact

    Accusations that U.S. Supreme Court justices are corrupt or nothing more than politicians in robes are unwarranted, tremendously dangerous and threaten to irreparably harm the institution's legitimacy, veteran high court litigator Kannon Shanmugam warns.

Expert Analysis

  • Series

    After Chevron: Uncertainty In Scope Of ITC Oversight

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    The U.S. International Trade Commission's long-standing jurisprudence on some of the most disputed and controversial issues is likely to be reshaped by the Federal Circuit, which is no longer bound by Chevron deference in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, say Kecia Reynolds and Madeleine Moss at Paul Hastings.

  • Half-Truths Vs. Omissions: Slicing Justices' Macquarie Cake

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Macquarie v. Moab provides a road map for determining whether corporate reports that omit information should be considered misleading — and the court baked it into a dessert analogy that is key to understanding the guidelines, say Daniel Levy and Pavithra Kumar at Advanced Analytical Consulting Group.

  • Lead Like 'Ted Lasso' By Embracing Cognitive Diversity

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    The Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso” aptly illustrates how embracing cognitive diversity can be a winning strategy for teams, providing a useful lesson for law firms, which can benefit significantly from fresh, diverse perspectives and collaborative problem-solving, says Paul Manuele at PR Manuele Consulting.

  • Chevron's End Puts Target On CFPB's Aggressive BNPL Rule

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    A recent interpretative rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, subjecting buy-now, pay-later loans to the same regulations as credit cards, is unlikely to survive post-Chevron challenges of the rule's partisan and shaky logic, say Scott Pearson and Bryan Schneider at Manatt.

  • Justices' Ch. 11 Ruling Is A Big Moment For Debtors' Insurers

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Truck Insurance v. Kaiser Gypsum ruling upends decades of Chapter 11 bankruptcy jurisprudence that relegated a debtor’s insurer to the sidelines, giving insurers a new footing to try and avoid significant liability, say Stuart Gordon and Benjamin Wisher at Rivkin Radler.

  • Justices' Starbucks Ruling May Limit NLRB Injunction Wins

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Starbucks v. McKinney, adopting a more stringent test for National Labor Relations Board Section 10(j) injunctions, may lessen the frequency with which employers must defend against injunctions alongside parallel unfair labor practice charges, say David Pryzbylski and Colleen Schade at Barnes & Thornburg.

  • Justices' Criminal Law Decisions: The Term In Review

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    Each of the 11 criminal decisions issued in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently concluded term is independently important, but taken together, they reveal trends in the court’s broader approach to criminal law, presenting both pitfalls and opportunities for defendants and their counsel, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.

  • Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: July Lessons

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    In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy considers cases touching on pre- and post-conviction detainment conditions, communications with class representatives, when the American Pipe tolling doctrine stops applying to modified classes, and more.

  • 7th Circ. Motorola Ruling Raises Stakes Of DTSA Litigation

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    The Seventh Circuit’s recent ruling in Motorola v. Hytera gives plaintiffs a powerful tool to recover damages, greatly increasing the incentive to bring Defend Trade Secrets Act claims against defendants with large global sales because those sales could generate large settlements, say attorneys at MoFo.

  • Series

    After Chevron: Bid Protest Litigation Will Hold Steady For Now

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    Though the substantive holding of Loper Bright is unlikely to affect bid protests because questions of statutory interpretation are rare, the spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision may signal a general trend away from agency deference even on the complex technical issues that often arise, say Kayleigh Scalzo and Andrew Guy at Covington.

  • Challenging Prosecutors' Use Of Defendants' Jail Phone Calls

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    Although it’s an uphill battle under current case law, counsel for pretrial detainees may be able to challenge prosecutors’ use of jail-recorded phone calls between the defendant and their attorney by taking certain advance measures, say Jim McLoughlin and Fielding Huseth at Moore & Van Allen.

  • How NJ Worker Status Ruling Benefits Real Estate Industry

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    In Kennedy v. Weichert, the New Jersey Supreme Court recently said a real estate agent’s employment contract would supersede the usual ABC test analysis to determine his classification as an independent contractor, preserving operational flexibility for the industry — and potentially others, say Jason Finkelstein and Dalila Haden at Cole Schotz.

  • 3 Policyholder Tips After Calif. Ruling Denying D&O Coverage

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    A California decision from June, Practice Fusion v. Freedom Specialty Insurance, denying a company's claim seeking reimbursement under a directors and officers insurance policy for its settlement with the Justice Department, highlights the importance of coordinating coverage for all operational risks and the danger of broad exclusionary policy language, says Geoffrey Fehling at Hunton.

  • Opinion

    Now More Than Ever, Lawyers Must Exhibit Professionalism

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    As society becomes increasingly fractured and workplace incivility is on the rise, attorneys must champion professionalism and lead by example, demonstrating how lawyers can respectfully disagree without being disagreeable, says Edward Casmere at Norton Rose.

  • Opinion

    High Court Made Profound Mistake In Tossing Purdue Deal

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to throw out Purdue Pharma's Chapter 11 plan jeopardizes a multistate agreement that would provide approximately $7 billion in much-needed relief to help fight the opioid epidemic, with states now likely doomed to spend years chasing individual defendants across the globe, says Swain Wood at Morningstar.

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