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Appellate
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February 25, 2025
River Agency Says Harvey Flood Dispute Was Already Decided
A Texas river management agency urged a state appeals court Tuesday to shut down claims brought by dozens of residents whose properties were flooded by Hurricane Harvey, pointing to a separate appellate court decision that ended similar claims by many of the same people.
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February 25, 2025
Businessman Looks To Nix $21M Arbitral Award
A businessman who controls real estate investment firm World Capital Properties Ltd. is urging the Eleventh Circuit to nix the enforcement of a $21.3 million arbitral award against him, arguing that he never signed an underlying arbitration agreement and objected "early, often and consistently" to the arbitration.
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February 25, 2025
5th Circ. Asks NLRB To Back Up Coercion Claim Against Apple
A Fifth Circuit panel asked the National Labor Relations Board to spell out how Apple Inc. was coercive to a worker during a unionization push in New York, pondering Tuesday whether affirming the board's finding would tamp down on the company's freedom of expression.
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February 25, 2025
Ga. County Collected Too Late On Theft Claim, Panel Says
The Georgia Court of Appeals has stripped a state county of a nearly $350,000 judgment it won from insurer Old Republic Surety Co. to cover a court employee's theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public coffers, ruling the county filed its claim well after the statute of limitations had run.
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February 25, 2025
Payments Weren't Admission Philly Cop Got COVID At Work
A Philadelphia police officer's "excused time," or E-Time, payments when he contracted COVID-19 were not a substitute for workers' compensation or an acknowledgment that he caught the disease on the job, so a state appellate court said Tuesday that he could not reinstate those payments under the workers' comp law.
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February 25, 2025
7th Circ. Mostly Denies Religious Groups' Visa Rule Challenge
A Seventh Circuit panel rejected religious groups' assertions that a visa regulation applying to foreign ministers burdens their religious and First Amendment rights, but revived their Administrative Procedure Act claim challenging the regulation.
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February 25, 2025
Utah Asks 10th Circ. To Block EPA's Ozone Standard Finding
The state of Utah has called on the Tenth Circuit to block a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determination that the state's most populous region is not complying with national ozone standards, saying international emissions are mostly to blame.
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February 25, 2025
5th Circ. Eyes Congress' Quorum As Texas Fights PWFA
The Fifth Circuit grappled Tuesday with whether the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was rightly blocked from enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act against the state of Texas, with several judges struggling to pinpoint whether the U.S. Constitution requires lawmakers' physical presence to have a quorum.
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February 25, 2025
Fired Worker Couldn't Justify COVID Vax Refusal, 3rd Circ. Says
A software engineer who refused to comply with his company's COVID-19 vaccine policy couldn't claim he had a "sincere religious objection" while shielding his medical records from disclosure and vacillating on his reasons, a Third Circuit panel ruled Tuesday.
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February 25, 2025
High Court Split Over Civil Rights Jury Trials For Prisoners
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared evenly divided Tuesday over whether the Seventh Amendment guarantees prisoners the right to a jury trial when disputed facts regarding exhaustion of remedies are intertwined with their underlying claims, including allegations of sexual misconduct and retaliation.
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February 25, 2025
Okla. Tribe Can't Revive Creek Land Dispute, DC Circ. Told
The federal government has urged a D.C. Circuit panel to deny an Oklahoma tribe's request to revive its challenge to a decision that rejected its proposed liquor ordinance in a dispute over shared jurisdiction with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, arguing there's no identifiable cause of action that entitles relief.
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February 25, 2025
NJ Appeals Panel Upends Custodians' COVID Pay Award
A New Jersey appellate court reversed an arbitration award Tuesday granting extra money to school custodians who worked during the COVID-19 state of emergency, saying the award conflicts with a state statute that provided school employees with regular pay throughout the pandemic.
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February 25, 2025
Atlanta Says 'Cop City' Completion Moots Public Vote
The city of Atlanta has told the Eleventh Circuit that the recent completion of its controversial "Cop City" police training center should render moot a lawsuit by noncity residents who had hoped to force a long-stalled public vote to roll back the city's approval of the project.
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February 25, 2025
NC High Court Hopeful Says Ballot Count Defied State Law
A North Carolina judge is pressing forward with his legal battle to throw out more than 60,000 ballots in a race he lost by just 734 votes, arguing in a newly filed appellate brief that the state Elections Board has ignored voter registration laws for decades.
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February 25, 2025
Justices Limit 'Prevailing Party' Status For Atty Fees
Litigants will no longer be considered the "prevailing party" — and thus won't be eligible for attorney fees — if they achieve courtroom victories via preliminary injunction instead of a final judgment, the U.S. Supreme Court has found, in a ruling that's expected to be a blow to legal advocacy groups.
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February 25, 2025
5th Circ. Backs FedEx's Win In Worker's Age Bias Suit
The Fifth Circuit refused to reopen a former FedEx manager's lawsuit alleging he was terminated because he was in his 50s, finding he couldn't overcome the delivery company's assertion that he was fired for failing to take action when a co-worker brought a BB gun to work.
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February 25, 2025
Federal Judiciary Repeats Request For More Judges
A federal circuit judge, speaking on behalf of the federal judiciary, repeated on Tuesday the need for more federal judges to alleviate the overwhelmed courts after President Joe Biden vetoed legislation late last year that would have added seats to the bench.
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February 25, 2025
NJ Atty Suspended Over Secret Outside Legal Work
A Garden State lawyer has been suspended for two years by the state's Supreme Court for surreptitiously accepting payments for legal services while never opening a file at his former firm for the clients or sharing profits with the firm, but instead had clients pay him directly.
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February 25, 2025
Ga. Chief Justice Resigning After Over 20 Years On Bench
Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs — who has steered the state's courts in spending pandemic relief funds and approving changes to the state's bar exam — announced Tuesday that he's stepping down at the end of March to return to private practice.
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February 25, 2025
Ayahuasca Church Appeals To 9th Circ. In $2M Atty Fee Fight
A Phoenix-based church is appealing to the Ninth Circuit a decision denying it more than $2 million in attorney fees after reaching a deal with the federal government to allow it to use ayahuasca for religious purposes.
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February 25, 2025
Insurers Owe Chubb $3.3M For Safelite Defense Costs
Two insurers must contribute $1.65 million each toward costs a Chubb unit incurred defending windshield repair company Safelite against a competitor's suit, an Ohio federal court ruled, finding the pair were not prejudiced by breaches of their policies' notice and voluntary payment provisions.
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February 25, 2025
10th Circ. Affirms Falsity Claims Bar Coverage Of HOA Fight
The Tenth Circuit affirmed that two AIG units need not cover a ski resort's homeowners association and other insureds found liable for trying to induce the owner of resort condo units to pay $15.5 million in fees it didn't owe, pointing to what are known as knowledge-of-falsity exclusions.
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February 25, 2025
10th Circ. Asked To Rethink Denying Atty's Racing Deductions
A Denver personal injury lawyer asked the Tenth Circuit to reconsider its decision barring his $300,000 tax deduction for car-racing costs as professional advertising, saying the court deprived him of due process in dismissing his argument that the IRS wrongly denied him a chance to settle.
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February 25, 2025
4th Circ. Taps 6 Judges For 6-Month Stint In NC Western
Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz of the Fourth Circuit has issued orders to five district court judges and one of his fellow appellate judges to serve temporarily in the Western District of North Carolina from March through the end of August.
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February 25, 2025
High Court Orders New Trial In Okla. Death Row Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for an Oklahoma inmate whose conviction and death sentence for a 1997 murder, the state confesses, was the product of prosecutors withholding evidence and knowingly presenting false testimony.
Expert Analysis
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Justices Face Tough Question On HHS Hospital Pay Formula
In Advocate Christ Medical Center v. Becerra, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services properly applied certain Medicare reimbursement adjustments to hospitals — a decision that could significantly affect hospitals' ability to seek higher Medicare reimbursement for low-income patients, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.
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How Attorneys Can Break Free From Career Enmeshment
Ambitious attorneys can sometimes experience career enmeshment — when your sense of self-worth becomes unhealthily tangled up in your legal vocation — but taking the time to discover and realign with your core personal values can help you recover your identity, says Janna Koretz at Azimuth Psychological.
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Where Can Privacy Plaintiffs Sue When Injury Is Online?
Website owners need to understand wiretapping laws to understand whether they may be sued for activity tracking in California or Pennsylvania courts, where the statutory damages for violations of half-century-old laws can be substantial — and a recent Third Circuit decision suggests establishing specific jurisdiction is not as easy as 1-2-3, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.
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Short-Seller Implications Of 10th Circ.'s Overstock Decision
The Tenth Circuit's Oct. 15 decision in Overstock Securities Litigation provides clarity on the pleading standard for a market manipulation claim under the Exchange Act, and suggests that short sellers might not be able to rely on the fraud-on-the-market presumption typically invoked by securities plaintiffs, say attorneys at Paul Weiss.
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Patent Lessons From 4 Federal Circuit Reversals In September
Cases that were reversed or vacated by the Federal Circuit last month provide helpful clarity on collateral estoppel, patent eligibility, construction of claim terms that have different boundaries across different claims, and the role of courts as neutral arbiter, say attorneys at Bunsow De Mory.
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11th Circ. Ruling Offers Refresher On 'Sex-Plus' Bias Claims
While the Eleventh Circuit’s recent ruling in McCreight v. AuburnBank dismissed former employees’ sex-plus-age discrimination claims, the opinion reminds employers to ensure that workplace policies and practices do not treat a subgroup of employees of one sex differently than the same subgroup of another sex, say attorneys at Bradley Arant.
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Ex-Chicago Politician's Case May Further Curb Fraud Theories
The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Thompson v. U.S. to determine whether a statement that is misleading but not false still violates federal law, potentially heralding the court’s largest check yet on prosecutors’ expansive fraud theories, with significant implications for sentencing, say attorneys at the Law Offices of Alan Ellis.
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Lawyers With Disabilities Are Seeking Equity, Not Pity
Attorneys living with disabilities face extra challenges — including the need for special accommodations, the fear of stigmatization and the risk of being tokenized — but if given equitable opportunities, they can still rise to the top of their field, says Kate Reder Sheikh, a former attorney and legal recruiter at Major Lindsey & Africa.
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High Stakes In Justices' Review Of Clean Air Act Venue Fights
Disputes over the Clean Air Act's venue provision may seem arcane, but a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision encompassing three cases will affect core principles of the separation of powers and constitutional due process in ways that could have significant consequences for the regulated community, say J. Michael Showalter and David Loring at ArentFox Schiff.
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Testing The Waters As New Texas Biz Court Ends 2nd Month
Despite an uptick in filings in the Texas Business Court's initial months of operation, the docket remains fairly light amid an apparent wait-and-see approach from some potential litigants, say attorneys at Norton Rose.
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Employer Lessons From Mass. 'Bonus Not Wages' Ruling
In Nunez v. Syncsort, a Massachusetts state appeals court recently held that a terminated employee’s retention bonus did not count as wages under the state’s Wage Act, illustrating the nuanced ways “wages” are defined by state statutes and courts, say attorneys at Segal McCambridge.
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Opinion
Judicial Committee Best Venue For Litigation Funding Rules
The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules' recent decision to consider developing a rule for litigation funding disclosure is a welcome development, ensuring that the result will be the product of a thorough, inclusive and deliberative process that appropriately balances all interests, says Stewart Ackerly at Statera Capital.
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The Strategic Advantages Of Appointing A Law Firm CEO
The impact on law firms of the recent CrowdStrike outage underscores that the business of law is no longer merely about providing supplemental support for legal practice — and helps explain why some law firms are appointing dedicated, full-time CEOs to navigate the challenges of the modern legal landscape, says Jennifer Johnson at Calibrate Strategies.
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Fed. Circ. Ruling May Signal Software Patent Landscape Shift
The Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Broadband iTV, despite similarities to past decisions, chose to rely on prior cases finding patent-ineligible claims directed to receiving and displaying information, which may undermine one of the few areas of perceived predictability in the patent eligibility landscape, say attorneys at King & Wood.
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Series
After Chevron: The Future Of OSHA Enforcement Litigation
The U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Loper Bright provides a blueprint for overruling the judicial obligation to defer to an agency's interpretation of its own regulations established by Auer, an outcome that would profoundly change the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s litigation and rulemaking landscape, say attorneys at Ogletree.