Appellate

  • March 17, 2025

    Tort Report: Fatal Hippo Attack Prompts Suit Against Tour Co.

    A lawsuit over a woman's death from a hippo attack and the latest on a Fox News sex assault case lead Law360's Tort Report, which compiles recent personal injury and medical malpractice news that may have flown under the radar.

  • March 17, 2025

    Judge Ikuta's Sr. Status Plans Give Trump 9th Circ. Opening

    U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta of the Ninth Circuit will be taking semi-retired status upon appointment of her successor, a court representative confirmed to Law360 on Monday.

  • March 17, 2025

    Burger King Workers Defend Revived No-Poach Case

    Burger King employees are defending their proposed class action over the fast-food chain's past use of no-poach provisions in its franchise agreements, as the restaurant urges a Florida federal court to toss the claims despite an appeals court reviving them in 2022.

  • March 17, 2025

    IPRs Are Going Too Far, Fed. Circ. Told In Samsung Dispute

    A late 1990s tech developer suing Samsung over LED patent claims wants the full Federal Circuit to "confirm the limits Congress placed" on patent challenges, after a panel decided that the patent board could accept patent applications that are not publicly accessible as prior art.

  • March 17, 2025

    4 Suits Benefits Attys Should Watch As ESG Pressures Persist

    A New York City pension fund recently escaped a proposed class action challenging its decision to divest nearly $4 billion in fossil fuel stocks, but experts say potential liability related to environmental, social and governance investment factors in retirement plan investment decisions is on the rise. Here are four suits involving challenges to employee retirement plan investing and ESG that attorneys say they're watching after New York City escaped a suit from its workers.

  • March 17, 2025

    Wash. AG Backs Tribe's $400M Trespass Win Against BNSF

    The state of Washington has said the Ninth Circuit should uphold a trial judge's ruling that BNSF Railway Co. owes nearly $400 million for years of illegally running oil cars across tribal territory, arguing in an amicus brief the railroad must be held accountable for perpetuating "a pattern of disregard for the sovereignty of Native people."

  • March 17, 2025

    Calif. Panel Sides With Tribe In Hotel Construction Fight

    A California appeals panel has sided with a Native American tribe in its decision to reverse a lower court ruling and invalidate the city of Clearlake's approval of a hotel project on what was tribal land, finding that the city failed to comply with a state environmental law.

  • March 17, 2025

    Full 7th Circ. Won't Revive Suit Over Late Medicaid Payments

    The full Seventh Circuit has answered the "enormous question" of whether a Chicago hospital can sue the state of Illinois to force the managed-care organizations it contracts with to make timely Medicaid payments, concluding the hospital doesn't have a federal right to prompt payments for fear of turning federal trial courts into "de facto Medicaid claims processors."

  • March 17, 2025

    9th Circ. Judge Urges Review Of Asylum Credibility Precedent

    The Ninth Circuit on Monday declined to review an Indian national's bid to revive an asylum claim deemed noncredible, with one judge calling on the court to revisit precedent that restricts immigration judges' ability to reject questionable asylum claims.

  • March 17, 2025

    Split 9th Circ. Won't Halt Federal Workers Reinstatement Order

    A divided Ninth Circuit panel on Monday denied President Donald Trump's administration an immediate administrative stay of a California district court order requiring reinstatement of some probationary federal workers fired from six agencies, the majority saying a pause "would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head."

  • March 17, 2025

    Colo. Justices Reject Bid To Toss Election Defamation Suit

    Colorado's justices have rejected petitions from President Donald Trump's campaign and conservative media personalities arguing that a former Dominion Voting executive's defamation suit should be tossed under a state anti-SLAPP law, according to an en banc order Monday declining to review the case. 

  • March 17, 2025

    Vague Settlement Can't Free Insurer From Asbestos Claims

    An insurer that says its policies' limits were exhausted while paying over $5 million toward an asbestos injury settlement on behalf of BNSF Railway failed to show it actually went over its limits, a Texas appeals court found. 

  • March 17, 2025

    Union, Green Groups Fight EPA Bid To Redo Biden TSCA Rule

    Labor unions and green groups are asking the D.C. Circuit to reject the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's bid to reconsider a Biden-era rule that strengthened regulations to assess chemicals' health and environmental risks.

  • March 17, 2025

    2nd Circ. Sends Amazon Wage Question To Conn. Justices

    The Second Circuit asked Connecticut's top court Monday to weigh in on whether employees are owed pay for their time spent undergoing post-shift anti-theft screenings, saying the state's justices have not yet provided guidance on this matter.

  • March 17, 2025

    FERC Grid Upgrade Fight Has DC Circ. Judges Flummoxed

    D.C. Circuit judges appeared to struggle Monday with how to determine ownership of new grid upgrades needed for a Michigan solar farm as they consider a transmission company's challenge to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's refusal to grant it sole ownership.

  • March 17, 2025

    NJ Justices Take On Nonclients' Malpractice Case Against Atty

    The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to an appellate court decision tossing part and keeping part of a malpractice suit brought against an estate attorney by plaintiffs who were never his clients.

  • March 17, 2025

    Georgia Justices Urged To Revive Trump Election Charges

    Prosecutors argued that the Georgia Supreme Court should reinstate certain criminal charges against President Donald Trump, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others alleging interference in the 2020 presidential election, saying lower courts wrongly dismissed the charges because of the indictment's purported lack of detail.

  • March 17, 2025

    DOL Urges 5th Circ. To Keep Contractor Wage Hike Ruling

    Former President Joe Biden had the authority to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors through a presidential executive order, the Trump administration's U.S. Department of Labor said, urging the full Fifth Circuit to leave in place a panel's decision backing the wage hike.

  • March 17, 2025

    4th Circ. Tosses HOA Closing Fees Suit

    The Fourth Circuit tossed a North Carolina property owner's proposed class action alleging that a property management company unlawfully charged excessive closing fees when she sold two properties.

  • March 17, 2025

    NC Appeals Court Leaves Judge's Ballot Challenge To Panel

    The full North Carolina Court of Appeals has shot down Democratic Justice Allison Riggs' request for an en banc hearing of her Republican challenger's suit seeking to throw out more than 60,000 ballots cast in their race for a seat on the state's highest court, leaving the dispute for a panel to decide first.

  • March 17, 2025

    High Value Dubious In $23M Easement Dispute, 11th Circ. Told

    A partnership that claimed a $23 million tax deduction for a conservation easement donation failed to consider the lack of market demand for a potential quarry it used to justify the land's high value, the U.S. government told the Eleventh Circuit.

  • March 17, 2025

    Jordan's Race Team Defends NASCAR Injunction To 4th Circ.

    A pair of stock car race teams including one owned by Michael Jordan urged the Fourth Circuit not to vacate a lower court's injunction allowing them to keep competing in NASCAR races while they pursue antitrust claims against the league, arguing NASCAR's "overblown rhetoric" against the order falls flat.

  • March 14, 2025

    Justices Set Deadline In Birthright Citizenship Injunction Row

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday gave states and organizations challenging President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at limiting birthright citizenship until early next month to address Trump's request for the high court to limit three federal judge's injunctions that preliminarily blocked the order's implementation across the U.S.

  • March 14, 2025

    4th Circ. Lets White House Anti-DEI Efforts Proceed

    The Fourth Circuit on Friday lifted a temporary injunction blocking President Donald Trump's administration from implementing the bulk of his executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, though each judge on the panel had differing views on the matter. 

  • March 14, 2025

    ExxonMobil Brings $14M Clean Air Act Suit To High Court

    ExxonMobil on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn both a "radically divided" en banc Fifth Circuit's opinion upholding $14.25 million in air pollution penalties as well as a decades-old high court ruling concerning redressability, saying it was being made to pay penalties environmental group plaintiffs won't even receive.

Expert Analysis

  • National Bank Act Rulings Facilitate More Preemption Analysis

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    Two recent National Bank Act preemption decisions from an Illinois federal court and the Ninth Circuit provide the first applications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s May ruling in Cantero v. Bank of America, opening the potential for several circuit courts to address the issue this year, say attorneys at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Series

    Collecting Rare Books Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My collection of rare books includes several written or owned by prominent lawyers from early U.S. history, and immersing myself in their stories helps me feel a deeper connection to my legal practice and its purpose, says Douglas Brown at Manatt Health.

  • Opinion

    New DOJ Leaders Should Curb Ill-Conceived Prosecutions

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    First-of-their-kind cases have seemingly led to a string of overly aggressive prosecutions in recent years, so newly sworn-in leaders of the U.S. Department of Justice should consider creating reporting channels to stop unwise prosecutions before they snowball, says Jonathan Porter at Husch Blackwell.

  • Opinion

    Judge Should Not Have Been Reprimanded For Alito Essay

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    Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor's New York Times essay critiquing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for potential ethical violations absolutely cannot be construed as conduct prejudicial to the administration of the business of the courts, says Ashley London at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University.

  • What Justices' FLSA Ruling Means For 2-Step Collective Cert.

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in EMD Sales v. Carrera may have sounded the death knell for the decades-old two-step process to certify collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which could lead more circuits to require a preponderance of the evidence showing that members are similarly situated, says Steven Katz at Constangy.

  • Lights, Camera, Ethics? TV Lawyers Tend To Set Bad Example

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    Though fictional movies and television shows portraying lawyers are fun to watch, Hollywood’s inaccurate depictions of legal ethics can desensitize attorneys to ethics violations and lead real-life clients to believe that good lawyers take a scorched-earth approach, says Nancy Rapoport at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

  • SEC Motion Response Could Reveal New Crypto Approach

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    Cumberland DRW recently filed to dismiss the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement action against it for the unlawful purchase and sale of digital asset securities, and the agency's response should unveil whether, and to what extent, the Trump administration will relax the federal government’s stance on digital asset regulation, say attorneys at O'Melveny.

  • Perspectives

    Accountant-Owned Law Firms Could Blur Ethical Lines

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    KPMG’s recent application to open a legal practice in Arizona represents the first overture by an accounting firm to take advantage of the state’s relaxed law firm ownership rules, but enforcing and supervising the practice of law by nonattorneys could prove particularly challenging, says Seth Laver at Goldberg Segalla.

  • Perspectives

    DC Circ. Cellphone Ruling Upends Law Enforcement Protocol

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    The D.C. Circuit’s recent U.S. v. Brown decision, holding that forcibly requiring a defendant to unlock his cellphone with his fingerprint violated the Fifth Amendment, has significant implications for law enforcement, and may provide an opportunity for defense lawyers to suppress electronic evidence, says Sarah Sulkowski at Gelber & Santillo.

  • The Post-Macquarie Securities Fraud-By-Omission Landscape

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    While the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 opinion in Macquarie v. Moab distinguished inactionable "pure omissions" from actionable "half-truths," the line between the two concepts in practice is still unclear, presenting challenges for lower courts parsing statements that often fall within the gray area of "misleading by omission," say attorneys at Katten.

  • AI Will Soon Transform The E-Discovery Industrial Complex

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    Todd Itami at Covington discusses how generative artificial intelligence will reshape the current e-discovery paradigm, replacing the blunt instrument of data handling with a laser scalpel of fully integrated enterprise solutions — after first making e-discovery processes technically and legally harder.

  • When Innovation Overwhelms The Rule Of Law

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    In an era where technology is rapidly evolving and artificial intelligence is seemingly everywhere, it’s worth asking if the law — both substantive precedent and procedural rules — can keep up with the light speed of innovation, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.

  • The Future Of ALJs At NLRB And DOL Post-Jarkesy

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    In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 Jarkesy ruling, several ongoing challenges to the constitutionality of the U.S. Department of Labor's and the National Labor Relations Board's administrative law judges have the potential to significantly shape the future of administrative tribunals, say attorneys at Wiley Rein.

  • The Tides Are Changing For Fair Access Banking Laws

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    The landscape of fair access banking laws, which seek to prevent banks from denying services based on individuals' ideological beliefs, has shifted in the last few years, but a new presidential administration provides renewed momentum for advancing such legislation against the backdrop of state efforts, say attorneys at Latham.

  • Imagine The Possibilities Of Openly Autistic Lawyering

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    Andi Mazingo at Lumen Law, who was diagnosed with autism about midway through her career, discusses how the legal profession can create inclusive workplaces that empower openly autistic lawyers and enhance innovation, and how neurodivergent attorneys can navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with disclosing one’s diagnosis.

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