Appellate

  • July 05, 2024

    Judge Should Have Been Disqualified From Case, Panel Said

    A Washington appeals court panel said a trial judge should have been disqualified over bias concerns raised by metro Seattle's bus agency in a worker discrimination case, according to an opinion that said the judge's order allowing an amended complaint was not a discretionary ruling in the case that would have forbid disqualification.

  • July 05, 2024

    Full 5th Circ. Urged To Revisit Fight Over CFPB Payday Rule

    Payday lender trade groups have formally asked the Fifth Circuit to take another look at parts of their long-running challenge to a payday loan regulation issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, filing a petition that seeks to reopen the case after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their prior win.

  • July 05, 2024

    Justices Told Revoked Visa Petition Is Reviewable

    A woman whose visa petition for her Palestinian husband was revoked two years after being approved urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that courts can review secondary decisions, saying that lower courts' refusal to do so creates an irrational system in which only initial decisions can be reviewed.

  • July 05, 2024

    Ga. Elections Office Wants Out Of Appeals Seat Challenge

    An elections office in Fulton County, Georgia's elections department asked a judge this week to be let out of a lawsuit alleging that the winner of a recent state appeals court election lied about his residency and is ineligible for the office, arguing that the suit "fails to make even a single allegation of misconduct, fraud or irregularity."

  • July 05, 2024

    DOJ Asks High Court To Review Nixed Bid-Rigging Conviction

    The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the overturning of a former Contech executive's bid-rigging conviction, saying the appeals court was wrong to focus on a supplier relationship between companies that also compete for contracts.

  • July 05, 2024

    The Firms That Won Big At The Supreme Court

    This U.S. Supreme Court term featured high-stakes oral arguments on issues including gerrymandering, abortion and federal agency authority, and a hot bench ever more willing to engage in a lengthy back-and-forth with advocates. Here's a look at the law firms that argued the most cases and how they fared.

  • July 05, 2024

    3rd Circ. Preview: Ponzi Scheme, Merck Vaccine Heat Up July

    The Third Circuit's July argument schedule is sizzling with several high-stakes cases, including two whistleblowers attempting to make drugmaker Merck answer for allegedly inducing the U.S. government to pay for substandard mumps vaccines.

  • July 05, 2024

    The 3 Biggest Labor Law Decisions Of 2024 So Far

    The first half of 2024 included several significant decisions for labor law, including the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling toughening the standard for evaluating injunctions requested by National Labor Relations Board prosecutors and a Texas federal judge's decision striking down the board's joint employer rule. Here, Law360 examines these cases, as well as some of the other most important decisions from the first six months of the year.

  • July 05, 2024

    Top Federal Tax Cases To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2024

    In the coming months, the U.S. Treasury and the IRS will defend rules designed to go after what they consider as abusive tax practices, including the economic substance doctrine, the Corporate Transparency Act and the moratorium on employee retention tax credits. Here, Law360 looks at key federal tax cases to watch in the rest of 2024.

  • July 03, 2024

    Humana Drops 6th Circ. Remand Bid In Ohio Collusion Suit

    Humana is being dismissed from Ohio's lawsuit accusing pharmacy benefit managers and insurers of conspiring to inflate prescription prices through international subsidiaries after the company reached a settlement agreement in June.

  • July 03, 2024

    7th Circ. Backs Bulk Of Motorola's $540M Award In IP Fight

    The Seventh Circuit has become one of the first courts to apply trade secrets laws extraterritorially, affirming a $407 million award Motorola won from a Chinese rival for Defend Trade Secrets Act damages in a suit over mobile radios, while finding that a $136 million award for copyright damages will have to be "reduced substantially" in order to cut out international sales.

  • July 03, 2024

    Broiler Chicken Buyers' Attys Get $51.6M Fees In Antitrust Suit

    An Illinois federal judge overseeing sprawling antitrust litigation against broiler chicken producers awarded class counsel more than $51.6 million in attorney fees in a $181 million deal for chicken buyers after the initial $57 million award was tossed by the Seventh Circuit last year, according to an order Wednesday.

  • July 03, 2024

    24 AGs Urge High Court To Preserve Ghost Gun Regs

    A coalition of 24 attorneys general urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a new federal regulation regarding the weapon parts kits consumers can purchase and use to build ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers — treating them the same way preassembled firearms are, saying the new rule is "crucial to preventing and solving violent, firearm-related offenses."

  • July 03, 2024

    Sonos Says Chevron's End Doesn't Impact Google Patent Row

    The U.S. Supreme Court's abolition of so-called Chevron deference doesn't warrant granting Google's request for the full Federal Circuit to review precedent on the U.S. International Trade Commission's patent powers, which requires "special justification" to undo, Sonos said Wednesday.

  • July 03, 2024

    Adobe Prevails As Fed. Circ. Rules Alice Dooms E-Sign Patent

    The Federal Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a lower court's ruling that axed an electronic signature patent for not inventing "much of anything," saying the patent Adobe Inc. allegedly infringed merely covered a long-standing business practice of signing documents.

  • July 03, 2024

    Muldrow Revives Worker's Pregnancy Bias Suit, 3rd Circ. Says

    The Third Circuit reinstated parts of a worker's suit claiming she was forced to resign from Pennsylvania's probation board because she was denied light duty and remote assignments to accommodate her pregnancy, stating Wednesday a recent high court ruling requires another look at her case.

  • July 03, 2024

    Chevron Irrelevant To Spouse Work Permit Case, Group Says

    The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that courts don't have to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes doesn't pertain to a lawsuit challenging an Obama-era program allowing work permits for spouses of highly skilled foreign workers, a nonprofit group intervening in the case told the D.C. Circuit.

  • July 03, 2024

    Fla. Court Nixes $5.5M Award In Patient Stroke Suit

    A Florida state appellate panel on Wednesday vacated a $5.5 million award in a suit accusing a cardiologist of causing a woman's incapacitating stroke due to alleged medical malpractice, saying the doctor was unfairly denied the opportunity to blame a nonparty surgeon.

  • July 03, 2024

    Restaurant Group Gets Another Shot At TM Suit Against Hotel

    The Fifth Circuit has revived a trademark infringement case in which restaurant chain Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises accused Hotel Magdalena Joint Venture of ripping off its summer-themed branding, finding that the lower court didn't apply the right standard properly.

  • July 03, 2024

    Rochester Says Chevron Ruling May Impact Telecom Fee Deal

    The city of Rochester is clashing with Verizon Wireless, Crown Castle and Extenet in New York federal court over the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning the Chevron deference amid litigation over how much the city can charge telecoms to do business.

  • July 03, 2024

    Ind. Panel OKs Coverage For Taiwanese Chemical Co. Owners

    An Indiana appeals court ruled that a Taiwanese company's owners were additional insureds and that an insurer could not stack various policies' deductibles and retentions to reduce the coverage it owed for defense costs of a chemical exposure class action.

  • July 03, 2024

    Veterans Ask High Court To Revive PTSD Benefits Claims

    Two military veterans urged the U.S. Supreme Court to remand Federal Circuit rulings that denied their benefits claims for post-traumatic stress disorder, saying the lower courts failed to properly review whether they deserved the benefit of the doubt.

  • July 03, 2024

    Revived Skinny Label Case Is A Warning For Generics

    The Federal Circuit has made clear that generic-drug companies need to pay close attention to public statements when advertising drugs that still have patent-protected uses, even if their so-called skinny labels properly avoid references to those carved-out indications, attorneys say.

  • July 03, 2024

    Panel Says Settlement Evidence Was 'Harmless' In Injury Case

    The Georgia Court of Appeals on Tuesday said a trial court was right to let a hospital tell jurors about a surgeon's settlement with a man who sued over postsurgery complications, saying it is "highly probable" that the evidence didn't contribute to a jury verdict in the hospital's favor.

  • July 03, 2024

    Full Fed. Circ. Urged To Rethink Amazon Patent Program Case

    Lighting Defense Group has urged the full Federal Circuit to undo a decision that it must face a declaratory judgment suit in the home state of a company it accused of infringement through an Amazon patent program, saying the holding is in "intractable conflict" with precedent.

Expert Analysis

  • Navigating Scrutiny Of Friendly Professional Corps. In Calif.

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    In light of ongoing scrutiny and challenges to private equity participation in the California healthcare marketplace, particularly surrounding the use of the friendly professional corporation model, management services organizations should consider implementing four best practices, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.

  • Series

    After Chevron: Expect Few Changes In ITC Rulemaking

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's opinion overruling the Chevron doctrine will have less impact on the U.S. International Trade Commission than other agencies administering trade statutes, given that the commission exercises its congressionally granted authority in a manner that allows for consistent decision making at both agency and judicial levels, say attorneys at Polsinelli.

  • 6 PTAB Events To Know From The Last 6 Months

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    The first half of 2024 brought a flurry of Patent Trial and Appeal Board developments that should be considered in post-grant strategies, including proposed rules on discretionary denial and director review, and the first decisions of the Delegated Rehearing Panel, say attorneys at Fish & Richardson.

  • Key Takeaways From High Court's Substitute Expert Decision

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Smith v. Arizona decision, holding that the confrontation clause generally bars prosecutors’ use of a substitute expert witness at trial, will have the most impact in narcotics and violent crime cases, but creative defense lawyers may find it useful in white collar cases, too, say Joshua Naftalis and Melissa Kelley at Pallas Partners.

  • Opinion

    Atty Well-Being Efforts Ignore Root Causes Of The Problem

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    The legal industry is engaged in a critical conversation about lawyers' mental health, but current attorney well-being programs primarily focus on helping lawyers cope with the stress of excessive workloads, instead of examining whether this work culture is even fundamentally compatible with lawyer well-being, says Jonathan Baum at Avenir Guild.

  • Parsing Justices' Toss Of Purdue's Controversial Ch. 11 Plan

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent nixing of OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma's Chapter 11 proposal prevents the Sackler family from settling thousands of civil opioid lawsuits without the consent of all of the plaintiffs, and holds profound implications for bankruptcy cases, say attorneys at MoloLamken.

  • Calif. Long-Tail Ruling Continues Policyholder-Friendly Trend

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    The California Supreme Court's recent ruling in Truck Insurance Exchange v. Kaiser Cement & Gypsum, rejecting horizontal policy exhaustion, was the latest in a string of its decisions involving insurance coverage for continuous or progressive injury claims that favor policyholders, say Billie Mandelbaum and David Goodwin at Covington.

  • What 2 Rulings On Standing Mean For DEI Litigation

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    Recent federal court decisions in the Fearless Fund and Hello Alice cases shed new light on the ongoing wave of challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, with opposite conclusions on whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue, say attorneys at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Perspectives

    High Court Ruling Leaves Chance For Civil Forfeiture Reform

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    Though advocates for civil forfeiture reform did not prevail in Culley v. Marshall last month, concerns voiced by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices potentially leave the door open to consider stricter limits in future cases, say attorneys at Dykema.

  • 4 Important Events In Bank Regulation: A Midyear Review

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    The first six months of 2024 have been fairly stable for the banking industry, though U.S. Supreme Court decisions and proposals from regulators have significantly affected the regulatory standards applicable to insured depository institutions, says Christina Grigorian at Katten.

  • Perspectives

    NY Chief Judge Spotlights Need To Strengthen Public Defense

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    In a recent concurrence in People v. Watkins, New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson called attention to the necessity for greater investment in public defense services, highlighting not only the urgency of current crises, but the need to embrace a more ambitious vision of equal right to counsel, says Corey Stoughton at Selendy Gay.

  • The Fed. Circ. In May: A Major Shift In Design Patent Law

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    The Federal Circuit's recent en banc decision in LKQ v. GM overruled three decades of precedent and adopted a new standard for assessing the obviousness of design patents, leaving many questions unanswered, say Sean Murray and Jeremiah Helm at Knobbe Martens.

  • Series

    Skiing And Surfing Make Me A Better Lawyer

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    The skills I’ve learned while riding waves in the ocean and slopes in the mountains have translated to my legal career — developing strong mentor relationships, remaining calm in difficult situations, and being prepared and able to move to a backup plan when needed, says Brian Claassen at Knobbe Martens.

  • Justices' Removal Ruling Presents Hurdles, But Offers Clarity

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Campos-Chaves v. Garland and two other consolidated cases endorses a multistep notice practice that could impair noncitizens' access to adequate judicial notice, but its resolution of a longstanding circuit split also provides much-needed clarity, says Devin Connolly at Reeves Immigration Law Group.

  • Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: June Lessons

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    In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy considers two recent decisions from the Third and Tenth Circuits, and identifies practice tips around class action settlements and standing in securities litigation.

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