Appellate

  • November 06, 2024

    Judiciary Panel Spurns Broadcasts, But More Pressure Looms

    Despite support from a jurist who televised a mass murderer's trial, the lead rulemaking body for federal criminal cases voted Wednesday against loosening limits on courtroom broadcasts, but members exchanged sharply conflicting views and predicted that digital age pressure will keep rising.

  • November 06, 2024

    Chicago Pol Urges Narrow Reading Of False Statement Law

    The U.S. Supreme Court should narrowly interpret the federal statute barring people from using false statements to influence certain financial institutions because backing the government's broad reading could expose borrowers to criminal liability that was never intended, former Chicago alderman Patrick Daley Thompson argued Wednesday.

  • November 06, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Mulls Whether Billable Hour Tech Can Be Patented

    The Federal Circuit is set to decide whether a LexisNexis program that helps attorneys track their billable hours is stepping on another company's intellectual property or if that company is simply trying to patent the noninventive concept of keeping time using a computer.

  • November 06, 2024

    10th Circ. Backs Colorado Age Limits For Gun Buyers

    A Tenth Circuit panel on Tuesday upheld a Colorado law establishing 21 as the minimum age to buy and sell guns in the state, concluding that age restrictions for buying guns don't have to line up with the age of majority.

  • November 06, 2024

    9th Circ. Says No New Trial For Tesla Investors' Suit

    The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday ruled that a lower court didn't err in denying Tesla investors' request for a new trial regarding their $12 billion claim over Elon Musk's 2018 tweets that he had "funding secured" to take the electric car giant private, saying there were no improper instructions given to the jury.

  • November 06, 2024

    Fla. Can't Reclaim Medicaid Payments On Immigrant Care

    A Florida appeals court on Wednesday reaffirmed a previous decision that the state Agency for Health Care Administration cannot claw back asserted overpayments of Medicaid funds hospitals received for emergency services provided to eligible unauthorized immigrants, ruling in the class action that a statutory change did not overrule the decision but merely clarified the law.

  • November 06, 2024

    Alaska Asks 9th Circ. To Roll Back Ringed Seal Protections

    The state of Alaska called on the Ninth Circuit to overturn a district court's refusal to eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for Arctic ringed seals, arguing the federal government failed to properly credit new information that raised serious questions about the necessity for continuing protections.

  • November 06, 2024

    Venue For Fla. County Suit Against Funder Getting New Look

    A Florida appellate court ruled Wednesday that Palm Beach County can't use the "sword-wielder" exception to deny a funding agency's choice of court in a lawsuit over the authority to levy property taxes, saying the agency has proved it's a governmental entity entitled to a home venue privilege.

  • November 06, 2024

    3rd Circ. Mulls Mootness In Boy Scouts Ch. 11 Plan Appeals

    Questions over whether equitable and statutory mootness foreclose challenges to the Boy Scouts of America's bankruptcy took center stage Wednesday during arguments before the Third Circuit, with the judges and parties involved noting the impact that changing the Chapter 11 plan that's already in effect could have on thousands of sexual abuse survivors.

  • November 06, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Panel Irked By Confusion In Check Patent Case

    An irritated Federal Circuit panel criticized attorneys for the United Services Automobile Association and PNC Bank on Wednesday for a lack of clarity on which issues reached a final judgment in their nine-figure patent dispute, with one judge telling them, "You both should be embarrassed."

  • November 06, 2024

    1st Circ. Tells Immigration Board To Rethink Torture Definition

    The First Circuit has ordered the Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider denying removal relief for a man wanted for murder in Jamaica, finding that the board incorrectly assumed that direct police participation was needed to back his fear of torture.

  • November 06, 2024

    Netflix Jury Will Hear Victim ID Evidence In 'Our Father' Trial

    An Indiana federal judge ruled Wednesday that Netflix Inc. can't exclude evidence of third-party statements in a suit accusing the entertainment giant of wrongly revealing the identities of the biological children of a rogue fertility doctor in the "Our Father" documentary, saying the statements were not inadmissible hearsay.

  • November 06, 2024

    5th Circ. Chides Texas For Clashing Insurance Law Messages

    A Fifth Circuit judge Wednesday told the state of Texas it was "having its cake and eating it too" by arguing it didn't plan to enforce a law governing certain disclosures between vision insurers and optometrists while simultaneously fighting off a temporary injunction enjoining the law from going into effect.

  • November 06, 2024

    2nd Circ. Revives Authors' Breach Claim Against McGraw Hill

    The Second Circuit has partially restored a breach of contract claim from a would-be class action that alleged McGraw Hill shortchanged textbook authors on royalties from e-book sales, saying there was merit to one of their arguments relating to contract language.

  • November 06, 2024

    10th Circ. Backs Asset Freeze In Forex Exec's Latest Bid

    A foreign exchange asset manager lost his bid to overturn a lower court's decision that froze his assets and ordered him to pay $510,000 in legal bills in a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with a panel of the 10th Circuit finding it does not have jurisdiction to reverse the ruling.

  • November 06, 2024

    Feds Fight Philly Injection Site Group's 3rd Circ. Appeal

    The U.S. Department of Justice has urged the Third Circuit to preserve its win in preventing an overdose prevention organization from opening a supervised safe-injection site in Philadelphia, arguing that a lower court correctly ruled that the group is not a religious organization eligible for federal protection.

  • November 06, 2024

    Justices Eye Narrowing Disclosure Rules In Meta Investor Suit

    The U.S. Supreme Court seemed poised Wednesday to hand Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. a narrow victory in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as justices put up a range of hypothetical scenarios to try to pin down when exactly a company needs to disclose to investors that a past event could cause future damage to its business.

  • November 06, 2024

    Maritime Commission Seeks To Ax Refusal To Deal Challenge

    The Federal Maritime Commission is asking the D.C. Circuit to toss an ocean carrier industry challenge to federal rules for carrier practices, arguing that the World Shipping Council hasn't shown it has standing to contest the regulations.

  • November 06, 2024

    GOP Will Get A Crack At The Judiciary, But First, Lame Duck

    With a little more than two months left in the Biden administration following Republicans' capture of the White House and Senate on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Durbin intends to confirm "every possible nominee" before time runs out on this Congress.

  • November 06, 2024

    Contractor Seeks Redo In Guatemala Power Plant Award Fight

    A contractor on an ill-fated Guatemalan power plant construction project urged the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday to reconsider its decision refusing to vacate an arbitral award favoring the plant's owner, saying the panel failed to properly consider "clear evidence" of corruption tarnishing the underlying contract.

  • November 06, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Panel Skeptical Of GeoComply Anti-Spoofing Patent

    Judges on the Federal Circuit appeared unlikely to reverse a district court's dismissal of GeoComply's patent infringement suit against its geolocation competitor XPoint Wednesday, repeatedly telling GeoComply's attorney that its anti-location spoofing patent seemed to be largely built around conventional programming.

  • November 06, 2024

    Insurers Urge Del. Justices To Reverse Drug Co. Policy Ruling

    Attorneys for three insurers battling Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. over potential director and officer insurance payouts in a securities action launched before Alexion received a separate federal regulator penalty told Delaware's Supreme Court on Wednesday that a lower court decision wrongly sided with the company on coverage worth an additional $20 million.

  • November 06, 2024

    5th Circ. Backs Gas Co. In Ex-Worker's Severance Pay Suit

    The Fifth Circuit declined Wednesday to revive an oil and gas company worker's suit claiming he should have received severance after he resigned when his job duties changed following an acquisition, ruling that a plan committee backed up its finding that the job switch didn't qualify for exit pay.

  • November 06, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Upholds PTAB's Ax Of Centripetal Cybersecurity IP

    The Federal Circuit declined Wednesday to revive a Centripetal Networks LLC patent covering computer network protection, backing a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision that handed a win to challenger Palo Alto Networks Inc.

  • November 06, 2024

    Mass. Tobacco Law's Penalty Provision Hits State's Top Court

    Massachusetts' highest court on Wednesday attempted to reconcile a state law mandating a $1,000 fine for selling flavored tobacco products with a separate statute requiring local officials to file a criminal complaint if they seek to enforce penalties of that amount.

Expert Analysis

  • 3rd Circ. Hertz Ruling Highlights Flawed Bankruptcy Theory

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    The Third Circuit, in its recent Hertz bankruptcy decision, became the latest appeals court to hold that noteholders were entitled to interest before shareholders under the absolute priority rule, but risked going astray by invoking the flawed theory of code impairment, say Matthew McGill and David Casazza at Gibson Dunn.

  • Opinion

    Barrett Is Right: Immunity Is Wrong Framework In Trump Case

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    Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurrence in Trump v. U.S., where the majority opinion immunized former presidents almost entirely from criminal prosecution for official actions, rests on a firmer constitutional foundation than the majority’s immunity framework, says Matthew Brogdon at Utah Valley University.

  • Opinion

    This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process

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    In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.

  • A Look At The PTAB's Assessment Of Prior Art Exceptions

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    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board's approach over the last 10 years to assessing Section 102(b) prior art exceptions reveals a few trends, including that evidence of common ownership may have a higher likelihood of successfully disqualifying prior art under Section 102(b)(2)(C) at the institution stage, say Louis Panzica and David Holman at Sterne Kessler.

  • Series

    Playing Diplomacy Makes Us Better Lawyers

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    Similar to the practice of law, the rules of Diplomacy — a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe — are neither concise nor without ambiguity, and weekly gameplay with our colleagues has revealed the game's practical applications to our work as attorneys, say Jason Osborn and Ben Bevilacqua at Winston & Strawn.

  • 5th Circ. Shows Admin Rules Can Survive Court Post-Chevron

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    The Fifth Circuit's textual analysis of the Fair Labor Standards Act, contributing to its recent affirming of the U.S. Department of Labor’s authority to set an overtime exemption salary threshold, suggests administrative laws can survive post-Chevron challenges, say Jessi Thaller-Moran and Erin Barker at Brooks Pierce.

  • Open Questions In Unsettled Geofence Warrant Landscape

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    The Fourth and Fifth Circuits recently reached radically divergent conclusions about the constitutionality of geofence warrants, creating an uncertain landscape in which defendants should assert and preserve the full range of conventional Fourth Amendment challenges, says Charles Fowler at McKool Smith.

  • Applying High Court's Domestic Corruption Rulings To FCPA

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the domestic corruption statutes in three decisions over the past year and a half, it’s worth evaluating whether these rulings may have an impact on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement, and if attorneys can use the court’s reasoning in international bribery cases, says James Koukios at MoFo.

  • 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.

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