SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 7 affirmed a district court’s ruling that an insurer has a duty to defend an insured in an underlying environmental contamination lawsuit, however, the panel said the insurer is entitled to a jury trial to determine the reasonableness of the defense costs incurred by the insured from the date of the insured’s tender of the underlying complaint through the date of the district court’s order.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court granted an insurer’s petition asking it to review a Texas appellate court majority’s reversal of a lower court’s judgment against insureds in a coverage dispute arising from tornado damage.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that claims against E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., its affiliates and other defendants in a lawsuit over the contamination of drinking water with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are precluded on statute of limitations grounds.  However, the Supreme Court ruled that claims against a group of landfills were not dismissed because they never sought dismissal of the claims against them based on the affirmative defense of statute of limitations.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided U.S. Supreme Court on April 7 in a per curiam opinion vacated a trial court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) and an order extending the TRO issued in a class case over the removal of immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), declining to reach the argument as to whether the immigrants in question fall under the AEA but opining that their claims for relief “fall within the ‘core’ of the writ of habeas corpus and thus must be brought in habeas” and that the proper “venue lies in the district of confinement.”

NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 4 affirmed a lower court ruling dismissing a breach of contract suit against an internet provider and related parties in an appeal in which the appellant, an attorney, seeks vacatur of every ruling issued by a magistrate judge and alleges that inadequate internet services led to two underlying suits being dismissed for late filings, finding “minimal risk of prejudice” regarding the magistrate judge’s recommendations and “no ground to question the district court’s dismissal” of certain parties.

BOSTON — The day after a Massachusetts federal judge granted final approval to a $2.8 million settlement with a health care billing firm that is one of the defendants in a multidistrict litigation over a 2023 ransomware attack that affected users of the MOVEit file-transfer app, the lead defendant in another component suit in the MDL, which had a $9.95 million settlement preliminarily approved in September, on April 4 filed a motion for attorney fees.

NEW YORK — Saying in an unpublished April 4 summary order that the trial court correctly applied the law-of-the-case doctrine in a long-running Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action over residual annuities, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld entry of a revised final judgment; the appeal concerned a preretirement mortality discount (PRMD) and interest rate for projecting forward employee contributions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided en banc District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 7, citing Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and Wiener v. United States, vacated a March 28 divided panel order that stayed the reinstatements of a member of the National Labor Relations Board and a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) pending appeal; on the same day, the court issued a second per curiam order denying petitions by the NLRB and MSPB members for an initial merits hearing en banc.