Appellate

  • July 13, 2026

    Fed. Circ. OKs Roku's PTAB Win Axing Ecolink Patent Claims

    The Federal Circuit on Monday upheld a decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidating six claims of a "smart" alarm device patent that was challenged by Roku Inc.

  • July 13, 2026

    Hemp Co. Tells 7th Circ. To Leave RICO Case Buried

    Hemp product maker Urb Cannabis and its affiliates are urging the Seventh Circuit to leave intact the dismissal of a hemp seller's suit alleging that Urb's products were illegal and led to a police raid on his store, saying the racketeering claims are insufficient and fail to describe the conspiracy or identify its members.

  • July 13, 2026

    Blanche Hearing To Proceed After Graham's Death

    The Senate Judiciary Committee will still hold the confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche's nomination to be attorney general on Wednesday, despite the death of committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over the weekend. 

  • July 13, 2026

    Families Cite Geofence Ruling In Newborn Blood Testing Case

    A group of parents suing the state of Michigan over the way newborn blood samples are collected and stored has asked a federal judge to revive its claims by citing recently decided U.S. Supreme Court precedent over the use of bulk cellphone data by police.

  • July 13, 2026

    Javerbaum Wurgaft Beats Challenge To Defamation Suit Win

    New Jersey law firms posting about their cases and achievements are protected by the state's anti-SLAPP law, the state's Appellate Division ruled Monday in backing the dismissal of Holtec International's suit against Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins PC over a blog post about the firm's representation of a former Holtec executive.

  • July 13, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Removes Early Sales Ban In Door Patent Case

    The Federal Circuit on Monday again threw out a preliminary injunction barring sales of insulated doors while patent litigation over them plays out, ruling an Ohio federal judge wrongly found that the patent owner and a licensee were likely to prevail in the case.

  • July 13, 2026

    Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

    The Delaware Chancery Court last week handled disputes involving corporate control, post-closing competition, executive departures, arbitration awards and shareholder litigation.

  • July 13, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Revives Google Fight Against Voice Tech Patent

    The Federal Circuit on Monday gave Google a new chance to invalidate a patent covering a voice-operated internet browsing system, saying the Patent Trial and Appeal Board needs to take another look at the company's challenge.

  • July 13, 2026

    Mass. High Court Says Prevailing Wage Skips Routine Repairs

    Massachusetts' highest court ruled Monday that routine maintenance and repair work at a privatized wastewater treatment facility does not trigger prevailing wage protections under a state special act, finding the phrase "construction and design of improvements" carries a narrower technical meaning than the workers claimed.

  • July 10, 2026

    Biggest Illinois Decisions Of 2026: Midyear Report

    One of the biggest decisions to come down in Illinois so far this year applies a 2-year-old Biometric Information Privacy Act amendment retroactively in an appellate ruling experts anticipate will deflate settlement values even though it came from a federal court.

  • July 10, 2026

    Davis Wright Atty Hit With Sanctions After Winning Sanctions

    After defending six-figure sanctions of plaintiffs lawyers for "a reckless course of prolonging litigation," a Davis Wright Tremaine LLP attorney is facing his own six-figure sanctions, with a California magistrate judge finding he "unnecessarily burdened" opposing counsel despite warnings dating back years about "improper litigation tactics."

  • July 10, 2026

    Ill. Appeals Court Upholds $45M Talc Verdict Against J&J

    A split Illinois state appeals court on Friday refused to disturb a jury's verdict awarding $45 million to the family of a woman who developed mesothelioma and died after using Johnson & Johnson's talc baby powder for decades, ruling that her case warranted both wrongful death and shortened life damages.

  • July 10, 2026

    Kalshi's Contracts 'Sound Like A Bet,' 9th Circ. Judge Says

    A Ninth Circuit panel appeared open Friday to preliminarily blocking Kalshi and Robinhood from offering sports contracts on tribal land, with one judge saying Kalshi's contracts "sound like a bet" subject to Native American gambling laws and another saying it "wouldn't be so unreasonable" to exclude tribes from federal oversight in this area.

  • July 10, 2026

    Nexstar-Tegna Merger Challenge Gets July 2027 Trial Date

    A California federal judge has scheduled an early July 2027 trial date in DirecTV and a coalition of states' lawsuit seeking to stop Nexstar Media Group Inc.'s integration with rival broadcast company Tegna Inc.

  • July 10, 2026

    1st Circ. Sinks Child Porn Evidence Found On Wrong Phone

    The First Circuit has upheld a lower court's ruling to suppress child pornography evidence found on a Puerto Rico man's iPhone, saying federal agents could not rely on the good faith exception after knowingly searching a device not specified in their warrant.

  • July 10, 2026

    Hospitals, Housing Targeted In 2026 As Fed Antitrust Wanes

    The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission are confronting claims that federal antitrust enforcement is petering out even as the agencies' dockets in 2026 include actions against hospital systems' demands on insurers, rental home listings, protein industry data and criminal prosecutions.

  • July 10, 2026

    Colo. Panel Rules Mineral Rights Appeal Premature

    The Colorado Court of Appeals tossed an estate's appeal of a lower court's decision that threw out its claims of mineral trespass and unjust enrichment in a Colorado property, finding the trial court's order was not final and appealable.

  • July 10, 2026

    Top 5 Enviro Cases To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2026

    The second half of 2026 could see courts delivering important rulings that will determine whether municipalities can set their own building emissions laws, the extent of California's authority to regulate pollution and citizens' power to enforce the Clean Air Act. Here, Law360 takes a look at five environmental cases that could be resolved before the end of the year.

  • July 10, 2026

    Gun Offender Barred From Recovery Court, NJ Panel Rules

    A New Jersey appeals court ruled on Friday that a man can be denied access to a state program providing special probation terms to drug offenders because he had a pending gun charge that did not involve physical possession of the weapon.

  • July 10, 2026

    Fla. Panel Clears Nurse, Pain Clinic Chain In Suicide Suit

    A Florida appeals court on Friday affirmed the dismissal of a suit accusing a nurse practitioner and a pain management clinic chain of causing a former patient's suicide, saying any duty of care owed to the patient ended when he stopped treatment.

  • July 10, 2026

    Texas Appeals Court Tosses Stroke Death Malpractice Suit

    A Texas appeals court on Friday tossed malpractice claims brought by the family of a woman who suffered a fatal hemorrhagic stroke, saying the family's experts failed to show how failures on the part of hospital staff caused the woman's death.

  • July 10, 2026

    Del. Justices Nix $16M Fee Award In SpaceX Investment Fight

    The Delaware Supreme Court on Friday erased a $16 million fee award stemming from a dispute over a fund manager's handling of a failed $50 million SpaceX investment, concluding that although the fund manager committed a limited breach of a "duty of candor," shifting all litigation expenses to him was unwarranted.

  • July 10, 2026

    5th Circ. Backs Block On Texas Dream Act Defense

    A split Fifth Circuit panel said a federal judge was right to block a challenge to an agreement Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Trump administration struck to end Texas law provisions allowing some unauthorized immigrants to pay in-state college tuition.

  • July 10, 2026

    Tulsa DA Tells 10th Circ. He Can Try Indians On Creek Land

    Oklahoma's Tulsa County district attorney has asked the Tenth Circuit to deny the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's attempts to block him from exercising criminal jurisdiction on its reservation, arguing that he has the authority to prosecute nonmember Indians for nonmajor crimes.

  • July 10, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Affirms Sony's PTAB Win Over Digital Imaging IP

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board stayed in bounds when deciding to invalidate claims of an Intellectual Pixels Ltd. digital image generation patent on remand, the Federal Circuit said Friday.

Expert Analysis

  • 2 AI Snafus Show Why Attys Can't Outsource Judgment

    Author Photo

    The recent incident involving Sullivan & Cromwell where citations in a filed motion were fabricated by artificial intelligence, as well as a punitive ruling from the Sixth Circuit in U.S. v. Farris, demonstrate that the obligation to supervise AI has belonged and always will belong to lawyers, says John Powell at the Kentucky School Boards Association.

  • Assessing The 9th Circ.'s Recent Stock Drop Dismissal Trend

    Author Photo

    The recent decision in Nova Scotia Health Employees' Pension Plan v. Comerica is an important circuit-level addition to the growing trend of Ninth Circuit securities class action dismissals on loss causation grounds, which have used a contextual analysis premised on stock drops that are modest, typical and short-lived, say attorneys at Paul Weiss.

  • Calif. Case Raises Questions For Medical Practice Investors

    Author Photo

    The California attorney general's amicus brief in Art Center v. WCE and the California Medical Association's response highlight how the California appeals court's ruling could significantly affect the structure and enforceability of succession arrangements in medical practice ownership, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

  • Opinion

    Tribal Gaming Law Is Paramount In Prediction Market Cases

    Author Photo

    Whatever the outcome of the preemption question in prediction market litigation involving states and the federal government, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act deals very specifically with gaming on Indian lands and almost certainly trumps the general federal laws at issue, says Kevin Washburn at the University of California, Berkeley.

  • Series

    Playing Magic: The Gathering Makes Me A Better Lawyer

    Author Photo

    The competitive card game Magic: The Gathering offers me a training ground for the strategic thinking skills crucial to litigation, challenging me to adapt to oft-updated rules, analyze text as complicated as any statute and anticipate my opponent’s next moves, says Christopher Smith at Lash Goldberg.

  • Why Product-Based Public Nuisance Claims May Be Waning

    Author Photo

    The Maryland Supreme Court's recent decision in Express Scripts v. Anne Arundel County is the latest in a national trend of rulings rejecting product-based public nuisance claims — but other forms of government litigation against companies that allegedly increase the cost of public services are likely to continue, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • State Of Insurance: Q1 Notes From Illinois

    Author Photo

    Matthew Fortin at BatesCarey discusses notable insurance developments in Illinois, including the state Supreme Court's highly anticipated Griffith Foods v. National Union Fire Insurance ruling, two bulletins from the Department of Insurance directed at public adjusters and a Seventh Circuit decision precluding a "super excess" tier of coverage.

  • Fed. Circ. In March: IPR And The Limits Of Retroactivity

    Author Photo

    The Federal Circuit recently ruled in Implicit v. Sonos that even though the clever retroactive correction of two invalidated patents theoretically should have changed the outcome of the inter partes review, the patentee had forfeited the right to rely on the correction — which is interesting for several reasons, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

  • Improving Well-Being In Law, 10 Years After Landmark Study

    Author Photo

    An important 2016 study revealed significant substance abuse and mental health issues among lawyers, and while the findings helped normalize the conversation around these topics, a decade later, structural change is still needed, says Denise Robinson at PLI.

  • Managing Tort Risk After Justices' War Zone Immunity Ruling

    Author Photo

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hencely v. Fluor changes the tort landscape for battlefield contractors, whose liability for employee injury will now turn on compliance with battlefield directives — a question that will require discovery into highly sensitive details of combat operations and military decision-making, says Warren Bianchi at Fluet.

  • What Mass. Ruling Clarifies About Whistleblower Protections

    Author Photo

    A Massachusetts appellate court's recent decision in Galvin v. Roxbury Community College, finding that an employee retained whistleblower protections despite his reporting responsibilities and possible contribution to the compliance failure, requires employers to distinguish between performance-based decisions and their response to protected reporting, say attorneys at Smith Kane.

  • AG Watch: Texas Charts A Course On Investigative Authority

    Author Photo

    The Texas Supreme Court's recent decision in Texas v. PFLAG affirmed, and arguably expanded, the Texas attorney general's civil investigative demand authority, providing a road map that other courts evaluating state attorney general CIDs may find instructive, amid a lack of precedent, say attorneys at Kelley Drye.

  • State Of Insurance: Q1 Notes From Pennsylvania

    Author Photo

    From causation standards in first-party property claims, to the scope of statutory bad faith liability, to the enforceability of arbitration provisions in underinsured motorist disputes, three recent cases illustrate how Pennsylvania courts continued to refine the boundaries of coverage and dispute resolution, says Todd Leon at Marshall Dennehey.

  • Building A Persecution Case After Justices' Asylum Ruling

    Author Photo

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi raises the bar for overturning agency findings in federal court, changing how practitioners handling asylum and removal defense cases need to think about building a factual record and formulating arguments on appeal, say attorneys at Lai & Turner and Farzaneh Law.

  • High Court 'Skinny Label' Case Will Matter To Tech Litigators

    Author Photo

    Hikma v. Amarin, set for oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, has potential to affect not just generic drug label-based evidence in patent cases, but also how technology inducement cases are presented and proven, says attorney Abdul Abdullahi.

Want to publish in Law360?


Submit an idea

Have a news tip?


Contact us here
Can't find the article you're looking for? Click here to search the Appellate archive.