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Appellate
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June 14, 2024
2nd Circ. Suspects Paralegal's Video Leaks Were Valid Threats
The Second Circuit on Friday seemed skeptical of a former U.S. Department of Justice paralegal's attempt to trim a 33-month sentence for helping her gang-affiliated son expose two associates who cooperated with a law enforcement probe into a 2018 robbery, questioning why the recordings at issue couldn't be considered threats.
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June 14, 2024
Colo. Town Says It Took Resort Co.'s Land To Protect Sheep
A Colorado town has told a state appeals court it was justified in condemning and taking over local land that was owned by The Vail Corp. because the town needed to preserve wildlife space for a bighorn sheep herd.
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June 14, 2024
3rd Circ. Won't Halt 'Made In America' False Ad Ruling
The Third Circuit will not pause an injunction against Albion Engineering Co. for falsely marketing its caulking guns as made in the United States, according to a Friday order declining to hold off the New Jersey federal court's order while the firm appeals.
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June 14, 2024
Novant Urges 4th Circ. To Reject FTC's 'Emergency' Bid
Novant Health told the Fourth Circuit there is no need to block its planned North Carolina hospital purchase while the Federal Trade Commission pushes a merger challenge, saying the deal will increase competition by preventing the hospitals from closing.
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June 14, 2024
DOJ Can't Force Retroactive FARA Registration, DC Circ. Says
The U.S. Department of Justice can't force casino magnate Steve Wynn to retroactively register as a foreign agent because his alleged lobbying efforts on behalf of China ended years ago, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled Friday.
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June 14, 2024
Off The Bench: Ex-Players Claim NIL, Loss For Trans Swimmer
In this week's Off The Bench, the 1983 men's college basketball champions want a piece of the loot the NCAA made off of their names, swimmer Lia Thomas loses in her bid to overturn an international trans athlete ban, and the House gets a bill through committee that would keep college athletes from becoming employees.
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June 14, 2024
DC Circ. Backs FERC Climate Reviews In Pipeline Project Row
The D.C. Circuit on Friday appeared to endorse the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's current method of evaluating the climate change impacts of gas infrastructure projects in approval in rejecting an environmental group's challenge of the agency's pipeline upgrade project serving the New York City area.
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June 14, 2024
Healthcare Worker's Solo PAGA Claim Heads To Arbitration
A California state appeals court ruled an employee's individual wage claims under the state's Private Attorneys General Act should be heard in arbitration, overturning a lower court's decision to keep the lawsuit in state court and finding the arbitration agreement encompassed the worker's claims.
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June 14, 2024
Pa. Court Allows 'Special Prosecutor' For Philly Transit
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner cannot stop the Pennsylvania Legislature and the state attorney general from appointing a "special prosecutor" to handle crimes within the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, according to a split state appellate court Friday.
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June 14, 2024
DOJ Declines To Prosecute AG Garland For Contempt
The U.S. Department of Justice is declining to prosecute Attorney General Merrick Garland after the House voted earlier this week to hold him in contempt for not turning over audio recordings of the president and his ghostwriter speaking with special counsel Robert Hur for his investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents.
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June 14, 2024
4th Circ. Urged To Toss Cannabis Dormant Commerce Suit
Maryland cannabis regulators have told the Fourth Circuit that a lower district court judge was right to deny a California entrepreneur's bid to halt all social equity licensure and that the state's policies do not discriminate against out-of-state players.
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June 14, 2024
Enviros Fight FERC OK Of Pipeline Feeding Mexico LNG Plant
The Sierra Club and Public Citizen called on the D.C. Circuit to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval of a methane gas pipeline to run between West Texas and Mexico, asserting the agency failed to conduct a thorough analysis of the pipeline's 157 U.S.-based miles.
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June 14, 2024
Texas Justices To Weigh Ethics Claims Against Paxton Deputy
The Texas Supreme Court agreed Friday to review a lower court's decision to revive an ethics charge against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's first assistant over a failed lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 election.
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June 14, 2024
Senate Passes Bill For State, Local Judge Security
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill unanimously to better protect state and local judges from threats amid "unacceptable attacks" on the judiciary.
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June 14, 2024
Chamblee Ryan Gets $1M Legal Malpractice Verdict Tossed
Chamblee Ryan PC has escaped a $1.1 million jury verdict in a malpractice suit brought by former client JBS Carriers Inc., with a Texas appeals court finding that the food transportation giant failed to submit expert testimony showing that the firm was negligent in failing to settle an underlying car crash lawsuit.
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June 14, 2024
Dunkin' Franchise Must Face Customer's Race Bias Suit
An intermediate appellate court in Massachusetts on Friday revived part of a lawsuit brought by a Black customer of a Dunkin' franchise who says an employee deliberately ignored his order for 15 minutes, then threw his food at him and called him a racist epithet.
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June 14, 2024
4 Big ERISA Decisions From The 1st Half Of 2024
A California federal court allowed a novel type of 401(k) mismanagement suit to advance to discovery, the Ninth Circuit elaborated on the pleading standard for mental health parity claims, and workers beat back an attempt to force their federal benefits suit into arbitration at the Second Circuit. Here, attorneys discuss four consequential ERISA decisions in 2024's first half.
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June 14, 2024
Full DC Circ. Won't Hear Foreign Disclosure Penalty Dispute
The D.C. Circuit declined to reconsider its ruling overturning a major U.S. Tax Court decision that had crimped the administrative collection arm of the Internal Revenue Service, letting stand a panel's restoration of the agency's power to more freely penalize undisclosed foreign corporations.
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June 14, 2024
Justices Endorse 2-Step Notification System For Removals
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said the federal government's practice of issuing multiple notices to migrants to advise them of removal proceedings is acceptable, ruling that in absentia removal orders can't be rescinded when the government fails to provide the location and time of immigration court hearings in a single document.
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June 14, 2024
Justices Overturn ATF Rule Banning Bump Stocks
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives does not have the authority to ban bump stocks, finding that the firearm accessory can't be considered a machine gun for purposes of the National Firearms Act.
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June 14, 2024
No Retroactive Fix For US Trustee Fee Dispute, Justices Say
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the U.S. Trustee's Office on Friday in finding that an amended fee structure implemented before a 2022 ruling that struck down a nonuniform system of payments was all that was needed to resolve the disparate treatment of debtors under the unconstitutional law.
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June 13, 2024
Ex-Duke Doc Wants Panel To Redo Disability Bias Ruling
A fired Duke University hospital doctor pressed a North Carolina state appeals court to reconsider not reviving the disability claims in his suit against the hospital, arguing that the case belongs before a jury.
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June 13, 2024
'Trump Too Small' Opinion Leaves Some Justices, Attys Vexed
In denying a bid to register "Trump Too Small" as a trademark for apparel, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously concluded Thursday there was no free speech violation. But Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion leaning on tradition to justify prohibiting names as marks without an individual's consent left some justices and attorneys dissatisfied.
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June 13, 2024
Textualism Still Dominates Justices' Arbitration Decisions
The U.S. Supreme Court's approach to arbitration issues this past term has helped to exemplify a growing trend by the justices in favor of textualism and away from a less nuanced pro-arbitration mindset that had been favored in previous decades, experts say.
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June 13, 2024
Tribal Casino Tells 7th Circ. Ill. City Rigged Proposal Votes
A proposed tribal casino has asked the Seventh Circuit to undo a lower court ruling that found Waukegan, Ill., did not intentionally discriminate against it when the city chose three other competitors to operate casinos, saying the city ran a rigged review process.
Expert Analysis
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What 3rd Circ. Trust Ruling Means For Securitization Market
Mercedes Tunstall and Michael Gambro at Cadwalader break down the Third Circuit's March decision in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. National Collegiate Master Student Loan Trust, as well as predict next steps in the litigation and the implications of the decision for servicers and the securitization industry as a whole.
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9th Circ. Ruling Puts Teeth Into Mental Health Parity Claims
In its recent finding that UnitedHealth applied an excessively strict review process for substance use disorder treatment claims, the Ninth Circuit provided guidance on how to plead a Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act violation and took a step toward achieving mental health parity in healthcare, says Mark DeBofsky at DeBofsky Law.
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Using Rule 23(f) To Review Class Certification Orders
Since plaintiffs on average are prevailing in certifying a class more often than not, the best-positioned class action defendants are those prepared to pursue relief under Rule 23(f) well before the district court issues its certification decision, say attorneys at K&L Gates.
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Perspectives
Justices' Forfeiture Ruling Resolves Nonexistent Split
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in McIntosh v. U.S., holding that a trial court’s failure to enter a preliminary criminal forfeiture order prior to sentencing doesn’t bar its entry later, is unusual in that it settles an issue on which the lower courts were not divided — but it may apply in certain forfeiture disputes, says Stefan Cassella at Asset Forfeiture Law.
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Opinion
SC's Courts Have It Wrong On Amazon Marketplace Sales Tax
The South Carolina Supreme Court should step in and correct the misguided change in tax law effectuated by lower court rulings that found Amazon owes state sales tax for marketplace sales made prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wayfair v. South Dakota decision in 2018, says Hayes Holderness at the University of Richmond.
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What Have We Learned In The Year Since Warhol?
In the almost year since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, which was widely seen as potentially chilling to creative endeavors, seven subsequent decisions — while illuminating to some extent — do not indicate any trend toward a radical departure from prior precedents in fair use cases, says Jose Sariego at Bilzin Sumberg.
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The Practical Effects Of Justices' Arbitration Exemption Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries, that a transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, may negatively affect employers' efforts to mitigate class action risk via arbitration agreement enforcement, say Charles Schoenwetter and Eric Olson at Bowman and Brooke.
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Binance Ruling Spotlights Muddled Post-Morrison Landscape
The Second Circuit's recent decision in Williams v. Binance highlights the judiciary's struggle to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's Morrison v. National Australia Bank ruling to digital assets, and illustrates how Morrison's territorial limits on the federal securities laws have become convoluted, say Andrew Rhys Davies and Jessica Lewis at WilmerHale.
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Practical Pointers After Fed. Circ. Double-Patenting Decision
With the Federal Circuit recently denying a full court review of In re: Cellect, a decision regarding obviousness-type double-patenting, affected patent family holders should evaluate their rights through both patent prosecution and future litigation lenses to minimize risks, say Austin Lorch and Jeff Wolfson at Haynes Boone.
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Sorting Circuit Split On Foreign Arbitration Treaty's Authority
A circuit court split over whether the New York Convention supersedes state law barring arbitration in certain disputes — a frequent issue in insurance matters — has left lower courts to rely on conflicting decisions, but the doctrine of self-executing treaties makes it clear that the convention overrules state law, says Gary Shaw at Pillsbury.
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Corp. Transparency Act Could Survive 11th Circ. Several Ways
If the Eleventh Circuit upholds an Alabama federal court’s injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act, the anti-money laundering law could persist as a narrower version that could moot some constitutional challenges, but these remedies would likely generate additional regulatory or statutory ambiguities that would result in further litigation, say attorneys at Perkins Coie.
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Del. Match.com Ruling Maintains Precedent In Time Of Change
Despite speculation that the Delaware Supreme Court could drive away corporations if it lowered the bar for business judgment review in its Match.com stockholder ruling, the court broke its recent run of controversial precedent-busting decisions by upholding, and arguably strengthening, minority stockholder protections against controller coercion, say Renee Zaytsev and Marc Ayala at Boies Schiller.
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The Future Of BIPA Insurance Litigation After Visual Pak
A recent Illinois appellate court decision, National Fire Insurance v. Visual Pak, may have altered the future of insurance litigation under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by diametrically opposing a prominent Seventh Circuit ruling that found insurance coverage for violations of the act, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.
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Macquarie Ruling Raises The Bar For Securities Fraud Claims
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week in Macquarie Infrastructure v. Moab Partners — holding that a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule does not forbid omissions in company disclosures unless they render other statements false — is a major setback for plaintiffs pursuing securities fraud claims against corporations, say attorneys at Skadden.
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Patent Lessons From 8 Federal Circuit Reversals In March
A number of Federal Circuit patent decisions last month reversed or vacated underlying rulings, providing guidance regarding the definiteness of a claim that include multiple limitations of different scopes, the importance of adequate jury instruction, the proper scope of the precedent, and more, say Denise De Mory and Li Guo at Bunsow De Mory.