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HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court on Oct. 15 ruled that a lower court erred when it found that Montana’s Media Confidentiality Act (MMCA) applied to a reporter’s records that were the subject of a subpoena in litigation brought by a hydraulic fracturing company against a media outlet related to a news story about groundwater contamination from fracking operations that affected a family in Pennsylvania. The high court reversed and remanded the matter, ruling that the lower court “must apply the Pennsylvania Shield Law and the qualified reporter’s privilege to the subpoena and determine whether all or some of the documents sought are privileged under Pennsylvania law.”
NEW YORK — Nearly half a year after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on the question of what is necessary to state an Employee Retirement Income Security Act prohibited transaction claim involving a service provider, the appeals court on Oct. 15 issued two one-paragraph orders — one recalling the mandate and reinstating the case, then one remanding the case to a New York federal court.
PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Oct. 15 granted final approval of a $450,000 settlement that resolves production workers’ claims that a manufacturer and seller of coffee and related products violated federal and state wage laws by failing to pay hourly workers for all hours worked, including failing to compensate for pre- and postshift work and miscalculating the regular rate of pay for overtime.
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California on Oct. 15 granted several unions’ motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) enjoining the federal government’s reduction-in-force (RIF) of thousands of federal workers during the federal government shutdown, writing that if the unions’ allegation that impacted workers were chosen due to their perceived political affiliations is true, it “is the epitome of hasty, arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking.”
BUTTE, Mont. — A federal judge in Montana “reluctantly” ruled Oct. 15 to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 22 minors and young adults against President Donald J. Trump and multiple government agencies seeking to rescind and declare unconstitutional a series of executive orders that include directives to increase fossil fuel production, opining that the plaintiffs failed to establish standing.
ATLANTA — After applying a 40-year-old circuit precedent in a unanimous Oct. 15 panel ruling affirming dismissal of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) valuation case but remanding for clarification on “whether prejudice attaches,” two panel members suggested that the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals convene en banc “to consider overruling” that precedent, which they said “imposed a judicially-created and atextual administrative exhaustion requirement for fiduciary-breach and statutory claims under” the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Wisconsin federal judge was wrong to apply issue preclusion based on prior findings from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) when granting summary judgment in a patent infringement dispute over eyeglass lens patents, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Oct. 15; the panel said the PTAB findings relied on by the judge came under a different standard of proof than that required for district courts.
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — In a medical malpractice lawsuit alleging that a patient’s head injury was misdiagnosed as gastroenteritis during the COVID-19 pandemic, the patient withdrew her complaint against one of the physicians who attended to her in a Connecticut hospital.
RICHMOND, Va. — The Virginia Court of Appeals on Oct. 14 reversed and remanded a lower court ruling that required police to obtain a search warrant before accessing surveillance camera data, holding that officers were not required to do so because the brief, noncontinuous capture of the appellee’s vehicle movements on public roads did not implicate a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.
TOLEDO, Ohio — An Ohio appellate court on Oct. 14 affirmed a trial court’s judgment for an insurer in a dispute between the insurer and a mortgagee over the debt owed to it after a fire damaged property for which it held a mortgage, finding that the trial court did not err in dismissing the suit because the mortgagee failed to provide evidence establishing damage and repair costs of the mortgaged property and whether it was a total loss.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Oct. 14 denied a company’s request for either panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, leaving in place its August finding that a Utah federal judge was wrong to hold that a patent was directed to an abstract idea by conflating a “rather simple mechanical invention” for stacking dumbbells with the kind of computerized automation that is often unpatentable as abstract.