Mealey Publications™
TOP STORIES
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 15 granted a South Korean battery-maker’s petition for rehearing, withdrew its opinion finding jurisdiction over personal injury claims against the company for injuries caused by a vape explosion, and issued a new opinion finding no jurisdiction after a Seventh Circuit opinion in a similar case led it to go “hunting” for previously unreviewed jurisdictional facts.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 15 affirmed a Delaware federal judge’s decision to grant judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to a defendant entity in a dispute over patents describing a vascular access port product, finding that the judge properly determined that the claims at issue were anticipated by prior art references.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A man who won a $1.25 million damages award for injuries from exposure to the herbicide Roundup filed a supplemental brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 16 contending that the U.S. government’s amicus curiae brief in support of Monsanto’s petition for review is “incomplete and unpersuasive” because there is no circuit split over whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) forbids Monsanto from warning consumers that exposure to Roundup can cause deadly cancer.
DOVER, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court on Dec. 15 affirmed a Chancery Court judgment awarding Reynolds American Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (collectively RJR) approximately $276 million against ITG Brands LLC in a long-running dispute over liabilities to the state of Florida under a tobacco company settlement for the number of cigarettes sold in the state under brands that RJR sold to ITG.
DETROIT — A Michigan appellate court affirmed a lower court’s ruling granting summary disposition in favor of an insurer in a dispute with surviving children and the estate of a woman who died in a car accident, finding that the lower court did not err in granting the insurer’s motion for summary disposition because the decedent’s children are ineligible for survivor benefits due to the decedent’s misrepresentations in the policy application.
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury hearing the first two asbestos-talc ovarian cancer bellwether cases found against Johnson & Johnson and handed the plaintiffs $18 million and $22 million awards.
BOSTON — A Massachusetts federal judge on Dec. 12 gave final approval to a claims-made class settlement over proton beam therapy (PBT or PBRT) that is capped at $6.75 million but at last report would result in distributions of less than $1.65 million because just 22 claims were submitted; in a different order issued the same day, the judge granted a separate $2 million for class counsel.
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California on Dec. 12 preliminarily certified a class of consumers who accuse Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and Ticketmaster LLC, two companies that are now merged, of engaging in anticompetitive practices.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 15 denied a certiorari petition in which insurers and health plan administrators challenged a Nevada Supreme Court ruling that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act does not preempt state law claims concerning out-of-network (OON) care, which they argued conflicts with the conclusion of “[e]very federal appellate court to have considered the issue.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 12 affirmed a series of inter partes review (IPR) findings of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB); the panel held that substantial evidence supported PTAB’s findings that all challenged claims in patents describing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies in various systems are unpatentable as obvious.
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge on Dec. 12 ordered plaintiffs’ attorneys to pay $13,000 for filing “AI-tainted” briefs in the court and denied their motion to withdraw and amend those briefs and in separate orders refused to reconsider the enforceability of OnlyFans’ forum selection clause and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against OnlyFans’ owners and content creators’ agencies for deceptively marketing “chats” to subscribers.