WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a petition for a writ of certiorari pertaining to the arbitrability under Louisiana law of a claim made by the owner of a hotel in Louisiana for hurricane damages and bad faith against its domestic insurer after the parties filed a joint stipulation informing the court that the matter was “resolved by the parties,” leaving two other petitions for certiorari on the same topic pending.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Google LLC failed to show that 23 claims of a patent related to technology designed to merge search results were unpatentable, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, affirming a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and rejecting Google’s attempt to point to a patent application filed five weeks earlier as well as a three-week gap between when the last inventor signed his oath and the filing of the patent application.

SEATTLE — A day after conducting a fairness hearing in a case that was among the many challenging a common use of forfeited nonvested matching retirement contributions, a Washington federal judge on Oct. 21 issued an order granting final approval of a settlement with an estimated value of $42,724,532 and approving the requested awards of $5,880,539 for attorney fees, $24,461 for litigation costs and $5,000 as a service award to the named plaintiff.

WICHITA FALLS, Texas — A woman suing various Elon Musk companies after their Grok artificial intelligence platform allegedly created explicit images of her must face the companies’ breach of contract claims resulting from her decision to sue in New York rather than Texas as dictated by the terms of service, a federal judge in Texas said in denying her motion to dismiss on Oct. 20.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on Oct. 20 published a divided tribunal’s partly redacted award in which it awarded a Dutch mining investor $141.2 million in compensation and $7.6 million in attorney fees and legal expenses plus interest for harming its investment and refusing to waive penalties on tax and royalty assessments, thereby depriving it of dividends, with the claimant’s arbitrator dissenting in part on the grounds the investor should have been awarded more compensation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on Oct. 20 published a split tribunal’s award dismissing for lack of jurisdiction a claim brought by three Mauritian investors against the Portuguese Republic for harming their investment in a bank loan after finding that the investors are pursuing contradictory claims in Portuguese courts, while the dissenting arbitrator said the award was procedurally improper.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that an insurer has a duty to defend its insured against an underlying negligent supervision claim arising from an altercation between two of the insured’s employees, concluding that it is at least arguable that the negligent supervision claim satisfied the insurance policy’s requirement that the bodily injury must both arise out of and be in the course of the employee’s employment with the insured.

BOSTON — Resolving cross-appeals in a presumptive total disability insurance case where the claimant partly prevailed after a jury trial and a bench trial, the Massachusetts Appeals Court issued a summary decision declining to disturb any of the challenged rulings but concluding that the claimant was entitled to unspecified attorney fees and expenses in defending against the insurer’s appeal as to a state law claim.