NEW YORK — Granting three $25,000 case contribution awards over the defendants’ opposition, a New York federal judge on Dec. 2 gave final approval to a class settlement that was struck after a rare Employee Retirement Income Security Act jury trial in a challenge to the record-keeping and administration fees of a multiple employer retirement plan; the deal includes a $48.5 million payment that with interest now totals $49,539,537, and class counsel were awarded a third of that total for attorney fees as requested.

SHERMAN, Texas — A federal judge in Texas on Dec. 2 granted Toyota Motor North America Inc.’s motion to compel arbitration and stay a class action alleging that Toyota, Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. and a provider of data analytics services in the automotive industry violated the Federal Wiretap Act and are responsible for injuries they inflicted on tens of thousands of class members because of their unauthorized collection and dissemination of private information from Toyota vehicles.

WOBURN, Mass. — A Massachusetts court on Dec. 1 entered judgment worth more than $803,000 in favor of a smoker’s estate after a jury awarded the estate only medical expenses for the smoker’s death from lung cancer after smoking for approximately 55 years and awarded no further compensatory or punitive damages against two tobacco companies or a local retailer.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 2 in a dispute concerning the New Jersey attorney general’s subpoena for information including the identity of pregnancy center donors, with the petitioner contending that the center operator had standing to sue in federal court as soon as the subpoena was issued and the respondent countering that standing requirements are still unsatisfied.

BOSTON — The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 1 affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment to a lab and its owners in a medical practice’s qui tam suit alleging violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) and similar state laws related to billing Medicare for alleged medically unnecessary urinary tract infection (UTI) testing, finding that the medical practice failed to show that the lab and its owners should have known the tests were not medically necessary.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government on Dec. 1 filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the petition of Monsanto Co., which is challenging a $1.25 million damages award for injuries from exposure to the herbicide Roundup. The government says that the lower court’s decision, which rejected Monsanto’s argument that the lawsuit was preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), is “incorrect.”

CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge on Dec. 1 denied motions for class decertification and for summary judgment filed by two companies that are accused of deceptively marketing pacifiers as “orthodontic” in violation of Illinois law, California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and the consumer protection laws of several other states, and denied Daubert motions to exclude experts filed by both the plaintiffs and the defendants.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 1 from an internet service provider (ISP) that contends that it can be found liable for customers’ copyright infringement through piracy only if it committed a culpable act, while a group of record labels and music publishers told the justices that the ISP’s continuous providing of service to internet protocol (IP) addresses of known infringers constitutes liability under the material contribution standard (Cox Communications, Inc., et al. v. Sony Music Entertainment, et al., No. 24-171, U.S. Sup.).