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SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Oct. 23 reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction a computer services company’s suit against a software company for its purported failure to comply with bid requirements for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) government in providing Microsoft software, finding that the software company was subject to personal jurisdiction because it “purposely availed itself of the privilege of doing business” in the CNMI.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on Oct. 23 affirmed a ruling by the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Board of Review that assessed a fraud overpayment in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits and a Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) fraud overpayment against a claimant who filed for benefits in both Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, finding that the board’s determination regarding the claimant’s intention when filing “for PUA benefits in Pennsylvania was supported by substantial evidence and cannot be set aside.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), on Oct. 23 released a new record of decision (ROD) adopting an oil and gas leasing program that officially opens roughly 1,563,500 acres in the Coastal Plain of Alaska for hydraulic fracturing in keeping with the executive order titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” issued by President Donald J. Trump on the first day of his second term. Plans for oil and gas extraction in that region of Alaska have been the subject of much dispute and litigation across multiple presidential administrations.
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a whistleblower physician’s petition for panel or en banc rehearing of the court’s ruling affirming a district court order denying his motion to reopen a federal and state false claims act violations suit alleging fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing by a health system.
PHILADELPHIA — Addressing a question of first impression, a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an order denying a bid by third-party litigation funders to compel arbitration of an application for discovery for use in Germany because the discovery application does not qualify as a “civil action” under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), while a dissenting judge said the case should be remanded for a “second look.”
NEW YORK — In an Oct. 22 lawsuit filed in a New York federal court, Reddit Inc. says Perplexity AI Inc. and a trio of internet data scraping companies act as modern-day bank robbers by intentionally circumventing digital defenses and scraping the valuable content protected by those efforts.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims judge on Oct. 22 vacated a decision by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals that denied a veteran’s claim for injuries from exposure to the pesticide Agent Orange, ruling that the board erred “in failing to address the appellant's explicitly raised contentions” regarding the conduct of a Department of Veterans Affairs examiner. The judge said the examiner did not “adequately consider the appellant's chemical exposures during service.”
LONDON — The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on Oct. 22 ruled that an Irish-owned company ordered to pay attorney fees to the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the costs it incurred obtaining the set-aside of an arbitral award worth more than $11 billion due to “fraud” was properly ordered to pay the more than 44.2 million pound award of fees and costs in British currency, not Nigerian naira.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said Oct. 22 that it saw no error in the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) analysis of the recusal of an administrative patent judge (APJ) after the institution of inter partes review (IPR) for a cybersecurity patent; the panel also held, though, that PTAB failed to fully consider evidence on copying provided by the appellant patent holder.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — An environmental advocacy group on Oct. 22 filed a response brief in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals arguing that The Chemours Co. FC LLC paints a “distorted and inaccurate portrait” of a trial court’s decision that granted the group a preliminary injunction in a per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination case, saying the lower court decision does not disregard U.S. Supreme Court injunction precedent.
DENVER — The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed that a disabled veteran whose employment contract with his government contractor employer was not renewed did not have enough evidence to prove disability discrimination and retaliation pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) in affirming a District Court’s order granting summary judgment to the employer.