DALLAS — A Texas federal judge stayed through Sept. 7 an advancement and fiduciary duty dispute between a former financial services company CEO and his former employer after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, pausing litigation over its obligation to fund his defense against counterclaims alleging manipulation of commercial auto claims reserves while it pursues confirmation of its bankruptcy plan.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida federal judge on July 10 entered an order approving a plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal and dismissing with prejudice her putative class action against the maker of Fume-brand vapes in which she had accused it of misleadingly marketing its vape products.

LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge on July 9 granted in part and denied in part Visa Inc.’s motion to dismiss certain claims against it arising out of its processing of payments for the pornography website Pornhub brought by a plaintiff who claims that the website monetized child sex abuse material (CSAM) made of her while she was a minor, dismissing a civil conspiracy claim but allowing claims to proceed for conspiracy to violate sex-trafficking laws and violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL).

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 9 upheld a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision affirming an examiner’s rejection of a claim of a medical technology company’s patent describing a blood sample collection device; the panel agreed with the finding that prior art anticipated the claim, rendering it unpatentable.

SAN FRANCISCO — An Employee Retirement Income Security Act case challenging the use of allegedly outdated assumptions to calculate annuities for married pension plan participants would be resolved in a settlement that the named plaintiffs say would provide “more than $149 million in combined monetary and prospective relief to” members of a proposed settlement class and subclasses that together would consist of nearly 170,000 individuals; in the preliminary approval motion filed in a California federal court on July 9, the named plaintiffs further say that up to $35 million for attorney fees and costs “would not reduce the monetary benefits to the Class.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 9 saw no error in a Delaware federal judge’s decision to grant judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on invalidity as to multiple patent claims asserted by a biopharmaceutical company that accused AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP and a related entity of infringing its cancer treatment patents; the panel agreed with the judge that the asserted patents disclosed only broad projected ranges of dosages without clearly explaining how to determine a therapeutic dosage.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A Florida appeals court reversed and remanded a lower court’s ruling enforcing a settlement agreement specifically as to the payment of $21,500 in attorney fees to a homeowner in a coverage dispute with the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA) over damage to the homeowner’s property, allegedly caused by a tropical storm, finding that the insured homeowner failed to show that the settlement amount did not include attorney fees.

NEW YORK — That a party in a dispute involving a breach of a manufacturing and supply agreement disagrees with the opinions of an opposing expert witness is not grounds for exclusion under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, a New York federal judge held in denying two motions to exclude expert testimony.