NEW ORLEANS — A divided Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed and remanded a lower court’s ruling and held that residents who sued Jackson, Miss., for allegedly contaminating the local drinking water supply with lead have valid due process claims against the city.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Kentucky appeals court panel affirmed a lower court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of a liability insurer in its lawsuit disputing indemnity coverage for underlying negligent retention and negligent supervision claims that were brought against its insured, holding that the appellants failed to demonstrate that coverage was triggered by an “occurrence” under the policy and that the policy's “expected or intended” exclusion precluded coverage.

KONA, Hawaii — A smoker’s estate on Nov. 17 filed a motion in Hawaii state court to vacate a jury’s general damages award in his favor and for a new trial solely on general damages, after the court entered final judgment reducing the jury’s verdict of $350,000 in compensatory damages to $0 based on comparative fault and prior settlements by co-defendants.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia in a Nov. 17 opinion noted doubt about “the lawfulness of” the federal government’s centralized database of Americans’ personal data but denied a motion for a stay filed by several nonprofits and individuals based on the failure to demonstrate irreparable injury as the database changes have already been made.

PASADENA, Calif. — Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s split June 18 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 17 vacated and remanded for reconsideration a class action ruling that the third-party administrator (TPA) of a self-funded health plan violated the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s antidiscrimination provision by administering exclusions of gender-affirming care.

RALEIGH, N.C.  — A North Carolina state court judge on Nov. 17 approved a class action settlement between patients and former patients of a hospital system and the hospital system in a suit asserting that software on the hospital’s website captured their information and sent it to Facebook without their consent, finding that the $2.45 million settlement “is fair, reasonable, adequate, and in the best interest of the settlement class.”

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 17 affirmed a district court’s ruling that an all-risk policy’s contamination exclusion bars coverage for losses sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic, rejecting the insureds’ argument that the district court erred in finding that a California appellate panel’s ruling in a similar case is applicable to the instant dispute.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a per curiam order denying rehearing en banc sought by immigrants after a panel in August dismissed an appeal by the federal government for lack of appellate jurisdiction and vacated a trial court’s ruling that probable cause exists to determine that the federal government’s actions in an immigrant removal class case constitute criminal contempt, opining that the government “satisfied the stringent requirements for a writ of mandamus.”