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HONOLULU — An amicus curiae group called the “Consolidated Class Plaintiffs” will take part in Feb. 6 oral argument after the Hawaii Supreme Court expanded the time allotted in the case concerning reserved questions on how the subrogation rights of property and casualty insurance carriers bear on a proposed global settlement of claims related to the August 2023 Maui wildfires; additionally, a pending opposed motion seeks to stay a lower court’s allocation proceeding.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 17 held that provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate the First Amendment rights of petitioners TikTok Inc. and Tik Tok creators and a nonprofit seeking to stop the enforcement of the law that promises to ban the social network on Jan. 19 absent a corporate ownership change, finding that the act’s challenged provisions “further an important Government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression and do not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further that interest.”
DETROIT — A Michigan federal jury on Jan. 16 awarded $133,000 to a former employee of a resort after determining that his refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine was based on a sincerely held religious belief and that the resort failed to prove that accommodating the employee’s religious beliefs would have caused it to suffer an undue hardship.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A Missouri federal judge on Jan. 16 granted preliminary approval to a $4.95 million class settlement proposed in a suit that was filed months before a recent wave of similar Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to health plans’ tobacco surcharges.
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Jan. 16 reversed a New York federal judge’s dismissal of a trade dress infringement dispute between competing nut companies, holding that the plaintiff company adequately alleged the possibility of confusion between the packaging of the companies’ respective pistachio products.
RICHMOND, Va. —The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower federal court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a plaintiff insurer alleging a defendant insurer breached their indemnity agreement for a $1 million appeal bond, rejecting the defendant insurer’s argument that it has no duty to indemnify under the equitable estoppel theory.
DENVER — A federal judge in Colorado has denied two motions to dismiss a lawsuit over abandoned hydraulic fracturing wells that the plaintiffs contend pose a threat to human health and have the potential to contaminate groundwater, ruling that the plaintiffs have “sufficiently alleged fraud with particularity” against the company and its principals.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) on Jan. 16 released a long-awaited revised proposed regulation and a proposed class exemption on an Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 issue that has seen significant litigation — employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) transactions.
NEW YORK — A man is free to sue whomever he wants, and because dismissal with prejudice precludes any future litigation on the claims, the talc defendant will not suffer any prejudice and is not entitled to discovery into an expert on whom the plaintiff no longer relies, a federal magistrate judge in New York said Jan. 15 in recommending that the court grant the motion.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A largely split panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed multiple findings from a Rhode Island federal judge in a patent infringement dispute between two manufacturers of bathtubs for infants, including a finding of noninfringement, with the panel majority holding that there are genuine disputes of material fact as to infringement.
SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a plaintiff company adequately alleged that another company infringed on copyrighted elements of its kinetic sculptures that could be manipulated into various shapes to survive a dismissal motion; the panel reversed a California federal judge’s order dismissing the copyright infringement claim.