DETROIT — A Michigan appellate court on March 18 reversed and remanded a lower court’s order dismissing a declaratory judgment suit by Progressive Michigan Insurance Co. alleging that it owed no coverage for an accident due to material misrepresentations about the garage locations of the insured vehicle, finding that the lower court abused its discretion when entering a dismissal order after entering a default judgment against certain defendants because the dismissal order prevented State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the insurer of another vehicle involved in the accident, “from defending its interests as an interested party.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia ordered all Voice of America (VOA) employees placed on administrative leave in March 2025 to return to work no later than March 23, 2026, in a decision that partially granted and partially denied summary judgment motions filed by journalists, unions and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA.

INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana federal judge dismissed a bad faith claim without prejudice after determining that the insureds failed to show that the insurer of a recreational vehicle wrongfully refused to pay policy proceeds, deceived the insureds or delayed the adjustment of the insureds’ vandalism claim.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A judge properly instructed a jury on the issue of whether an employer’s workers’ compensation insurance covered mesothelioma claims, and an attorney’s testimony explaining why a company would obtain insurance in a state where it had no employees was offered as rebuttal testimony, not expert opinion, a Missouri appeals court held in affirming a defense verdict.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on March 17 reversed and remanded a lower court’s dismissal of a health system’s qui tam suit asserting violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) and related state laws by drug manufacturers participating in the Public Health Service Act’s Section 340B Drug Pricing Program, finding that because the health system brought an action pursuant to the FCA, the lack of a private right of action under Section 340B was not material and therefore the health system’s claims were not barred by Section 340B.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court treated as petitions for a writ of certiorari before judgment two applications to stay orders issued in two putative class lawsuits that postpone the termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for individuals from Syria and Haiti; granting the petitions, the high court consolidated the cases and set one hour for oral arguments “during the second week of the April 2026 argument session.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A North Carolina federal bankruptcy judge properly denied an asbestos claimant’s motion for relief from the automatic stay in the Chapter 11 case of Georgia-Pacific spinoff Bestwall LLC, a federal judge ruled in affirming the decision on appeal.

NEW YORK — Saying in part that it found no error “in the district court’s decision to assign minimal weight to [the claimant]’s self-reported symptoms and to focus, instead, on the paucity of objective record evidence supporting her claimed inability to work,” the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a March 17 summary order affirming judgment for a long-term disability (LTD) plan administrator that denied a claim that was based on a nurse practitioner’s purported symptoms of long COVID.