ATLANTA — A Georgia appeals panel on March 12 affirmed a lower court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of a boat manufacturer insured in its lawsuit alleging that its insurers acted in bad faith for failing to settle an underlying action arising from a boating accident that killed a 7-year-old boy, holding that the record evidence established that the primary insurer was at all times responsible for the insured’s defense and never tendered its policy limits to the insured.

NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel saw no abuse of discretion in a New York federal judge’s finding that the owner of a South Asian film festival in New York was unlikely to succeed on trademark claims against the owner of a South Asian film festival in both Texas and New York, affirming the judge’s decision to deny a preliminary injunction.

BALTIMORE — A Maryland federal judge on March 12 ordered a case brought by the family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose medical tissue was taken without her consent in 1951 to create the first immortalized human cell line that has been used in medical developments from the polio vaccine to in vitro fertilization, to be closed after signing off on a joint stipulation to dismiss the remaining defendants with prejudice

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a pair of opinions, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a judgment of infringement against the makers of the Norton antivirus software, holding that a Virginia federal judge wrongly held that the patents at issue are not directed at an abstract idea; the panel also reversed the judge’s entry of sanctions against the software company’s counsel at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP for failing to comply with an order compelling it to disclose allegedly privileged information it received from a former employee of the software company the firm also represented.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge on March 11 granted the U.S. government’s motion for default judgment and ordered forfeiture to the government of now-frozen cryptocurrency allegedly stolen by North Korean hackers, finding that the cryptocurrency is considered the proceeds of computer fraud and subject to forfeiture in this case where the government correctly provided notice.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California federal judge on March 11 granted a motion by Home Depot Inc. (HD) to dismiss a putative class action lawsuit against it for allegedly violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by mislabeling its Christmas lights in a manner that a consumer says rendered the products defective.

NORFOLK, Va. — Claiming that his application for total and permanent (T&P) disability benefits didn’t get “a full and fair review” and that “the lasting effects of his injuries . . . render him substantially unable to engage in any occupation or employment for remuneration or profit” under the applicable definition, former National Football League player Aaron R. Rouse sued the NFL Player Disability and Survivor Benefit Plan in a Virginia federal court on March 11 for retroactive and continuing benefits.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government filed two applications with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to stay orders issued in two putative class lawsuits that postpone the termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for individuals from Syria and Haiti; in the latest application filed March 11 and concerning individuals from Haiti, the government argues, referencing earlier rulings by the high court for the government concerning a similar case over Venezuela, that “[l]ower courts should be guided by this Court’s conclusions that the government was likely to succeed on the merits,” but instead “stop-and-start litigation over TPS terminations has become endemic.”