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July 15, 2025
ATLANTA — Affirming a trial court’s denial of a request for default judgment sanctions over surveillance and bodycam video footage that was purportedly not preserved, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel stressed that the appellants, who were suing police for false arrest, did not establish the necessary bad faith to justify such an extreme sanction.
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July 15, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge ordered sanctions against an attorney from Ramey LLP who formerly represented a pro se plaintiff in a patent infringement dispute brought against Netflix Inc., holding that the attorney inappropriately shared discovery information with a third party the court previously blocked from being joined to the litigation.
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July 15, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — Three days after Meta Platforms Inc. filed a petition for mandamus with the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, contending that the “apex doctrine” precludes a trial court’s order for the deposition of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, the plaintiffs alleging privacy violations from Meta’s purported gathering of their personal health information (PHI) from hospital websites asked the lower court to enforce the deposition order.
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July 15, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Asserting that the congressional intent behind the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) was to prevent the disclosure of student materials without the consent of students or parents, a school district filed a petition for certiorari, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to clear up conflicting court interpretations over enforcement of the statute alongside state public records acts (PRAs) and to find that it properly withheld surveillance videos sought in connection with bullying complaints.
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July 14, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s business emails across the spectrum of companies where he serves as a high-level executive are not in the hands of third parties, and he is responsible for producing them in his suit against OpenAI Inc. and related entities, a federal magistrate judge in California said.
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July 11, 2025
SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on July 10 issued an “admonition” in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s motion seeking sanctions against Amazon.com Inc. for Amazon’s alleged use of its privilege log to hide evidence in a suit accusing Amazon and its officers of tricking customers into enrolling in the Amazon Prime service.
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July 10, 2025
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Plaintiffs’ asbestos experts accused of trade libel by Johnson & Johnson spinoff Pecos River Talc LLC must produce the names of mesothelioma study participants because their identities “are relevant, proportional to the needs of the case, and are not privileged,” a Virginia federal magistrate judge ruled.
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July 10, 2025
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel determined, in partially vacating and remanding a federal judge’s order, “that disputed issues of material fact preclude summary judgment” on one of two New York bank employees’ claims that her religious beliefs exempted her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine after the employees were terminated for not getting vaccinated to return to work after the pandemic but agreed that the judge was correct in imposing discovery sanctions related to the employees’ lawsuit alleging religious freedom, First Amendment and Title VII violations.
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July 09, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A medical product company tells the U.S. Supreme Court that a North Carolina federal court violated its due process rights by changing both the time to trial and the time for discovery in a patent infringement case for which the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has already ordered a new trial.
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July 08, 2025
PHOENIX — Litigation continues in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit over a $105 million employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) deal after a bench trial, with a joint filing in Arizona federal court where the parties dispute whether a recreational vehicle company should participate in “Phase II” discovery.
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July 07, 2025
LOS ANGELES — Having successfully blocked a 40-year-old mesothelioma sufferer’s attempt to gain trial preference, an asbestos-talc defendant asked a California judge to compel full genetic testing, saying it was the only way to get to the heart of causation and damages in the case.
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July 07, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — Ten states in an amicus curiae brief tell a judge in Delaware that destruction of asbestos trust documents would encourage fraud and mismanagement and undercut state laws determining that such evidence is relevant and discoverable in pending and potential asbestos personal injury suits.
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July 03, 2025
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge on July 2 directed the issuance of letters rogatory to a Ghanaian insurer and three of its employees to acquire otherwise unobtainable information as part of a gold mining equipment dispute over whether the defendants are direct insurers or reinsurers of the plaintiffs.
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July 03, 2025
OKLAHOMA CITY — A trial court correctly found that information a man sought from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) is privileged under a state confidentiality law and not susceptible to discovery under the Oklahoma Open Records Act (ORA), an Oklahoma Supreme Court majority ruled, also finding that a newly revised version of the confidentiality law further confirmed this and is not unconstitutional.
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July 03, 2025
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal judge accepted a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation advising granting sanctions only as to an adverse inference instruction related to the purported destruction of text messages by an insured, a Minneapolis event center, in the insurer’s suit seeking a declaration that it does not need to pay an appraisal award of $986,436 related to business income loss the insurer says was based upon “concealed and misrepresented material facts and circumstances willfully and with intent to defraud.”
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July 02, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an American chip maker’s request for relief from a California federal judge’s discovery order requiring it to turn its source code over to a Chinese rival in a patent infringement dispute.
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June 30, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In its June 30 order list, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari to a bitcoin user on his question over whether the Internal Revenue Service violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with the warrantless seizure of users’ financial records from a digital currency exchange.
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June 30, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found that the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) properly entered default judgment against a shipping company that refused to comply with its discovery orders in a lawsuit brought against it by a client under the Shipping Act of 1984 (SA).
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June 27, 2025
NEW YORK — A New York federal court properly granted the wife and daughter of a wealthy, deceased businessman to serve a discovery subpoena on a financial organization for use in a fraud lawsuit in the United Kingdom, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, finding that the subpoena complied with the guidelines of U.S. Code Title 28 Section 1782 for discovery to be used in a foreign proceeding or tribunal.
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June 27, 2025
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Insureds and one insurer filed a joint stipulation asking a North Carolina court to dismiss the claims and counterclaims between them in a coverage dispute arising from the opioid epidemic.
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June 27, 2025
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that a fired Chili’s general manager’s “own recollection” of the details of his termination, which differs from those outlined in a now-inadmissible report, and the fact that he was replaced by a much younger employee serve as evidence for an age discrimination claim in reversing and remanding a Tennessee federal court’s order that granted summary judgment to his employer.
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June 26, 2025
LINCOLN, Neb. — Noting a trial court’s finding that a group of parties accused of fraud engaged in “repeated discovery violations” and “inexcusable recalcitrance,” the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld an award of more than $2 million in default judgment for the plaintiff-appellees, as well as an attorney fees award exceeding $180,000.
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June 23, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court in its June 23 order list denied a petition to review an Employee Retirement Income Security Act discovery ruling in favor of a multiemployer health plan; the petitioner had argued that the “decision exacerbates both the ongoing split between Circuits as to determining what a plan administrator must do in order to satisfy its fiduciary obligation to perform a full and fair review, as well as the inconsistent factors that courts employ in order to determine whether discovery should be permitted,” and the plan countered that the decision shows only “the routine exercise of judicial discretion in applying the same rule to differing facts.”
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June 23, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Plans have been revealed for an Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit of “how the U.S. Department of Labor [DOL] has shared investigative information with non-governmental entities involved in class action litigation and the extent of any related controls.”
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June 18, 2025
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Monsanto Co. filed a reply brief in Vermont federal court on June 17, arguing that a school district’s opposition to the company’s motion to quash the district’s Rule 30(b)(6) notice for deposition and motion for a protective order fails. Monsanto also contends that the district has already been given a “full and fair opportunity to explore” the topics about which it seeks information in its current notice of deposition.