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Appellate

  • July 21, 2025

    Feds Tell 3rd Circ. Gun Rights Not Automatic After Crime

    The Third Circuit heard oral arguments Monday over whether the Second Amendment gives a man convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol the automatic right to own weapons after serving his time.

  • July 21, 2025

    Copyright And TM Cases To Watch In The Second Half Of 2025

    The U.S. Supreme Court will evaluate contributory liability in a $1 billion copyright case involving internet service providers, and the Federal Circuit will assess the latest attempted trademark registration testing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's comfort with profanity. Here are the copyright and trademark cases to watch for the rest of the year.

  • July 21, 2025

    Enterprise Need Only Check License, Conn. Panel Rules

    Enterprise Rent-A-Car can not be held liable for renting a vehicle to a man who became intoxicated and struck a jogger and his dog later that day, a Connecticut appeals court ruled, saying the company was only required to inspect the driver's physical license and not to find out if the state had limited him to vehicles equipped with car breathalyzers.

  • July 21, 2025

    Mich. Justices Raise Bar For Prisoner Contraband Cases

    The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Monday that possession of contraband in prison is not a strict liability offense, meaning prosecutors must prove that a prisoner was, at minimum, reckless in obtaining drugs or alcohol while behind bars. 

  • July 21, 2025

    Guinea Tells DC Circ. $22M Award Can't Be Enforced

    The Republic of Guinea has urged the D.C. Circuit not to revive a consulting company's bid to enforce a $22 million arbitration award, saying a lower court correctly found that it was unclear whether the country agreed to arbitrate the dispute in the first place.

  • July 21, 2025

    9th Circ. Narrows 'Remain In Mexico' Block During Appeal

    A split Ninth Circuit panel ruled that a California federal judge's nationwide block of the Remain in Mexico program can only apply to the clients of the nonprofit that brought the underlying challenge while the Trump administration's appeal proceeds.

  • July 21, 2025

    Baseball Training Co. Must Face Suit Over Mom's Injury

    Indiana's court of appeals ruled that a baseball training center cannot escape a lawsuit accusing the business of negligence after an admittedly unstable training screen fell over and caused a head injury to the mother of one of the trainees.

  • July 21, 2025

    Split 8th Circ. OKs Fed Charges In Cop Car Burning Case

    A split Eighth Circuit panel has ruled that a man convicted in Arkansas federal court of firebombing three police vehicles must face his sentence, ruling that, because the departments to which the cars belonged received federal money, the U.S. government is allowed to bring charges against the man.

  • July 21, 2025

    Wash. Plastic Surgeon Can't Get $13M Jury Verdict Overturned

    A Washington appeals court panel refused on Monday to undo a $13 million jury verdict against a plastic surgeon in a medical malpractice case, rejecting the doctor's argument that the lower court wrongly allowed evidence of state regulators' unrelated disciplinary proceedings against her.

  • July 21, 2025

    Justices Asked If Frontier Law Covers 'Corner Crossing' Case

    A Wyoming ranch owner is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Tenth Circuit decision that four hunters who crossed over its property to reach public lands didn't trespass, arguing that state law prohibits "corner crossing" and that no federal easement exists across private land for public access.

  • July 21, 2025

    Ex-Judges Call SAP Hypocritical In 'Self-Serving' Fintiv Appeal

    Retired Federal Circuit Judges Randall Rader and Kathleen O'Malley are urging their former court to reject SAP America Inc.'s challenge to how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is implementing new policies, saying the agency is acting within its limits and that SAP is selfishly contradicting arguments it previously made at the U.S. Supreme Court.

  • July 21, 2025

    Calif. Court Orders Drug Deal Retrial Over Mistaken Admission

    A California state appeals court on Monday demanded a new trial on drug dealing charges for a man who admitted to possessing cocaine while on probation, finding a trial court judge had erroneously admitted botched testimony the man gave in a probation hearing.

  • July 21, 2025

    How GOP Judges Teed Up 4th Circ.'s Supreme Court Shutout

    No appeals court found the U.S. Supreme Court's latest term less endearing than the Fourth Circuit, where a supersize shutout accentuated a multiyear slump for the once-favored circuit and repeatedly vindicated conservative dissenters on the left-leaning bench.

  • July 21, 2025

    Board Says Salvadoran Women Not A Social Group Under INA

    The Board of Immigration Appeals has dismissed a Salvadoran woman's attempt to revive her application for asylum and withholding of removal, ruling that a particular social group based solely on an individual's sex and nationality is "overbroad and insufficiently particular." 

  • July 21, 2025

    Energy Litigation To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2025

    Courtroom showdowns between the Trump administration and blue states over U.S. energy and climate change policy will dominate the energy litigation landscape for the rest of 2025. Here is what the energy industry will be watching closely in the second half of the year.

  • July 21, 2025

    Pa. Hospital Can Shield Some Docs In Birth Injury Suit

    A Pennsylvania state appeals panel won't force a hospital to turn over all of its internal reports in a suit by parents alleging that the hospital's negligence led to their son's injuries at birth, finding that the hospital sufficiently showed that two of the three contested files are privileged.

  • July 21, 2025

    Mich. Panel Upholds Atty Fee For Court-Appointed Counsel

    A Michigan appellate panel has upheld a sentence requiring a defendant to pay a $400 attorney fee to her court-appointed counsel, rejecting her contentions that it was an unconstitutional fine and that the court failed to determine whether she had the ability to pay.

  • July 21, 2025

    Calif. High Court Says Biotech Investor Suit Belongs In Del.

    The California Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a lawsuit pursued by a minority investor alleging San Diego-based EpicentRx and its officers bamboozled investors belongs in Delaware Chancery Court, rejecting arguments that enforcing the biopharmaceutical company's forum selection clause violated Golden State jury trial protections.

  • July 21, 2025

    Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

    Last week at the Delaware Court of Chancery, a major settlement between Meta Platforms Inc. and its investors reached on the proverbial courthouse steps during day two of a trial ended an $8 billion-plus suit accusing the company's directors and officers of breaching privacy regulations and corporate fiduciary duties tied to allegations dating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal more than a decade ago.

  • July 21, 2025

    Tax-Lien Biz Atty Tells Jury He Didn't Seek To Dupe Lender

    Counsel for a former compliance lawyer accused of pilfering from a $20 million line of credit extended to his tax-lien investment firm told a Manhattan federal jury Monday that the defendant was "sloppy," but never intended fraud.

  • July 21, 2025

    DC Circ. Strikes Down Gag Order On X Corp. Subpoenas

    A D.C. Circuit panel has struck down a lower court's sweeping order blocking X Corp. from informing users about government data requests, with the appeals court finding the district court failed to identify specific harm that would come from keeping users in the loop.

  • July 21, 2025

    11th Circ Says. Experian Not Liable For Credit Dispute Costs

    The Eleventh Circuit upheld a win for Experian PLC when it held that a consumer's attempts to correct inaccurate information in a credit report can't constitute an injury without evidence that the data was published to a third party or some other actual or imminent harm.

  • July 21, 2025

    EPA Asks 9th Circ. To Reverse Calif. Judge In Fluoride Suit

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking the Ninth Circuit to reverse a California federal judge who ruled that the EPA's current "optimal" level of fluoride in drinking water poses an unreasonable risk of lowering children's IQ.

  • July 21, 2025

    Dentist Can't Shake $11.4M Verdict Over Patient's Cancer

    A Pennsylvania Superior Court on Monday affirmed an $11.4 million verdict against a dentist who allegedly ignored signs of skin cancer during appointments, rejecting her argument that the evidence didn't support the verdict.

  • July 21, 2025

    4th Circ. Reverses Portion Of Railroads' Broadband Suit

    The Fourth Circuit has ruled that the Association of American Railroads has standing to challenge a Virginia state law requiring railroads to allow for broadband crossings, reversing a trial court decision and dealing another blow to a law that the Virginia Supreme Court already gutted on state constitutional grounds in May.

Expert Analysis

  • Google Case Amicus Briefs Reveal Patent Damage Fault Lines

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    The 21 amicus briefs filed before the en banc rehearing of EcoFactor v. Google offer opposing viewpoints on important patent damages issues that extend beyond the specific question the Federal Circuit eventually ruled on, helping practitioners anticipate and address likely objections to future damages opinions, say attorneys at Stout.

  • Using Federal Forum Provisions To Nix State Securities Cases

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    A California appeals court's recent decision in Bullock v. Rivian clarifies that underwriters may enforce federal forum provisions to escape state court Securities Act claims, marking progress in restoring such lawsuits to federal court and reducing the litigation costs arising from duplicative state court litigation, say attorneys at Paul Weiss.

  • 30 Years Later: 2nd Circ.'s Road To Arbitral Preemption

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    The Second Circuit's recent decision in Lloyds of London v. 3131 Veterans Blvd. overturns its own 1995 precedent and squares its position with decades of circuit court jurisprudence holding that international arbitration agreements must take primacy over state anti-arbitration insurance laws, say attorneys at Linklaters.

  • Series

    Playing Poker Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Poker is a master class in psychology, risk management and strategic thinking, and I’m a better attorney because it has taught me to read my opponents, adapt when I’m dealt the unexpected and stay patient until I'm ready to reveal my hand, says Casey Kingsley at McCreadyLaw.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Becoming A Firmwide MVP

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    Though lawyers don't have a neat metric like baseball players for measuring the value they contribute to their organizations, the sooner new attorneys learn skills frequently skipped in law school — like networking, marketing, client development and case evaluation — the more valuable, and less replaceable, they will be, says Alex Barnett at DiCello Levitt.

  • 9th Circ. Ruling Clarifies Derivative Suit Representation Test

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    The Ninth Circuit's recent ruling in Bigfoot Ventures v. Knighton clarifies the test used to assess the adequacy of a plaintiff's representation in a shareholder derivative action, and will likely prove useful to litigants by ensuring that courts can fully examine all relevant circumstances, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • Patenting AI And Machine Learning In The Wake Of Recentive

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    Though the Federal Circuit's recent decision in Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp. initially appears to doom patents related to artificial intelligence and machine learning, a closer look shows that strategies for successfully drafting and prosecuting such patents offer hope despite increased pushback from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, say attorneys at Banner Witcoff.

  • Age Bias Suit Against Aircraft Co. Offers Lessons For Layoffs

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    In Raymond v. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, an aircraft maker's former employees recently dismissed their remaining claims after the Tenth Circuit rejected their nearly decade-old collective action alleging age discrimination stemming from a 2013 reduction in force, reminding employers about the importance of carefully planning and documenting mass layoffs, say attorneys at Cooley.

  • Trade Secrets Would Likely See Court Protection From GenAI

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    The advent of generative artificial intelligence has given rise to debate about how this technology will affect intellectual property rights and trade secret protections in particular, but courts to date have protected owners when technological advances have facilitated new means for trade secret theft, say attorneys at Kilpatrick Townsend.

  • How Mass Arbitration Defense Strategies Have Fared In Court

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    As businesses face consumers who leverage arbitration agreements to compel mass arbitration, companies are trying defense strategies like batching arbitration cases to reduce costs, and escaping specific mass arbitrations without rejecting the process completely, with varying results in the courtroom, say attorneys at Montgomery McCracken.

  • FTC Focus: Interlocking Directorate Enforcement May Persist

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    Though the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Andrew Ferguson seems likely to adopt a pro-business approach to antitrust enforcement, his endorsement of broader liability for officers or directors who illegally sit on boards of competing corporations signals that businesses should not expect board-level antitrust scrutiny to slacken, says Timothy Burroughs at Proskauer.

  • How Cos. Can Navigate Risks Of New Cartel Terrorist Labels

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    The Trump administration’s recent designation of eight drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations gives rise to new criminal and civil liabilities for companies that are unwittingly exposed to cartel activity, but businesses can mitigate such risks in a few key ways, say attorneys at Steptoe.

  • Mass. Suit Points To New Scrutiny For Home Equity Contracts

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    The Massachusetts attorney general’s recent charge that a lender sold unregulated reverse mortgages shows more regulators are scrutinizing mortgage alternatives like home equity contracts, but a similar case in the Ninth Circuit suggests more courts need to help develop a consensus on these products' legality, say attorneys at Weiner Brodsky.

  • Bid Protest Spotlight: Size, Supply Schedules, SINs

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    In this month's bid protest roundup, Alissandra McCann at MoFo examines three recent decisions, two of which offer helpful reminders for U.S. General Services Administration schedule holders drafting blanket purchase agreement proposals, and one for small-business joint ventures to avoid running afoul of the U.S. Small Business Administration's two-year rule.

  • 4th Circ. Latest To Curb Short-Seller Usage In Securities Suits

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    The Fourth Circuit's recent decision in Defeo v. IonQ will serve as a powerful and persuasive new precedent for corporate defendants as courts continue curtailing securities class action plaintiffs' use of short-seller reports to plead federal securities law claims, say attorneys at Alston & Bird.

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