Appellate

  • October 16, 2026

    Balancing The Scales: Criminal Appeals, Sentencing Rules

    The Second Circuit has been ordered to take another look at a murder-for-hire conviction in light of the high court's new miscarriage-of-justice exception for criminal appeal waivers, and the top courts in Pennsylvania and Michigan will look at the retroactivity of new sentencing rules. Here, Law360 highlights access to justice stories arising from litigation, verdicts and judgments you may have missed.

  • October 16, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Stands By Double Denials, SpaceTime3D PTAB Loss

    The Federal Circuit declined Friday to rehear two cases decided in August, one where an e-commerce patent owner was looking for the security to assert its patent in future litigation, and the other where SpaceTime3D was trying to revive patents cut down by Apple and Google.

  • October 16, 2026

    US Inventor Presses Justices To Hear $2.6B Centripetal Case

    US Inventor Inc. has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to revive Centripetal Networks LLC's patent infringement case against Cisco Systems Inc., arguing that a lower court that wiped out a $2.6 billion judgment had wrongly denied Centripetal the chance to respond to new claim construction.

  • October 16, 2026

    Del. High Court Backs Gard In Litigation Funding Fight

    The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld a Chancery Court ruling rejecting claims that hedge fund manager Casey Gard and affiliates improperly shifted a litigation-finance business away from a company he co-owned with attorney Brett K. Findler, ending Findler's challenge to liability findings from a closely watched business breakup.

  • October 16, 2026

    Could A Criminal Sentencing Case Upend Loper Bright?

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is concerned that a ruling instructing trial courts to defer to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines could blow a "pretty big hole" in the court's recent rejection of deference doctrines. His colleagues, however, don't appear as perturbed.

  • October 16, 2026

    Mass. Court Adds Knowledge Prong To Gun Charge

    Prosecutors must prove that a defendant found with a licensed firearm while intoxicated knew it was loaded in order to secure a conviction under a state law prohibiting such conduct, Massachusetts' intermediate-level appellate court said Friday in vacating a conviction.

  • October 16, 2026

    9th Circ. Won't Rethink $2B Devas Arbitral Award Confirmation

    The Ninth Circuit said Friday it will not disturb a unanimous three-judge panel's decision to enforce a $2 billion arbitral award issued to a satellite communications company, rejecting the award debtor's petition for a rehearing by the full court.

  • October 16, 2026

    Justices Told Siemens Chip Patent Win Shows Fed. Circ. Split

    The owner of a set of patents covering computer chip design wants the U.S. Supreme Court to look at an alleged internal split within the Federal Circuit of how it looks at whether patents are eligible under the high court's Alice test.

  • October 16, 2026

    US Says 1907 Border Strip Lets Wall Work Continue

    The federal government is asking the D.C. Circuit to deny an Arizona tribe's emergency bid to block border wall construction, saying the Indigenous nation's claim that a 1907 law that established the Roosevelt Reservation as part of its traditional homelands ignores history and precedent.

  • October 16, 2026

    Meet The Candidates Seeking A Texas Supreme Court Seat

    Four justices on the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court will defend their seats from Democratic challengers in November, making for a closely watched contest on a bench that's made controversial moves this year.

  • October 16, 2026

    'Defend To The End': Atty Admits Error In Gucci Glasses Suit

    An attorney blamed a "defend to the end" attitude he'd developed while fighting foreclosures for turning a client's dispute over $399 Gucci glasses into a multiyear legal morass that landed him in front of a Pennsylvania disciplinary panel on Friday.

  • October 16, 2026

    11th Circ. Backs Florida Firm In Lender Note Verdict Appeal

    The Eleventh Circuit in an unpublished opinion backed a law firm accused of botching several financial transactions for a Puerto Rican microcap lender, affirming the findings of a jury and a lower court that it didn't commit malpractice by failing to secure the company's assets during bankruptcy proceedings.

  • October 16, 2026

    Mich. Panel Says PIP Opt-Out Bars State Medical Coverage

    Michigan motorists who opt out of personal injury protection medical benefits cannot obtain such coverage through the state's assigned claims plan if they are injured as a non-occupant of a motor vehicle, a Michigan state appeals court ruled.

  • October 16, 2026

    11th Circ. ERISA Exhaustion Shift Furthers Textualist Trend

    An Eleventh Circuit decision overruling decades-old precedent that took a strict view of when federal benefits law claims could be brought in court continues a trend of courts excising judicially imposed rules not contained in statutory text, attorneys say.

  • October 15, 2026

    Would-Be Kavanaugh Assassin Slams Feds' Skewed Facts

    A woman accused of trying to kill U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh told the Fourth Circuit that federal prosecutors have presented a "wildly inaccurate description" of a Maryland federal judge's sentencing decision, rejecting their argument that she got off too easy because of her gender identity.

  • October 15, 2026

    10th Circ. Shifts Indian Status Burden In Sex Abuse Cases

    Reversing its own long-term precedent, the Tenth Circuit has ruled that defendants seeking to claim Native American status under federal criminal law must prove their status themselves, a decision that rewrites decades of circuit precedent dealing with how crimes on Native lands are prosecuted by the federal government.

  • October 15, 2026

    Anthropic Urges DC Circ. To Revisit Defense Supply Risk Ban

    Anthropic has urged the D.C. Circuit to reconsider a split panel's decision allowing the Pentagon to exclude Claude artificial intelligence models from its supply chain, saying the decision, if left standing, puts U.S. companies at risk of punishment for refusing Pentagon demands.

  • October 15, 2026

    2nd Circ. Doubts NY's Power To Regulate Nuclear Discharge

    A Second Circuit panel appeared skeptical of a New York law banning a decommissioned nuclear power plant's waste from being discharged into the Hudson River, asking pointed questions on Thursday on why those discharges are not part of the plant's operations.

  • October 15, 2026

    Texas Appeals Court Says Cities Can't Block ETJ Opt-Out Law

    A Texas appeals court on Thursday found that cities cannot block a state law that allows citizens living in areas surrounding municipalities to leave the cities' jurisdiction, saying the law does not violate the Texas Constitution.

  • October 15, 2026

    Murdaugh Tells 4th Circ. To Revive Jury Tampering Civil Suit

    Disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh asked the Fourth Circuit on Thursday to revive his suit accusing a court clerk of interfering in his murder trial, arguing he has standing because the alleged tampering "destroyed the value" of his $600,000 defense.

  • October 15, 2026

    1st Circ. Orders New Look At Defendant's Role In Drug Org.

    The First Circuit on Thursday said a Boston man must be resentenced after he pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute drugs because the sentencing judge erroneously found he was not a low-level player in the drug trafficking operation.

  • October 15, 2026

    9th Circ. Orders New Murder Trial Over Juror Mental Crisis

    The Ninth Circuit on Thursday vacated a man's convictions for a slaying on the waters off California's coast, saying the trial court should have declared a mistrial after dismissing a juror who experienced a mental health crisis during deliberations.

  • October 15, 2026

    Wash. Justices Doubt Prosecutor Immunity In Judge DQ Case

    Washington Supreme Court justices pushed back Thursday on assertions by a county prosecutor's office that it's immune from claims that it improperly used disqualification affidavits to remove a former judge from its cases, with one justice noting that a line-level prosecutor acknowledged an officewide policy to seek disqualification of the judge.

  • October 15, 2026

    Ohio Justices Say There Is No Limit On Refiled Actions

    The Supreme Court of Ohio on Thursday ruled that the state's saving statute does not limit how many times an action may be refiled, allowing a wealth management firm client to proceed with claims over bad investment advice he allegedly received.

  • October 15, 2026

    Louisiana Asks Justices To Undo Stay In Coastal Damage Suit

    Louisiana urged the U.S. Supreme Court to erase a Fifth Circuit stay of a remand order preventing one of its parishes from litigating coastal damage claims against an oil and gas company in state court, arguing the "comity essential to our federalism" was disrupted.

Expert Analysis

  • Roundup

    The Most Talked-About Supreme Court Decisions Of 2026

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    This term, 11 U.S. Supreme Court decisions quickly became hot topics among Law360's guest writers.

  • A New Defense For Medicaid Fraud Cases In Texas

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    The Texas Supreme Court decision in LabCorp v. Texas last month, finding that the state's False Claims Act requires proof that an omission is material, is among the first to establish that the government's lack of reaction to the defendant's disclosures rendered alleged omissions immaterial, say attorneys at Sheppard.

  • Fighting The Evidentiary Risks Of Deepfakes In Court

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    Though courts and federal rules are only slowly developing frameworks for assessing digital evidence that could have been created or generated by artificial intelligence, litigators should understand what steps they'll likely need to take to successfully challenge potentially deepfaked exhibits — and fight questions about the authenticity of their own, say attorneys at MoFo.

  • Justices' Cuba Ruling Narrowly Recasts Sovereign Immunity

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    The U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed Exxon Mobil's bid for $1 billion in damages for Cuban-seized property to proceed, but the ruling's doctrinal significance is in treating the Helms-Burton Act as a later, specific and self-contained statutory displacement of the default jurisdictional immunity regime, says Josep Galvez at 4-5 Gray's Inn.

  • 'Tiger King' Funeral Clip Ruling Offers Fair Use Road Map

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    The Tenth Circuit's decision in Whyte Monkee v. Netflix that the streaming service's use of another party's funeral footage in the docuseries "Tiger King" constituted fair use lays out a framework for producers to apply the four statutory fair use factors to their own projects, says Frank D’Angelo at Loeb & Loeb.

  • Justices Stand On Statutory Specifics In Cisco And Landor

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    With its June 23 decisions in Cisco Systems Inc. v. Doe and Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, the U.S. Supreme Court doubled down on the critical point that the statute invoked in a federal claim must authorize a private lawsuit and the remedy sought, says Patrick Judd at Phelps Dunbar.

  • Justices' Concurrences Foretell Fault Line On Appeal Waivers

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    The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled 8-1 in Hunter v. U.S. that appeal waivers that produce a miscarriage of justice are unenforceable, but the decision's concurrences indicate future divisions over whether this exception will be used as a rare safety valve or to police ordinary but troubling plea errors, say attorneys at RJO.

  • How Montgomery Ruling Will Affect Cos. Across Supply Chain

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    Since the U.S. Supreme Court's May 14 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the immediate focus has been on freight brokers and negligent carrier-selection claims, but the ripple effects may extend to shippers, logistics providers, insurers, transportation managers and other participants in the supply chain, say attorneys at Quintairos Prieto.

  • High Court's FCC Fine Ruling Reframes Agency Enforcement

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T sweeps aside uncertainty about what kinds of regulatory enforcement trigger a Seventh Amendment right, say attorneys at Squire Patton.

  • How 6th Circ. Tightened NLRB Injunction Standard

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    The Sixth Circuit's recent ruling in Kerwin v. Trinity Health Grand Haven Hospital, dissolving a Section 10(j) injunction obtained by the National Labor Relations Board against an employer that refused to bargain, will make it harder for the NLRB to obtain injunctions while prosecuting unfair labor practice proceedings, say attorneys at Bass Berry.

  • After Durnell, Connecting Science And Causation Will Be Key

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's June 25 decision in Monsanto v. Durnell narrowed label-based failure-to-warn claims — meaning that going forward, viable theories will depend even more on whether experts can reliably connect scientific evidence to the causal proposition the law requires, says Alex Smolak at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.

  • Series

    Choral Singing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Singing in the New York City Bar Chorus — a hobby partly inspired by the late U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, who infused my clerkship year with opera music — has improved my legal career by refining my abilities to listen, exude confidence and develop emotional intelligence, says Bonnie Baker at Friedman Kaplan.

  • Attorney Mental Health Is An Ethical Obligation In The AI Era

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    As attorneys cope with the increasing unpredictability that artificial intelligence and constant policy changes have created, particularly in practice areas where they carry the emotional weight of clients’ most consequential life events, otherwise soft discussions about self-care are a matter of professional competence, says attorney Jack Jrada.

  • Tariff Refunds May Reshape Loan Covenant Calculations

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    Tariff refunds issued after the U.S. Supreme Court's Learning Resources decision may complicate borrowers' covenant calculations depending on accounting treatment, the timing of recognition, customer reimbursement obligations and credit agreement language, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.

  • The Case For Using Final-Offer Damages Forms In IP Suits

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    Recent Federal Circuit decisions, such as Ollnova v. Ecobee, that scrutinize verdict forms in patent infringement disputes potentially render the final-offer damages selection procedure more attractive, though it should not be seen as a replacement for patent damages doctrine, says Brandon Theiss at Addy Hart.

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