Appellate

  • July 10, 2026

    Biggest Illinois Decisions Of 2026: Midyear Report

    One of the biggest decisions to come down in Illinois so far this year applies a 2-year-old Biometric Information Privacy Act amendment retroactively in an appellate ruling experts anticipate will deflate settlement values even though it came from a federal court.

  • July 10, 2026

    Davis Wright Atty Hit With Sanctions After Winning Sanctions

    After defending six-figure sanctions of plaintiffs lawyers for "a reckless course of prolonging litigation," a Davis Wright Tremaine LLP attorney is facing his own six-figure sanctions, with a California magistrate judge finding he "unnecessarily burdened" opposing counsel despite warnings dating back years about "improper litigation tactics."

  • July 10, 2026

    Ill. Appeals Court Upholds $45M Talc Verdict Against J&J

    A split Illinois state appeals court on Friday refused to disturb a jury's verdict awarding $45 million to the family of a woman who developed mesothelioma and died after using Johnson & Johnson's talc baby powder for decades, ruling that her case warranted both wrongful death and shortened life damages.

  • July 10, 2026

    Kalshi's Contracts 'Sound Like A Bet,' 9th Circ. Judge Says

    A Ninth Circuit panel appeared open Friday to preliminarily blocking Kalshi and Robinhood from offering sports contracts on tribal land, with one judge saying Kalshi's contracts "sound like a bet" subject to Native American gambling laws and another saying it "wouldn't be so unreasonable" to exclude tribes from federal oversight in this area.

  • July 10, 2026

    Nexstar-Tegna Merger Challenge Gets July 2027 Trial Date

    A California federal judge has scheduled an early July 2027 trial date in DirecTV and a coalition of states' lawsuit seeking to stop Nexstar Media Group Inc.'s integration with rival broadcast company Tegna Inc.

  • July 10, 2026

    1st Circ. Sinks Child Porn Evidence Found On Wrong Phone

    The First Circuit has upheld a lower court's ruling to suppress child pornography evidence found on a Puerto Rico man's iPhone, saying federal agents could not rely on the good faith exception after knowingly searching a device not specified in their warrant.

  • July 10, 2026

    Hospitals, Housing Targeted In 2026 As Fed Antitrust Wanes

    The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission are confronting claims that federal antitrust enforcement is petering out even as the agencies' dockets in 2026 include actions against hospital systems' demands on insurers, rental home listings, protein industry data and criminal prosecutions.

  • July 10, 2026

    Colo. Panel Rules Mineral Rights Appeal Premature

    The Colorado Court of Appeals tossed an estate's appeal of a lower court's decision that threw out its claims of mineral trespass and unjust enrichment in a Colorado property, finding the trial court's order was not final and appealable.

  • July 10, 2026

    Top 5 Enviro Cases To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2026

    The second half of 2026 could see courts delivering important rulings that will determine whether municipalities can set their own building emissions laws, the extent of California's authority to regulate pollution and citizens' power to enforce the Clean Air Act. Here, Law360 takes a look at five environmental cases that could be resolved before the end of the year.

  • July 10, 2026

    Gun Offender Barred From Recovery Court, NJ Panel Rules

    A New Jersey appeals court ruled on Friday that a man can be denied access to a state program providing special probation terms to drug offenders because he had a pending gun charge that did not involve physical possession of the weapon.

  • July 10, 2026

    Fla. Panel Clears Nurse, Pain Clinic Chain In Suicide Suit

    A Florida appeals court on Friday affirmed the dismissal of a suit accusing a nurse practitioner and a pain management clinic chain of causing a former patient's suicide, saying any duty of care owed to the patient ended when he stopped treatment.

  • July 10, 2026

    Texas Appeals Court Tosses Stroke Death Malpractice Suit

    A Texas appeals court on Friday tossed malpractice claims brought by the family of a woman who suffered a fatal hemorrhagic stroke, saying the family's experts failed to show how failures on the part of hospital staff caused the woman's death.

  • July 10, 2026

    Del. Justices Nix $16M Fee Award In SpaceX Investment Fight

    The Delaware Supreme Court on Friday erased a $16 million fee award stemming from a dispute over a fund manager's handling of a failed $50 million SpaceX investment, concluding that although the fund manager committed a limited breach of a "duty of candor," shifting all litigation expenses to him was unwarranted.

  • July 10, 2026

    5th Circ. Backs Block On Texas Dream Act Defense

    A split Fifth Circuit panel said a federal judge was right to block a challenge to an agreement Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Trump administration struck to end Texas law provisions allowing some unauthorized immigrants to pay in-state college tuition.

  • July 10, 2026

    Tulsa DA Tells 10th Circ. He Can Try Indians On Creek Land

    Oklahoma's Tulsa County district attorney has asked the Tenth Circuit to deny the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's attempts to block him from exercising criminal jurisdiction on its reservation, arguing that he has the authority to prosecute nonmember Indians for nonmajor crimes.

  • July 10, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Affirms Sony's PTAB Win Over Digital Imaging IP

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board stayed in bounds when deciding to invalidate claims of an Intellectual Pixels Ltd. digital image generation patent on remand, the Federal Circuit said Friday.

  • July 10, 2026

    Union Can't Force Ex-Aides Into Arbitration, 2nd Circ. Says

    A union cannot automatically bind former New York City home health aides to mandatory arbitration through an agreement signed after they left their jobs, the Second Circuit ruled, allowing 17 former workers to press their cases outside a roughly $30 million fund.

  • July 10, 2026

    Mich. Panel Orders Age-Based Resentencing For Murderers

    A Michigan state appellate panel upheld the murder convictions of two men in the 2011 robbery and fatal shooting of a Flint woman, but ruled that both must be resentenced under state law, because they were 19 years old when they committed the crimes.

  • July 10, 2026

    Full 5th Circ. To Reconsider 90-Day Bond Hearing Limit

    The full Fifth Circuit on Friday vacated a roughly week-old split panel decision holding that the Trump administration can't hold noncitizens for more than 90 days without a bond hearing, and said it will rehear the matter.

  • July 10, 2026

    DOJ Appeals Order Shielding Trans Youth Medical Records

    The U.S. Department of Justice asked the Ninth Circuit to review a California federal court's order blocking the government from trying to identify individuals who received gender-affirming care from a Stanford Medicine hospital as minors.

  • July 10, 2026

    Investors Call Boeing's 7th Circ. Class Cert. Appeal Premature

    Investors urged the Seventh Circuit on Friday to dismiss as improvidently granted Boeing's interlocutory challenge to an Illinois district court's class certification order in litigation alleging Boeing misrepresented the 737 Max 8 jets' safety after two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

  • July 10, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Won't Rethink Corcept Patent Loss In Teva Case

    Corcept Therapeutics Inc. lost its bid Friday to have the full Federal Circuit look at a panel's refusal to revive its suit accusing Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. of patent infringement over its production of a generic version of the drug Korlym.

  • July 10, 2026

    4th Circ. Upholds Sentence Hike Despite 'Murky' WV Records

    The Fourth Circuit on Friday upheld a West Virginia man's 15-year prison term for illegal gun possession and witness tampering, rejecting his argument that his prior conviction for cultivating marijuana should not have counted as a sentence-lengthening "controlled substance offense."

  • July 10, 2026

    DOJ Defends Nurse Wage-Fixing Conviction At 9th Circ.

    The U.S. Department of Justice urged a Ninth Circuit panel to reject a Las Vegas home nursing executive's appeal of its first-ever criminal wage-fixing conviction, defending its trial characterization of a leniency deal with a cooperating company and the inclusion of the executive's statement likening nurses to prostitutes.

  • July 10, 2026

    4th Circ. Nixes Womble Bond Atty's 'Overtly Punitive' Penalty

    The Fourth Circuit on Friday wiped out a contempt order against a Womble Bond Dickinson partner that temporarily barred him from practicing in the Western District of North Carolina, characterizing the sanction as "extreme" and "overtly punitive."

Expert Analysis

  • A Fed. Circ. Blueprint For Drafting Medical Device Patents

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    The Federal Circuit's decision in Constellation Designs v. LG last month, among other recent rulings, underscores the importance of emphasizing engineering, rather than clinical goals, when drafting patent claims for medical devices and software as a medical device, says Brandon Theiss at Volpe Koenig.

  • Decoding Arbitral Disputes: EU's Arb. Defense From Russia

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    The EU's latest package of restrictive measures against Russia marks a significant shift from merely resisting Russian jurisdictional tactics to proactively protecting arbitration and exclusive jurisdiction agreements, elevating the procedural importance of dispute resolution clauses, says Josep Galvez at 4-5 Gray's Inn Square.

  • Becoming The Biz-Savvy GC That Portfolio Companies Need

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    Candidates for general counsel roles at private equity-backed portfolio companies should prioritize proving their sector-specific experience, commercial judgment and ease with uncertainty — and attorneys hoping to be candidates in five to 10 years should start working on those skills now, says Dimitri Mastrocola at Major Lindsey.

  • Nielsen Appeal Tests Antitrust Limits Of Pricing And Bundling

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    In Cumulus v. Nielsen, the Second Circuit is considering a structural pattern in which a monopolist exploits upstream market power to foreclose downstream competition, which could potentially offer broad insight into how courts will assess exclusionary bundling and pricing defenses under antitrust law, says Luke Hasskamp at Bona Law.

  • Series

    Judges On AI: How Courts Can Survive The Tech Revolution

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    Colorado Supreme Court Justice Maria Berkenkotter and Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Lino Lipinsky de Orlov discuss how artificial intelligence has already fundamentally altered the legal system and offer tips for courts navigating deepfakes, hallucinations and a gap in access to AI tools.

  • 'Skinny Label' Arguments Spotlight Induced Infringement Risk

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    Recent oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hikma Pharmaceuticals v. Amarin Pharma highlight the uncertain boundary between lawful generic competition through so-called skinny labels and induced patent infringement, with potential implications for patent holders’ communication, enforcement and causation strategies across industries, says Anton Hopen at Trenam.

  • A Framework For Habeas Relief After 5th Circ. Bond Ruling

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    Following the Fifth Circuit’s recent Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi decision foreclosing statutory bond for detained nonimmigrants not deemed admitted to the U.S., lawyers should adopt a framework that requests habeas relief pursuant to the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, says Kemal Hepsen at Mandamus Lawyers.

  • 4th Circ. Ruling Will Rewrite Class Action Litigation Strategies

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    The Fourth Circuit's recent decision in Oliver v. Navy Federal Credit Union is the first from a federal circuit court to hold that motions to strike are inappropriate vehicles for challenging class allegations at the pleading stage, invalidating a tactic that had been used for decades, says Jim Francis at Francis Mailman.

  • Startup Founder Disputes Increasingly Turn On Governance

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    Recent Delaware developments suggest that as courts place increasing emphasis on board process, independence and oversight in founder-led startups, the growing intersection of governance, technology risk and investor oversight is accelerating both the emergence and escalation of founder disputes, says mediator Frank Burke.

  • 3 AI Adoption Mistakes GCs Should Avoid

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    The pressure in-house legal teams face to quickly adopt artificial intelligence tools, combined with budget constraints and the need to evaluate a crowded market of options, sets the stage for implementation mistakes that are often difficult to undo, says former 23andMe general counsel Guy Chayoun.

  • Series

    Playing Basketball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My grandfather used to say "I wear your jersey" as shorthand for wholly committing to support someone with loyalty and integrity — ideals that have shaped my life on the basketball court and in legal practice, says Tracy Schimelfenig at Schimelfenig Legal.

  • Salt-N-Pepa Suit May Shake Up Music Copyright Issue

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    James v. UMG Recordings is a copyright termination rights case that provides an opportunity for the Second Circuit to make concrete choices about grant language, authorship, work-for-hire status and survival of derivative works, says attorney Abdul Abdullahi.

  • Opinion

    5th Circ.'s Abortion Pill Order Is Shaky On Multiple Grounds

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    The Fifth Circuit's recent order in Louisiana v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reinstating an in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion medication mifepristone, seems to turn federalism upside-down, and is also questionable for several other reasons, says Gregory Curtner at Curtner Law.

  • Series

    The Biz Court Digest: Georgia Court Has Business On Its Mind

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    Thanks to recent legislation, the Georgia State-wide Business Court will soon offer business litigants greater access to the court than ever before, further enhancing the court's emphasis on efficiency, predictability and accessibility for sophisticated commercial disputes, says former GSBC judge Walt Davis at Jones Day.

  • 5 Takeaways From Justices' Subpoena Fight Ruling

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in First Choice v. Davenport fortifies a line of First Amendment associational privacy cases stretching back nearly 70 years, and ensures that organizations subject to government demands for donor information have a meaningful federal forum in which to defend their constitutional rights, say attorneys at DLA Piper.

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