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NEW YORK — In a summary order saying that the complaint “fails plausibly to allege breach of fiduciary duty against any of the Defendants,” the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 21 affirmed dismissal of a putative class Employee Retirement Income Security Act case in which a participant in a defined-benefit multiemployer pension plan challenged an allegedly high-risk investment strategy.
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge granted a putative class plaintiff’s motion to remand his suit accusing Costco Wholesale Corp. of deceptively inflating prices for items on its online store after finding that Costco failed to show that the suit was properly removed based on the amount in controversy, opining that Costco’s arguments regarding that amount were “speculative” and not based on the plaintiff’s pleadings.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on Nov. 21 granted PayPal Inc.’s motion to dismiss a putative class action brought against it by influencers and content creators active on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram who accused it of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by using a discount-finding browser extension, “Honey,” to redirect profits from their market affiliate links to itself, finding that they lack standing for failure to allege an injury traceable to PayPal.
NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 21 affirmed a lower court’s award of $168,454,749 in compensatory and exemplary damages but vacated and remanded a permanent injunction in a dispute over the alleged misappropriation of trade secrets to develop a software platform by a technology consulting company, finding that requiring the technology consulting company to pay costs related to the software development while preventing it from using the software resulted in an overlap of the remedies which the lower court needs to address on remand.
ATLANTA — Reversing and remanding a ruling against a long-term disability (LTD) claimant, a split 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Nov. 21 ruled that it was unreasonable for the insurer to interpret a preexisting conditions exclusion in a way that the majority said means that “treatment for a headache during the lookback period converts any disease or condition that causes headaches into a preexisting condition.”
CHICAGO — The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 21 denied petitions for rehearing filed by both parties in a False Claims Act case in which the Seventh Circuit affirmed a final judgment of $193 million for reporting falsely deflated drug prices to the government.
LOS ANGELES — The trustee in the Chapter 11 Subchapter V asbestos talc case of family-run cosmetics company Ben Nye Co. Inc. says a California federal bankruptcy court should enter a final decree closing the proceeding after a Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) affirmed confirmation of the company’s plan of reorganization.
BOSTON — The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Nov. 20 affirmed a lower federal court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of a cybersecurity company in a lawsuit arising from a 2018 health data breach, rejecting an insurer’s argument that the lower court erred in denying it equitable indemnification from the cybersecurity company.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Nov. 20 held that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) wrongly construed the claim term “acquiring interest data” when considering the patentability of a claim phrase in a patent describing a system to determine if a computer is being used by a human or a “bot”; under the correct construction, the panel held that the claim is anticipated by a prior art reference.
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court on Nov. 21 denied a motion for rehearing filed by a group of pharmacies, letting stand its decision to refuse to review a lower court’s ruling that allowed a case filed against them by Texas counties for their role in the opioid epidemic to proceed, rejecting arguments by the pharmacies that the case will leave those counties “emboldened to find another set of businesses to target” and “could cause serious harm to people across this State.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Nov. 20 reversed a man’s convictions for first-degree murder after finding that the trial court erred in failing to conduct a proper analysis under Motorola Inc. v. Murray and Federal Rule of Evidence 702 of the government’s cell site location information (CSLI) expert.