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May 18, 2026
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Despite determining that the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery in a toxic chemical exposure case was untimely, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas ruled on the merits of the motion and denied it as “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and not proportional to the needs of the case” because it sought documents spanning a 65-year period. The magistrate judge ruled that discovery was limited to a 10-year period dating from the filing of the complaint in 2015.
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May 18, 2026
BISMARCK, N.D. — Exercising its supervisory jurisdiction but denying the petition for a supervisory writ in a dispute concerning the state’s journalist shield statute and a subpoena duces tecum that touches a murder case, the North Dakota Supreme Court said in part that the lower court “should have addressed the motion to quash before ordering an in camera review.”
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May 18, 2026
CHICAGO — In an Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenge to a multiemployer benefit plan amendment under which the end of a Social Security Administration (SSA) disability award results in termination of disability pension benefits, an Illinois federal judge denied the defendants’ motion to stay discovery and granted the claimant’s request to pursue limited discovery outside the administrative record.
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May 15, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Finding no abuse of discretion, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed imposition of a $38,507.44 sanction and denial of a motion to depose a law firm, noting that the trial court determined that the motion constituted a willful violation of an order that said no additional discovery regarding the finances of a third-party defendant would “‘be permitted absent new evidence of fraudulent or voidable transactions.’”
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May 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Three litigation funders filed a petition for a writ of certiorari urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel’s ruling finding no jurisdiction over their attempt to arbitrate a discovery application, writing that the ruling contradicts high court precedent and that their petition should be held pending resolution of a similar issue in another high court case.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — Keller Postman LLC and Ashley C. Keller, plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel in the acetaminophen autism spectrum disorder-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ASD-ADHD) multidistrict litigation, have appealed to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals a ruling by the MDL judge imposing sanctions on the firm and its senior partner for failing to comply with a protective order in the MDL.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a New York federal judge’s decision to deny adidas America Inc.’s motion for a new trial in a trademark dispute with Thom Browne Inc.; the panel agreed that while Thom Browne failed to disclose certain emails, adidas failed to show how those emails would have changed the jury’s verdict.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge issued letters rogatory allowing two vendors to seek overseas discovery in the United Kingdom from personnel of a dismissed insurance broker in connection with the vendors’ remaining negligence claims against another broker over political violence coverage and reinsurance allegedly procured for a 1.3 million-square-foot warehouse in Afghanistan that the Taliban seized in 2021.
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May 11, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court will decide in the coming months whether asbestos bankruptcy trusts must face a suit challenging document retention policies after hearing oral arguments pitting a claim that repeat litigants cannot hope to secure unlimited document preservation from a third party against the claim that an equitable bill allows for such preservation in the unique asbestos litigation setting.
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May 11, 2026
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Florida appeals panel on May 8 reversed a lower court’s final judgment in favor of a property insurer in a breach of contract lawsuit arising from storm damage, holding that the lower court erred in using the insurer’s motion in limine to summarily dispose of the insureds’ case before trial.
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May 08, 2026
DENVER — A Colorado federal magistrate judge on May 7 granted in part a motion to compel discovery of certain text messages sent by a woman whose company sued its business owner’s insurer for breach of contract for its purported failure to cover a claim for fire damage to her retail store, finding in part that privacy considerations related to the text messages are outweighed by the need to view them in connection with an arson investigation related to the fire.
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May 08, 2026
CINCINNATI — Saying in part that the administrator of a long-term disability (LTD) plan “adequately considered the evidence . . . and arrived at a reasoned decision,” a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on May 7 affirmed judgment against a project director who stopped working because of symptoms she attributed to long COVID, was denied LTD benefits and then unsuccessfully asserted breach of contract and bad faith claims; the panel also affirmed the lower court’s denial of the claimant’s requests for both broad and limited discovery.
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May 08, 2026
NEW YORK — Rejecting arguments that two Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. factors did not favor authorizing subpoenas for use in shareholder derivative litigation in South Korea under Title 28 U.S. Code Section 1782, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a summary order upholding three discovery rulings.
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May 07, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia federal judge correctly concluded that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) properly withheld draft decisions in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, agreeing that the materials were “predecisional” and “deliberative” under the meaning of a FOIA exemption.
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May 07, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal magistrate judge granted Anthem Inc.’s motion to seal documents that were previously placed under provisional seal in the U.S. government’s suit against Anthem alleging violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) related to alleged inaccurate diagnosis codes submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for services provided to Anthem’s Medicare beneficiaries, finding that “the limited presumption of public access is outweighed by the higher values of protecting non-party confidentiality and preventing competitive harm.”
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May 06, 2026
OLYMPIA, Wash. — In an en banc decision affirming discovery rulings in favor of former foster children who accuse Washington state of negligence for purportedly failing to protect them from physical and sexual abuse, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in part that the documents are privileged under state law but must be produced because a statutory exception applies.
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May 06, 2026
ST. PAUL, Minn. — In a divided decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that a geofence warrant used in a homicide investigation violated the state constitution’s particularity requirement and, in what it described as its first consideration of the constitutionality of such warrants, ruled that although geofence warrants are not categorically unconstitutional, the warrant at issue impermissibly granted law enforcement discretion to expand the scope of the search, reversing an appellate court decision and remanding for further proceedings.
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May 05, 2026
Three attorneys told Mealey’s Publication that artificial intelligence is creating new questions about work product and attorney-client privilege protections, and all three indicated that their firms are taking steps to address the issues and create a playbook for both attorneys and clients in the wake of recent rulings.
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May 01, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Personnel actions and recommended personnel actions will be designated confidential, but the names, work email addresses and work telephone numbers of lower-level Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers will not, a federal judge in California ordered, ruling on a motion for a protective order filed by federal government parties in a lawsuit by unions, groups and local governments challenging an executive order (EO) and memorandum implementing the EO that resulted in widespread layoffs of federal workers.
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April 30, 2026
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal magistrate judge in Connecticut has approved a modified protective order outlining broad topics related to the handling of confidential information and the use of generative AI in discovery in an injury lawsuit related to exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances(PFAS) brought by firefighters, firefighter unions and parties that purchased gear for firefighters against the makers of PFAS. Among other things, the order establishes that confidential material that is uploaded into a generative AI tool should not be hosted on public cloud servers or used to train public AI models.
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April 29, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unanimously reversing a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 held that pregnancy center operator First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc.has standing to challenge a subpoena from New Jersey’s attorney general in federal court because “First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights.”
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April 28, 2026
NEW YORK — Issuing a brief summary order upholding denial of a motion for accounting or postjudgment discovery in a partially successful class action over a 1998 conversion that turned a traditional defined-benefit pension plan to a cash-balance plan, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals called the challenged decisions “careful and thorough” and said it affirmed them based on “substantially the reasons” the lower court cited.
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April 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For two hours on April 27, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a lawsuit over whether a geofence warrant that enabled police to obtain cell phone location evidence from a technology provider violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with both sides stressing the breadth of the issues the high court could address in the case.
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April 22, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to amend a scheduling order to extend an expert disclosure deadline for a man who alleges that he was injured by the defective stapler, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held, affirming summary judgment for the manufacturer.
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April 21, 2026
ALEXANDRIA, La. — A home improvement store asked a court to expand its order to show cause why two attorneys should not be sanctioned for misciting material in a brief, saying the problem appears to go further and that a review shows that the entire firm exhibits an “unchecked habit of misstating law, misquoting, and misleading multiple courts.” One of the attorneys took responsibility for the errors in his response, saying he took steps to prevent future mistakes and that the court should ignore unsolicited input from the defendant.