Courts Let Military Ban Trans, HIV-Positive Troops For Now

By Anne Cullen

Two federal appellate courts have cleared the federal government to enforce a pair of controversial policies restricting transgender and HIV-positive people from serving in the military, with each lifting trial court blockades on the rules while litigation challenging them plays out.

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4th Circ. Icy To Reviving Retired Miners' Health Coverage Fight

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Fourth Circuit seemed disinclined Wednesday to reopen a dispute over lifetime retirement health and life insurance benefits from a proposed class of retired coal miners, as two judges knocked the coal company's attempt to pick apart the results of a seven-day bench trial that broadly favored them.

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6th Circ. Mulls NLRB's Injunction Burden After Justices' Tweak

By Braden Campbell

A Sixth Circuit panel on Wednesday probed a judge's inference that Michigan hospital workers would suffer without an order making their employer resume dealing with their union in the circuit's first National Labor Relations Board injunction case since the U.S. Supreme Court altered the courts' test last year.

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Fla. Atty Faces Bar Referral Over 'Hallucinated' Case In Filing

By Madison Arnold

A Florida appeals court will refer an attorney to the state's Bar after she filed a brief that included a "hallucinated" case.

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'Crazy' To Link Talc With Ovarian Cancer, J&J Expert Says

By Craig Clough

Johnson & Johnson rested its defense Wednesday in a Los Angeles bellwether trial over claims its talc products caused two women's ovarian cancer, with a gynecologic oncologist appearing as its last witness and telling the jury the idea of talc used for feminine hygiene reaching the ovaries is "crazy."

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Feds Seek 10 Years For Ex-Harvard Morgue Manager

By P.J. D'Annunzio

Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania have recommended that the court impose a 10-year prison sentence for former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge following his admission to stealing and selling body parts from cadavers donated to the school for scientific research.

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Nursing Home Owners Defrauded Medicaid For Years, NJ Says

By George Woolston

The owners of two New Jersey nursing homes diverted nearly $100 million in Medicaid funds to themselves while intentionally understaffing the facilities and neglecting the residents, according to a state comptroller report released Wednesday that called for more scrutiny of for-profit residential care facility operators.

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Hospital Nonprofit's Ex-COO Gets 80 Months For $7M Fraud

By Carolina Bolado

A Florida federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the former chief operating officer of the fundraising arm for a taxpayer-funded Miami health system to more than six years in prison for embezzling $6.9 million through a scheme in which she received kickbacks after submitting false vendor invoices.

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Akerman Beats Healthcare Cos.' Bid To Escape Fee Suit

By Madison Arnold

Akerman LLP can continue its fees lawsuit against Rennova Health Inc. and other defendants after they lost their motion to dismiss the suit for being "facially time-barred, factually flawed and legally indefensible," a Florida state judge has ruled.

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Kaiser Asks 9th Circ. To Make Nurses Arbitrate Wage Claims

By Bonnie Eslinger

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and a staffing company urged the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday to force traveling nurses to arbitrate their claims that they were cheated out of compensation, saying a judge erred when he found the agreement unconscionable due to a potentially confusing fee shifting provision.

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Ga. Health Providers Say It's Too Late For Subpoena, Judge DQ

By Emily Johnson

A pair of Georgia healthcare providers asked a federal court to throw out a Florida couple's subpoenas for documents, arguing that their subpoenas and attempt to disqualify a Georgia federal judge are too late and not valid because they came after the dismissal of their medical malpractice suit was affirmed on appeal.

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Med Delivery Co. Fired Workers For Pay Complaints, Suit Says

By Benjamin Morse

A pharmaceutical delivery company misclassified drivers as independent contractors even though it controlled nearly every aspect of their work and fired 12 named drivers at once for speaking up about it, according to a proposed class action filed in Kentucky federal court.

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HealthEC Data Hack Class Seeks OK Of $5.5M Privacy Deal

By Gina Kim

Over 1.6 million patients affected by HealthEC's cybersecurity attack in 2023 asked a New Jersey magistrate judge for her final stamp of approval on a $5.48 million class action settlement, arguing Monday the resolution includes additional, significant benefits like Medical Shield Complete which protects them from healthcare-related fraud. 

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Diagnostic Co. Agrees To Oversight Reforms In Derivative Suit

By Sydney Price

A California federal judge has granted preliminary approval to a deal ending shareholder derivative claims that diagnostics company CareDx's executives and directors damaged the company by concealing its scheme to inflate its testing services revenue.

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Calif. Panel Reinstates Child Porn Rap Despite Abuse History

By Elizabeth Daley

A man who was abused as a child and raped as an adult cannot escape a child pornography conviction by arguing the abuse he endured led to the offense, a California state appeals court has ruled, finding in a reversal that his many traumas made it hard to ascertain a direct link to his crime.

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Brief

NY Clinic Settles Retaliation Suit With Doctor

By Irene Spezzamonte

A physician has agreed to settle his suit accusing a medical clinic of withholding his bonus and then firing him for complaining about unsanitary conditions in an autopsy suite, a New York federal judge said, discontinuing the case.

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Akerman Hires DOJ Civil Division Lawyer For Healthcare Team

By Jack Rodgers

Akerman LLP has brought on a former member of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division, who will be joining the healthcare practice group as a partner in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

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How 11th Circ.'s Qui Tam Review Could Affect FCA Litigation

On Dec. 12, the Eleventh Circuit will hear arguments in U.S. ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates, setting the stage for a decision that could drastically reduce enforcement under the False Claims Act, and presenting an opportunity to seek U.S. Supreme Court review of the act's whistleblower provisions, say attorneys at Epstein Becker.

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Series

The Biz Court Digest: Welcome To Miami

After nearly 20 years in operation, the Miami Complex Business Litigation Division is a pioneer upon which other jurisdictions in the state have been modeled, adopting many innovations to keep its cases running more efficiently and staffing experienced judges who are accustomed to hearing business disputes, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

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Bonus Spotlight

Litigation Shops Paying Above-Market Bonuses, Reports Say

By Andrea Keckley

Litigation boutiques Yetter Coleman LLP and Dunn Isaacson Rhee LLP are giving above-market bonuses to their associates, according to reports from Above the Law and Bloomberg.

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Jack Smith To Launch Firm With Willkie Partner, 2 Ex-Deputies

By Jack Rodgers

Jack Smith, the former Justice Department special counsel appointed to investigate President Donald Trump, is set to launch his own firm alongside two of his former top deputies and the co-chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP's investigations and enforcement practice.

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Judge Bove Faces Complaint Over Trump Rally Attendance

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. Circuit Judge Emil Bove, who previously served as President Donald Trump's personal defense attorney and a top official at the U.S. Department of Justice, has been hit with a judicial misconduct complaint for his appearance at a Trump event on Tuesday night.

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Analysis

Wanted: Temporary US Attorney, No Experience Needed

By Phillip Bantz

Frustrated by a string of court rulings disqualifying several of his U.S. attorney picks, President Donald Trump lamented recently that he might "just have to keep appointing people for three months and then just appoint another one, another one." Experts say the idea raises legal and practical issues.

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AGs Say Judicial Safety Threats Reaching 'All-Time Highs'

By Matthew Santoni

Attorneys general for 43 states, three territories and the District of Columbia signed a letter to Congress urging more financial support for judicial security in the face of threats against judges, including funding for a program that lets judges scrub addresses and personal information from online databases.

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Disciplined Attys Want High Court's Take On Judge Criticism

By David Minsky

A father-daughter team of attorneys have brought a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging their suspensions for criticizing a Florida state judge who reversed a $2.75 million jury verdict in favor of their client in a racial discrimination lawsuit, saying their comments are protected by the First Amendment. 

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McIver's Immunity Disputed In Detention Center Assault Case

By Elizabeth Daley

Federal prosecutors asked a New Jersey federal judge to maintain all charges against U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, who was accused in an indictment of assaulting federal officers outside an immigration detention center during a scrum in which the mayor of Newark was arrested in May.

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Regulate AI With Existing Regs, Financial Industry Lobby Says

By Sarah Jarvis

The Financial Services Institute on Wednesday recommended that regulators apply existing rules and standards to artificial intelligence, saying they should use new rules only when AI brings "genuinely new issues or significantly alters existing risks."

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