MIAMI — The widow of a man who was killed when an Amazon Prime plane crashed into vehicles while landing at Miami International Airport filed a wrongful death and negligence suit on Sept. 9 in Florida state court against Amazon.com Inc., Amazon.com Services LLC, the company operating the plane and related entities and the two pilots, asserting that the defective condition of the aircraft “was a proximate cause of the incident and the failure of the aircraft to properly perform the landing in a safe manner.”

DENVER — The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a petition by two individuals who accuse the alleged owners and operators of a Kansas facility of exposing them and others to carcinogens, seeking interlocutory review of the question whether the latent disease exception to the Kansas Product Liability Act’s (KPLA) statute of repose applies to toxic tort claims arising from air emissions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Sept. 8 affirmed a California federal judge’s decision to award more than $700,000 in attorney fees against a plaintiff-appellant entity in a dispute over patents covering three-dimensional sensing technologies, finding that the record does not establish that the plaintiff-appellant conducted an adequate presuit investigation.

ATLANTA — Affirming summary judgment for an insurer that terminated a claimant’s long-term disability (LTD) benefits, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in an unpublished opinion that the insurer needed the documents to evaluate whether the claimant “satisfied the Test of Disability, so his refusal to provide them justified termination under the Plan.”

BOSTON — The government and 12 intervenor states on Sept. 4 separately appealed a Massachusetts federal judge’s preliminary injunction blocking mandatory portions of the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) mail-in ballot final rule, issued under President Donald Trump’s March 31 Executive Order (EO) directing federal agencies to compile and share voter citizenship data from federal databases USPS to develop mail-in ballot requirements involving voter information, after the district court judge found the rule likely exceeded USPS’s statutory authority and unconstitutionally intruded on election regulation reserved to Congress and the states.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Sept. 4 denied an application filed by a Las Vegas casino asking to stay a mandate of an appellate court panel’s denial, pending a petition for a writ of certiorari, of a petition for review of a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision finding that the casino committed unfair labor practices when it rolled out a new benefits package before a union vote and ordering it to bargain with employees under NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., Inc.

NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 4 held that a lower federal court’s July 22 order on remand stayed and administratively closed an insured’s breach of contract coverage lawsuit arising from Hurricane Ida pending arbitration and, therefore, the domestic and foreign insurers’ appeal of the lower court’s ruling compelling them to arbitration is moot.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court granted a motion on Sept. 4 filed by the United States to participate as amicus curiae and for divided argument in an upcoming oral argument on whether federal law precludes state law claims for relief for alleged damages to infrastructure and resources caused by greenhouse gas emissions in a dispute between a group of oil and gas companies and two Colorado municipalities over the companies’ alleged contribution to climate change.