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CINCINNATI — An Ohio federal judge granted default judgment to Columbus Life Insurance Co. in its suit seeking a declaratory judgment that a $500,000 insurance policy it issued is void due to the insured’s purported misrepresentations in the policy application, finding that the insurer is entitled to default judgment due in part to the insured’s failure to abide by court-imposed conditions to file a brief out of time and that the policy is void because it lacked an insurable interest due to the alleged misrepresentations.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — An insured’s bad faith claim alleged against an auto insurer is dismissed without prejudice, a Pennsylvania federal judge said April 14 after determining that the insured failed to offer evidence in support of her argument that the insurer’s $15,000 settlement offer was unreasonable.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court should let stand a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision that affirmed a final judgment of $193 million for a qui tam relator who sued Eli Lilly & Co. for reporting falsely deflated drug prices to the government in order to profit off of drug rebate programs because the two questions presented to the high court by the drug manufacturer “are uniquely poor candidates for this Court’s review,” the relator contends in an April 14 opposition brief.
BOISE, Idaho — Albertsons Companies Inc. announced in an April 14 press release that “it has reached a $774 million settlement framework to resolve substantially all of the opioid-related claims brought against the Company by state, local and tribal government entities nationally.”
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama’s reporter shield law does not protect all information that could reveal a confidential source but only “information that would inevitably reveal the identity of a confidential source,” a split Alabama Supreme Court held in answering a certified question from an Alabama federal court that is presiding over a defamation case brought by a member of the University of Alabama’s men’s basketball team against The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A district court properly determined that an insured’s breach of contract and bad faith claims against a homeowners insurer fail because it is clear that the insured failed to file suit within the policy’s one-year suit limitations provision, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in affirming the lower court’s judgment.
TAMPA, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida on April 13 granted a Write-Your-Own insurer’s motion to dismiss with prejudice an insured’s breach of contract lawsuit arising from its flood damage caused by Hurricane Helene, holding that the action is untimely because it was not filed within a year of the insurer’s partial denial of the claim.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a win for Roku Inc. in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings the company sought, rejecting an appellant technology company’s argument that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) adopted a theory introduced by Roku for the first time in a reply brief.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will pay more than $17 million to resolve allegations that it violated the federal False Claims Act (FCA) by failing “to comply with anti-discrimination requirements” in its federal contracts, which “the United States contends discriminated against employees during employment and applicants for employment because of race, color, national origin, or sex and failed to treat employees during employment without regard to race, color, national origin, or sex.”
BALTIMORE — The owner of a broadcasting tower and a painting company have agreed to pay $2.2 million in penalties to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) for lead-based paint contamination of soil and water that occurred when the painting company performed lead paint abatement work on the broadcasting tower and did not properly contain the hazardous waste. The MDE also penalized the broadcasting tower for hiring a painting company that was not accredited and authorized to perform lead-paint abatement services in the state.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A court may, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), review the Homeland Security secretary’s designation of temporary protected status (TPS) and the termination of such designation, Syrian nationals with TPS or pending applications for TPS and Haitian TPS holders argue in separate respondent briefs filed April 13 in putative class cases consolidated by the U.S. Supreme Court and scheduled oral argument for April 29.