BOSTON — The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on April 22 affirmed a $56 million punitive damages award in favor of the estate of a smoker who died from lung cancer at age 60, which the trial court judge reduced on remittitur down from the original amount of $1 billion in punitive damages against a tobacco company.  The court said that the trial court properly found that the jurors “were not inflamed by passion or prejudice” and that the verdict after the judge’s reduction “was within constitutionally permissible bounds.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court declined to step into an antitrust case involving artificial intelligence-based hotel pricing, leaving in place a ruling that the casinos’ independent decisions to employ the same algorithmic tool did not constitute a violation even if it led to higher prices.

ATLANTA — The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 21 held that a lower court erred in dismissing Florida insureds’ breach of contract complaint for lack of jurisdiction without analyzing whether the claims against insurers were frivolous, vacating in part and remanding for a new jurisdictional inquiry under the Class Action Fairness Act.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral argument in consolidated cases in which Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. assert constitutional challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement of monetary forfeitures under the Communications Act, arguing that the FCC’s forfeiture orders are unlawful because they impose monetary penalties without a jury trial.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court declined to consider whether its dose-requirement precedent applies to single-exposure asbestos cases, with a concurring justice calling the lower court’s approach “troubling” and saying that the court eventually would have to address the issue.

ATLANTA — Reversing a Florida federal judge’s dismissal, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that an entity associated with the late Mexican surrealist artist Frida Kahlo established personal jurisdiction for Lanham Act and other claims against the artist’s grandniece because she is alleged to have sent cease-and-desist letters with false claims of trademark ownership into Florida on her own behalf.

DOVER, Del. — An insurer failed to show that an interlocutory appeal of a Delaware judge’s ruling that a pollution exclusion applies only to traditional environmental pollution claims is warranted, a panel of the Delaware Supreme Court said April 20 in affirming the lower court’s denial of the insurer’s motion to certify the lower court’s ruling for interlocutory appeal.

WASHINGTON, D.C. —The U.S. Supreme Court on April 20 heard oral arguments in a case asking it to determine whether the Securities and Exchange Commission may seek equitable disgorgement under federal securities laws without showing that investors suffered pecuniary harm; the SEC and an individual it brought a civil enforcement action against debated the definition and purpose of disgorgement, as well as the proper interpretation of Liu v. SEC.