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RALEIGH, N.C. — Without providing an explanation, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Feb. 24 issued orders dismissing a petition for a writ of supersedeas and motion for a temporary stay filed by former insurance mogul Greg Lindberg, now proceeding pro se, seeking a stay of trial court orders, including an order requiring him and his companies to pay $526 million in damages regarding conversion of assets in insurers’ breach of contract suit against him.
NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Feb. 24 denied an insured’s petition to reconsider its ruling that affirmed a lower federal court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an insurer in a breach of contract and bad faith lawsuit, standing by its ruling that the insured failed to provide evidence suggesting that hail occurred within the relevant policy period and, as a result, did not establish a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether covered damage occurred.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a New York federal judge’s decision to grant summary judgment in favor of Amazon.com Inc. on claims brought by a technology company that accused Amazon of infringing its patent on a type of machine learning; the panel agreed in its Feb. 24 opinion that the plaintiff-appellant’s patent claims were ineligible as abstract.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Roughly 11 months after issuing a dismissal without prejudice for lack of standing, a District of Columbia federal judge on Feb. 24 declined to let Alcoa USA Corp. retirees file a second amended putative class complaint challenging pension risk transfers (PRTs) under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Yearsley v. W.A. Ross Construction Co. provides federal contractors with a possible merits defense only and not immunity, and so a ruling denying a contractor protection under Yearsley is not immediately appealable, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Feb. 25 in a forced labor class case against the operator of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center.
CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals partly vacated a lower federal court’s order on class certification in a coverage dispute arising from tornado damage to a Nashville-based church insured’s two properties, holding that the insured has standing to represent class members whose claims are governed by the state laws other than Tennessee and that the lower court abused its discretion by failing to conduct an Erie R. Co. v. Thompkins analysis with respect to five of the 10 states involved in the putative class action.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 24 heard oral arguments in a case in which a pipeline company’s attorney argued that “federal courts retain their traditional equitable authority to excuse the 30-day removal deadline” and the Michigan solicitor general contended that the company seeks “an atextual escape hatch” with respect to federal removal of the attorney general’s state court lawsuit that sought to shut down operation of the company’s oil and gas pipeline on grounds that it posed a “risk of release.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a Feb. 23 merits brief arguing in part that accessing location information culled from user’s mobile devices via a geofence warrant constitutes a search, a man who was convicted of armed robbery through evidence obtained via such a warrant urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the warrants violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Monsanto Co. on Feb. 23 filed a merits brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in litigation over whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts state law failure-to-warn claims based on the content of pesticide product labels related to the herbicide Roundup, arguing that “preemption here comports with both Congress’ will and common sense.” The next day, the Atlantic Legal Foundation (ALF) filed an amicus curiae brief supporting Monsanto.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — A Pennsylvania federal magistrate judge on Feb. 23 dismissed a professional liability insurer’s motion to dismiss bad faith and fiduciary duty counterclaims but granted an alternate motion to bifurcate and stay the counterclaims in the insurer’s declaratory judgment suit disputing coverage for an underlying action arising from alleged sexual abuse by a pediatrician.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a brief filed Feb. 23, an individual urges the U.S. Supreme Court to find that the Securities and Exchange Commission may not seek disgorgement under Sections 21(d)(5) and (d)(7) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 without showing that investors suffered pecuniary harm and that the SEC cannot instead use disgorgement as a penalty or deterrent.