NEW YORK — The subjects of research papers on the connection between cosmetic talc and mesothelioma are clearly relevant to personal injury actions, and because the subjects were never treated by or patients of the researchers, they are not protected by federal health privacy law, a panel of the First Department New York Supreme Court Appellate Division said Oct. 8.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8 heard competing arguments as to whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) may for the purposes of regulation broaden the Gun Control Act’s (GCA) definition of “firearm” to include parts of “ghost guns,” which can be assembled into weapons after performing certain operations on them such as drilling holes or removing plastic tabs and which, before the regulation, were considered by some manufacturers to not require serial numbers or a firearms background check before sale.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A preliminary injunction is nothing more than “a threshold prediction of the likelihood of success based on a truncated record” and can’t make a plaintiff a prevailing party for the purposes of awarding attorney fees, an attorney representing the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles argued Oct. 8 before the U.S. Supreme Court.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Oct. 7 granted a motion by owners, operators and managers of two Napa Valley, Calif., restaurants to dismiss their appeal in a coronavirus coverage dispute after the California Supreme Court dismissed its consideration of the Ninth Circuit’s certified question asking whether an insurance policy’s virus exclusion is unenforceable.

SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge on Oct. 7 issued a three-year permanent injunction against Google 10 months after a jury entered a verdict in favor or Epic Games Inc. in its antitrust dispute with Google LLC over the Android app market and the Google Play Store, finding that “[r]equiring Google to allow other app stores to be distributed through the Play Store for a discrete period is a modest step to correct the consequence of unlawfully preventing rival stores from reaching users and developers.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two makers of e-cigarette products urge the U.S. Supreme Court in an Oct. 7 response brief to side with the en banc Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a circuit split over Food and Drug Administration bans of e-cigarette products and affirm the en banc court’s findings that FDA unfairly changed its requirements for vape product manufacturers and “committed prejudicial error” during the review process.

HONOLULU — In response to two certified questions posed by a federal court in Hawaii in a suit filed by an insured petroleum company seeking coverage for underlying lawsuits alleging that the company is responsible for contributing to the effects of global warming based on its failure to warn of the hazards of using fossil fuel products, the Hawaii Supreme Court on Oct. 7 determined that an “accident” includes an insured’s reckless conduct and that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are pollutants as defined in the subject policies’ pollution exclusions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ determination that an amended class complaint no longer belonged in federal court after all references to federal law have been eliminated “is an extreme outlier” and “conflicts with the text and structure of [28 U.S. Code] Section 1367 and with more than a century of precedent,” an attorney representing the makers of prescription pet food argued Oct. 7 before the U.S. Supreme Court.