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As the number of health plan sponsors facing putative class lawsuits over tobacco surcharges keeps rising, plaintiffs continue to get claims past dismissal most of the time, but in the last month one case has been dismissed while four survived dismissal wholly or in part; additionally, a similar case that slightly preceded the wave was ruled time-barred at summary judgment.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Despite calling the underlying Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling “erroneous,” the United States says that a U.S. Supreme Court petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a uranium processing company and its former owner asking the court to decide whether radiation-dose regulations for nuclear incidents provide the exclusive standard of care in public liability actions pursuant to the Price-Anderson Act (PAA)should be denied, stating that review by the high court “is not warranted at this time.”
RICHMOND, Va. — A divided en banc Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on April 10 vacated a trial court’s April 2025 preliminary injunction — an injunction that was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2025 — in a suit by a union and two groups representing a combined 7 million Americans who challenged access to Social Security Administration (SSA) records provided to individuals working for U.S. DOGE Service and U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization(together, DOGE).
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge had harsh words for the head of a New York area chapter of the Proud Boys extremist group who filed a response to a trademark infringement complaint filed against the group by a historic Black church in Washington, D.C., while a default judgment hearing was occurring before the court; the judge said the “Court balks at the suggestion that this level of disregard stemmed from an ‘inadvertent[]’ ‘calendaring error.’”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In consolidated cases before the U.S. Supreme Court 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, Verizon and AT&T on April 13 filed a reply brief, arguing that the FCC’s forfeiture orders are unlawful because they impose monetary penalties without a jury trial.
BOSTON — The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on April 10 affirmed a trial court’s ruling denying dismissal by Meta Platforms Inc. and Instagram LLC in a suit filed against them by the commonwealth of Massachusetts alleging that Instagram’s design features cause addiction in youth, finding that interlocutory review is appropriate and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not bar the commonwealth’s claims because the alleged harm results from the way in which the platform is designed rather than the content of the information published.
BALTIMORE — Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said on April 9 that the state has reached a settlement in principle with the owner and technical manager of the ship M/V Dali, which allided with and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, 2024, noting that the settlement resolves a potion of the state’s claims in an exoneration lawsuit.
DENVER — Colorado’s Artificial Intelligence Act (CAIA), set to take effect in June, must be enjoined as it is “an effort to embed the State’s preferred views into the very fabric of AI systems” rather than “a prohibition on so-called ‘algorithmic discrimination’” as the state has alleged, X.AI LLC (xAI), the developer of Grok, claims in an April 9 complaint filed against the Colorado attorney general.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) had substantial evidence to support its rejection of a Dominican Republic tobacco company’s challenge to a CBD vape manufacturer’s application for a trademark on a stick-figure logo with limbs splayed out in the shape of the letter X, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed.
PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge dismissed in part a putative class action against DraftKings Inc., a gambling company that offers online betting, and related entities, asserting claims for violations of a Pennsylvania consumer protection law, unjust enrichment and intentional misrepresentation related to “deceptive” advertising for certain betting promotions, finding that some of the claims under state law failed because the plaintiffs did not show “ascertainable loss” and the losses asserted were “inherently speculative.”
WILMINGTON, Del. — In the latest decision in a long-running case brought by shareholders regarding the merger between M&T Bank Corp. and Hudson City Bancorp Inc., a federal judge in Delaware granted summary judgment in favor of the banks and their respective directors, finding that the banks did not provide any misleading information in their joint proxy statement informing shareholders of the merger.