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DENVER — Ruling that a common interest agreement (CIA) does not protect the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) from waiving its privileges and protections by sharing investigative materials with plaintiffs challenging an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) deal, a Colorado federal magistrate judge on Sept. 11 said the plaintiffs gained “access to information they can leverage, use to take shortcuts, and rely upon to circumvent ordinary discovery protocols.”
PHILADELPHIA — A jury in a Pennsylvania state court on Sept. 12 ruled in favor of Monsanto Co. in a trial for damages brought by a man who contended that he developed cancer from exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.
BALTIMORE — Experts retained by an organization that alleges that the U.S. Naval Academy unconstitutionally considers race as a factor in admissions can testify after a federal judge in Maryland largely denied a motion to exclude.
ATLANTA — A federal judge in Georgia on Sept. 11 partially granted a motion from the estate of a songwriter and the company that manages his works to bar former President Donald J. Trump and associated entities from using a soul tune from the 1960s at future campaign appearances, but the judge held that the estate and the company are not harmed by videos of the song being used at past campaign stops.
PASADENA, Calif. — A split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Sept. 11 reversed the dismissal of a putative class action against a hand sanitizer maker that advertises its products as capable of killing “99.99% of germs,” with the majority finding that the plaintiff adequately raised an “alternative theory” that the defendant misrepresented the effectiveness of its products under “real-world conditions” in which consumers’ hands may be dirty, greasy or wet.
DENVER — An assistant principal who was fired after citing religious beliefs when disagreeing with a play that was to be put on by students may proceed with his discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), a 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled Sept. 10, opining that the former employee “provide[d] a plausible link between his termination and a discriminatory motive.”
OAKLAND, Calif. — A California federal judge granted motions to dismiss filed by the manufacturer of embryo culture media and its subsidiary in a case in which a couple alleges that a defective solution that was used in the fertility procedure caused none of their fertilized eggs to survive to the blastocyst stage.
OAKLAND, Calif. — A California federal judge on Sept. 10 granted summary judgment to defendants in a defective metal-on-metal hip implant case remanded from a multidistrict litigation after finding that the man who alleges that he was injured failed to prove causation or that his doctor relied on misrepresentations from the company.
CHICAGO — A majority of an Illinois appeals court panel on Sept. 10 held that an underlying lawsuit alleging that an insured violated the Biometric Information Privacy Act did not trigger coverage under its “Cyber, Data Risk, and Media Insurance” policies, reversing the lower court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of the insured and remanding for the court to enter summary judgment in favor of the insurer on the issue of its duty to defend.
NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 10 held that an oil well operator is not liable to the excess insurer of an oilfield consultancy, affirming on other grounds a lower federal court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the oil well operator in the insurer’s subrogation breach of contract lawsuit seeking reimbursement for the $5 million it paid toward the settlement of an underlying injury lawsuit.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge in Ohio dismissed a man’s trademark infringement suit against a food manufacturing company, holding that the company did not infringe the man’s registered trademarks on phrases related to a type of pepper in salsas because the company used the words descriptively without a risk of confusion with the man’s products.