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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.
NEW ORLEANS — While a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel rejected plaintiff-appellants’ arguments that a Texas federal judge lacked jurisdiction to enter attorney fees in a copyright row after the Fifth Circuit had already affirmed an earlier finding that the parties would bear their own fees and costs, the panel also found that the judge failed to provide a lodestar analysis to explain the $500,000 awarded in attorney fees.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 23 granted an extension to the United States to file a response to a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a Connecticut farmland owner asking whether a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel was correct in upholding a lower court’s ruling finding him liable for the remediation of his property after he violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) by filling in protected wetlands without a permit.
NEW YORK — Distinguishing Kiobel v. Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a grant of an application for discovery of documents from a U.S. law firm for use in foreign proceedings under Title 28 U.S. Code Section 1782.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 24 ruled unanimously in favor of a couple who sued a baby food maker alleging that its product contained heavy metals, finding that a district court’s erroneous dismissal of one of the defendants did not cure the jurisdictional defect that existed when the case was removed to federal court. The Supreme Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Granting judgment on the administrative record against a claimant who unsuccessfully sought short-term and long-term disability (STD and LTD) benefits due to symptoms he attributed to long COVID despite being awarded disability benefits by the Social Security Administration (SSA), a Vermont federal judge on Feb. 20 said she found “no evidence that Plaintiff was intentionally deceitful” but concluded that he “is not a reliable source of information due to his conflicting statements, self-described poor memory, psychiatric symptoms, and extensive marijuana use.”
LOS ANGELES — A putative class complaint challenging the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles during which individuals in publicly accessible places are being stopped and asked about their legal status based on the location, type of work being done, language being spoken, accent and race or ethnicity may largely continue, a federal judge in California ruled, rejecting as “false” the federal government’s portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case.
RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the record does not indicate that the only finding that a reasonable jury could have reached was one in favor of an insurer in a breach of contract lawsuit arising from the insured’s roof damage caused by a snowstorm, concluding that the insurer’s arguments on appeal “fall short of that high bar.”