SAN FRANCISCO — A divided California Supreme Court clarified that while an employment contract’s format is generally irrelevant to the substantive unconscionability analysis that focuses on the fairness of the terms, “courts must closely scrutinize the terms of difficult-to-read contracts for unfairness or one-sidedness,” remanding for further consideration a lower court’s ruling that small, barely readable print supports findings of substantive and procedural unconscionability in the case of a former Nissan employee who sued for wrongful termination after signing such an agreement.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — In an unpublished opinion, a split Kentucky appeals panel reversed and remanded a ruling against the third-party administrator of a short-term disability (STD) plan in a long-running case where a jury awarded the claimant $7,125,000 in emotional distress and punitive damages

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge in California on Feb. 2 granted an insurer’s motion to dismiss a real estate agent insured’s breach of contract, bad faith and declaratory relief lawsuit seeking additional insured coverage for an underlying lawsuit alleging that the real estate agent deliberately misrepresented a coastal residence for sale, holding that the underlying action involves economic damages and not bodily injury or property damages to trigger coverage under the policy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that found no error in the certification of a national third-party payer (TPP) class of entities that paid for the diabetes drug Actos, despite the court recognizing that there is no way to calculate the number of class members that were not harmed, does not warrant review by the U.S. Supreme Court, Painters and Allied Trades District Council 82 Health Care Fund argues in an opposition filed Feb. 2.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Feb. 2 affirmed a Maine federal judge’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in a dispute over a design patent describing a body massaging device; the panel majority held that a reasonable jury could not have found infringement under the judge’s construction, while the chief circuit judge wrote in dissent that the majority and the judge focused too much on individual features and not the similarity of the overall design.

The parties to multidistrict litigation in California federal court against 23andMe Inc. and affiliates for a data breach in which millions of customers’ genetic data and personally identifiable information (PII) was hacked filed a joint status report on Feb. 2 stating the plaintiffs will move to dismiss the MDL following the final approval in Missouri federal bankruptcy court of a settlement worth up to $50 million to resolve U.S. customers’ claims against 23andMe, with 25% allocated for attorney fees.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A unanimous Iowa Supreme Court reversed and remanded a lower court ruling denying dismissal of a common law and statutory law privacy violation suit against a police department, a police officer and related officials and entities alleging that the officer improperly accessed confidential databases of local residents for his own personal use, finding that the suit is “time-barred” under the statute of limitations.

SAN DIEGO — Asserting that a False Claims Act (FCA) claimant had no direct knowledge of the details of a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan application process and thus could not show a knowingly false statement made in connection with the application, a construction equipment dealer moved a California federal court for summary judgment in a lawsuit by a former employee alleging that the dealer received the COVID-related loan by altering or misrepresenting its payroll records.