WASHINGTON, D.C. — Weighing in on a separate aspect of the withdrawal liability case that spawned a May 21 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on July 7 partially reversed and remanded a summary judgment ruling in which a multiemployer pension fund had prevailed on all issues.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on July 6 denied applications in two separate cases seeking to vacate the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ stay of lower court injunctions preventing the enforcement of a Texas state law that requires age verification and parental consent before minors download mobile applications.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida on July 6 dismissed with prejudice a pro se plaintiff’s copyright infringement claims against pop singer Taylor Swift and related entities, finding that any alleged overlaps between the plaintiff’s poetry and Swift’s lyrics were unprotectable ideas, themes, metaphors, words and short phrases, and that the complaint still did not plausibly plead unlawful copying.

SEATTLE — The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP), an internal vetting policy implemented in 2008, will be rescinded pursuant to a class settlement reached in a nearly decade-long case over the vetting process that was found by a federal court in Washington to have been adopted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner.

TUCSON, Ariz. — An insurer owes no duty to cover a bodily injury claim filed against an insured health club by a club member who contracted Legionnaires’ disease in the club’s sauna because the policy’s fungi or bacteria exclusion clearly applies as a bar to coverage, an Arizona federal magistrate judge said July 6 in recommending that the insurer’s motion for summary judgment be granted.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a July 6 ruling, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said that a settlement agreement in a patent infringement dispute mooted the plaintiff-appellant’s appeal of a New York federal judge’s finding that the patent claims at issue were invalid as abstract.

PIERRE, S.D. — The South Dakota Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment for Viva Capital Trust but reversed in part the cost award to Viva in a dispute with an estate claiming that a $10 million life insurance policy, initially owned by the decedent’s trust, was an illegal stranger-originated life insurance (STOLI) policy, finding in part that a later transfer of the policy was not unlawful and that when the policy was issued, the benefits were payable to an individual with an insurable interest in the insured’s life.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on July 2 granted in part class certification and a motion for a preliminary injunction in a putative class action against the U.S. Department of Justice and a California children’s hospital seeking to stop the DOJ from obtaining patient records related to gender-affirming care as evidence of purported violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), finding that provisional class certification and injunction apply to a specific subclass because the plaintiffs failed to establish the commonality and typicality requirements under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the statewide class.