EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A federal judge in Illinois granted expedited third-party discovery from asbestos trusts in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case in the wake of a Delaware Supreme Court ruling allowing the trusts to implement new document retention policies.

SEATTLE — Giving the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) a victory on an issue that is the focus of numerous lawsuits, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Aug. 14 issued a 2-1 ruling reversing quashal of an administrative subpoena for patient medical and communications data from a gender-affirming care provider and remanding for further proceedings; the majority concluded that the provider “has not met its heavy burden of showing that the subpoena was issued for an improper purpose,” and the dissenter said, “That the President may lawfully voice policy opposition to a practice does not mean the DOJ can exceed its statutory authority and issue pretextual subpoenas to put a company out of business.”

SHERMAN, Texas — A federal judge in Texas on Aug. 14 rejected an objection from an infectious disease lab testing company and adopted a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation granting the lab’s insurer’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in a dispute over defense coverage for regulatory claims.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling recognizing a cause of action for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics for an inmate who was injured in a prison gang fight but was not sent to a hospital, a staff nurse at a federal detention center in his Aug. 14 petitioner brief notes that the high court “has refused to extend Bivens to any new context for the past 45 years, across 13 cases,” and says his case should be the 14th “and perhaps the final installment of the Bivens saga.”

RICHMOND, Va. — A Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel, in vacating and remanding a South Carolina federal judge’s award of summary judgment, held that an African-American man who was fired from his job as a driver for a recycling company after complaining about racial discrimination provided enough evidence to show genuine issues of material fact about his employer’s characterization of its stated reason for firing him as “belligerent and insubordinate conduct” to support a finding of pretext on a retaliation claim.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 17 denied Verizon Communications Inc.’s petition for rehearing seeking to modify the court’s disposition from affirmance to affirmance with a remand as to Verizon only following the court’s holding that the Federal Communications Commission’s forfeiture orders do not violate the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in consolidated cases in which Verizon and AT&T Inc. asserted constitutional challenges to the FCC’s enforcement of monetary forfeitures under the Communications Act.

CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge issued a warning that no more bellwether trials in multidistrict litigation filed against the manufacturers of infant formula that allegedly caused preterm infants to develop necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) will be held “absent assurances that the majority of fact witnesses will appear for live, in-person testimony” after learning just days before the first trial was set to commence that most of the witnesses would be “testifying via pre-recorded deposition designations.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After granting Apple Inc.  an administrative stay that expired at 5 p.m. on Aug. 13, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan that same day denied Apple’s application for a stay of the proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which granted injunctive relief and issued a contempt finding against Apple over anticompetitive practices on its App Store in an antitrust dispute with Epic Games Inc.