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January 15, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge vacated a JAMS arbitral award worth more than $102 million after finding the original award-creditors “purposefully presented false testimony at the arbitration” regarding a dispositive issue in the dispute, issued sanctions against them for failure to comply with discovery orders and ordered them to pay attorney fees, saying their former law firm “crossed” a “line” in the arbitration without finding it “complicit in its clients’ perjury.”
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January 14, 2026
SEATTLE — Addressing an opposed request for attorney fees totaling $239,390 in a long-term disability (LTD) benefits case involving long COVID that was remanded to the administrator for full consideration because of a “substantial” procedural error, a Washington federal judge on Jan. 13 reduced the hours and the blended hourly rate, concluding that the appropriate fee award in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act case is $112,050.
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January 14, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Writing that a dental insurer engaged in “dubious” tactics by “removing based on federal jurisdiction then turning around and challenging federal standing,” a California federal judge denied the insurer’s motion to dismiss and instead remanded a putative class action against it for allegedly sharing insureds’ online data without consent, but denied the plaintiff’s request to consider attorney fees.
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January 13, 2026
NEW YORK — An intergovernmental risk pool told a New York federal court that a reinsurer baselessly alleged that it was dissolved without notice when the reinsurer urged the court to rule on pending cross-petitions in an arbitration awards dispute involving attorney fees and whether there was a probability or a possibility of an excess judgment in an underlying case.
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January 13, 2026
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A California federal judge partially denied an insurer’s motion to recoup more than $721,000 in attorney fees, costs and interest deposited with the court in a coverage dispute over environmental contamination costs owed to an insured after determining that the insurer failed to show that the fees and costs billed by the insureds are unreasonable.
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January 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 12 denied a cigar maker’s petition for a writ of certiorari challenging the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ latest ruling on a long-running dispute between it and rival tobacco companies over antitrust and breach of contract claims, in which the petitioner argued that the Ninth Circuit “deepened” a circuit split by hearing an appeal in which the respondents allegedly “manufactured finality.”
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January 09, 2026
BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment issued in favor of property owners, holding that a state statute prohibits a homeowners association from enforcing a short-term rental restriction adopted without the property owners’ express written consent and rejecting the association’s argument that the restriction later bound subsequent purchasers; the Idaho high court also declined to award attorney fees to either party after determining the appeal raised an issue of first impression and was not frivolous.
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January 08, 2026
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York federal judge denied an insurer’s motion for summary judgment seeking rescission of policies due to a purported material misrepresentation in a policy application and a determination that the insurer has no duty to defend in underlying personal injury litigation involving a property owner and a property manager, finding “that there was no misrepresentation” in the application and that there is no dispute that a duty to defend is covered under the policies.
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January 07, 2026
ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida federal judge granted a request for attorney fees from Netflix Inc. and related entities, calling an author’s claims that the 2021 disaster comedy “Don’t Look Up” copied elements of two of his novels “objectively unreasonable, if not frivolous.”
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January 07, 2026
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Citing “the uncertainty of the appellate relief and operation of the agreement,” a Kansas federal judge on Jan. 6 denied without prejudice the parties’ joint stipulation that “upon affirmance of the District Court’s decision that does not reduce the amount of the judgment” the defendants would pay $7,108,254.82 in attorney fees and $449,437.86 in costs plus interest in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action where labor union members whose early retirement benefits were stopped or denied because of non-boilermaker work largely prevailed following a bench trial.
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January 07, 2026
CINCINNATI — Resolving cross-appeals, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court “abused its discretion in disallowing, as a matter of law, any fees for work performed in separate proceedings and in awarding expert witness fees under” Title 42 U.S. Code Section 1988(c) in a long-running inverse condemnation case that the owner of an industrial property filed against the city of Detroit.
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January 06, 2026
DETROIT — A federal judge in Michigan has granted final approval to a $150 million settlement that will resolve consolidated litigation alleging that the batteries in Chevrolet Bolt electronic vehicles for model years 2017 to 2022 had a defect that allowed them to overheat, finding that “the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable; the attorneys’ fees and expense reimbursement and service awards are reasonable; and the settlement is in the best interest of the class as a whole.”
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January 06, 2026
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York federal magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation advising entering default judgment against a pharmacy in a relator’s qui tam suit accusing the pharmacy of violating the federal False Claims Act (FCA) and related New York state law by participating in a “massive fraudulent prescription billing scheme” regarding the submission of false claims to government insurers, finding that the relator “has alleged all of the elements of a plausible claim under the FCA” against the pharmacy, which has failed to appear.
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January 06, 2026
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Michigan federal judge’s order that a pro se plaintiff-appellant must pay singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette and a related entity more than $3,000 in attorney fees and costs, finding that the appellant abandoned his challenge to attorney fees and failed to show that he should be allowed to amend his complaint accusing Morissette of stealing the songs on her record “Jagged Little Pill” from him.
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January 05, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted a motion from a supplement maker and its founder for appellate attorney fees against defendant-appellant entities that were accused of counterfeiting the appellees’ registered trademark; in October, the panel affirmed a California federal judge’s entry of $4 million judgment and award of nearly $5.3 million in attorney fees after the judge entered default judgment against the defendant-appellants.
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January 02, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed in full a Texas federal judge’s decision in a dispute over copyrights associated with a band from Mexico, seeing no abuse of discretion in the judge’s decision to deny posttrial attorney fees beyond a jury’s $50,000 award for a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
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December 31, 2025
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc filed by an employee after the appellate panel issued a ruling on a reduction of attorney fees for the employee’s counsel and remanded for recalculation in a wrongful termination case.
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December 29, 2025
DENVER — In an order issued without explanation nearly five months after the appellant filed a petition for panel rehearing that drew no response from the other party in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act case, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals declined to revisit its rejection of a bid to make a long-term disability (LTD) insurer pay attorney fees and other costs for an administrative appeal that got benefits reinstated.
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December 23, 2025
SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on Dec. 22 granted a Chinese law firm’s petition to confirm a Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration (SCIA) award worth more than $765,000 in unpaid attorney fees against the firm’s former client, who is now residing in Washington state.
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December 23, 2025
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge awarded Walmart Inc. more than $623,000 in attorney fees against two attorneys as sanction for bringing a frivolous class action based on the plaintiff’s alleged in-store purchase of Walmart avocado oil, which after multiple rulings including a grant of class certification was revealed to have been made online and therefore was subject to a binding arbitration agreement.
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December 23, 2025
DOVER, Del. — The Supreme Court of Delaware, sitting en banc¸ reversed a lower court’s rescission of Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package in a shareholder’s derivative suit, finding that rescission was an improper remedy because Musk couldn’t be restored to the status quo ante.
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December 19, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — One of the first Employee Retirement Income Security Act cases in which a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the “effective vindication” doctrine in declining to compel individual arbitration has been resolved by an $8 million class settlement that the plaintiff said will yield average net distributions of more than $8,500 per class member; the suit filed in a Delaware federal court challenged a 2016 employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) transaction.
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December 19, 2025
NEW ORLEANS — A divided Louisiana Supreme Court denied an attorney’s application for writ of certiorari filed after she was ordered to pay additional attorney fees to a former client and his new attorney when she was unsuccessful in appealing a ruling against her in her defamation suit; the dissenting high court justices opined that the application should have been granted to consider additional attorney fees for the client.
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December 19, 2025
NEW ORLEANS — Concluding that favorable factual findings are “a moral victory . . . insufficient to justify an award of attorney’s fees” and that the claimant here ultimately obtained no legal relief, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 18 reversed an award of more than $1.25 million to a former National Football League player who sued for a higher level of disability benefits than he was awarded, prevailed after a bench trial and then saw that favorable ruling reversed in a previous appeal.
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December 18, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Class counsel filed a reply brief in further support of their request for an attorney fee award of 5% of settlement classes’ net in a risk-corridor payment class action under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), arguing that the fee would not result in an “unjustified windfall.”