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October 16, 2026
HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court is considering whether the Montana Board of Environmental Review has jurisdiction in an administrative proceeding under the Montana Strip and Underground Mine Reclamation Act to award attorney fees against conservation groups that the board found acted in bad faith in order to harass a mining company.
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October 16, 2026
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A Florida appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling denying homeowners’ motion to enforce the attorney fees and costs portion of a settlement reached with their now-insolvent insurer after the lower court determined that those fees and costs are not considered a covered claim under Florida law “even if they were part of a global settlement” reached with the insurer before its insolvency.
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October 16, 2026
PITTSBURGH — A federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania ordered that parties’ bonds remain in place in a dispute over intellectual property rights related to a fudge recipe while the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals mulls appellate attorney fees; a partially split appeals court panel in July affirmed an award of attorney fees against plaintiff entities for their unsuccessful copyright and trademark claims in the dispute and affirmed their jury victory on trade secret claims.
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October 16, 2026
HONOLULU — The Hawaii Supreme Court partially affirmed an order governing the award of attorney fees in cases related to the 2023 Maui fires, upholding the lower court’s authority to establish the fee framework and a $222 million common benefit fund but vacating three provisions that restricted juridical review of fee awards.
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October 16, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A False Claims Act relator filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the court to determine whether postjudgment interest on attorney fees begins when a judgment establishes a plaintiff’s entitlement to fees or when a later judgment quantifies the fee award, saying an appellate panel’s ruling on the issue “deepens an entrenched circuit split.”
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October 16, 2026
DETROIT — A Michigan bank agreed to pay $31.5 million — including $10.5 million in attorney fees, $311,690.80 in litigation costs and monetary relief and credit monitoring for class members — in a class action settlement after the bank experienced two cyberattacks resulting in data breaches impacting more than 2.18 million employees and customers whose data was compromised.
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October 15, 2026
GREEN BAY, Wis. — After a Wisconsin federal judge for a second time granted summary judgment of patent invalidity to a defendant eyeglass company, the company is requesting the judge find the patent infringement case against it to be exceptional and award it attorney fees.
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October 15, 2026
SHERMAN, Texas — In an amended memorandum opinion, a Texas federal judge awarded guitar maker Gibson Inc. more than $4 million in attorney fees and costs from a company a jury held infringed trademarked guitar shapes, finding that fees were warranted based on the jury’s finding that the defendant entity intentionally infringed and counterfeited the trademarks.
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October 15, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge granted a California company’s petition to recognize and enforce a split International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) tribunal’s award worth $17.8 million for attorney fees and costs that the company incurred arbitrating a pharmaceutical licensing dispute brought against it by a Swiss company, which the Swiss company has already paid, and adopted specific findings regarding the dispute, which the Swiss company had opposed.
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October 15, 2026
MINNEAPOLIS — Overruling the objections of a long-term disability (LTD) insurer, a Minnesota federal judge affirmed a magistrate judge’s order allowing discovery outside the administrative record for an Employee Retirement Income Security Act claim for equitable relief.
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October 15, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a joint venture member was not entitled to attorney fees after a jury found that it had not breached the joint venture agreement by not making expected capital contributions because the agreement conditioned attorney fees on an adjudicated breach, not merely on prevailing in the litigation, and there was no determination that the other joint venture member breached the agreement.
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October 14, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California federal judge on Oct. 13 granted a motion for final approval of a $68 million settlement resolving class claims against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. (collectively Google) for allegedly eavesdropping on Google Assistant (GA) users in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and privacy laws and granted the plaintiffs’ motion for more than $22 million in attorney fees but reduced the named plaintiffs’ service awards.
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October 13, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — After finding a Colombian family of four had adequately established that the husband was harmed in Colombia because of his political opinion and that the Colombian government could not or would not control those harming them, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel granted their motion for attorney fees, finding that the government’s position was not substantially justified.
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October 13, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 13 granted the United States’ motion for leave to participate in the Nov. 9 oral argument as amicus curiae in an appeal concerning whether the compensation a private pipeline company must pay in an eminent domain action carried out under the Natural Gas Act is controlled by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or state law.
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October 12, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge on Oct. 9 granted a Dubai-based joint venture’s motion, first filed in 2021, for reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred compelling discovery during proceedings related to its enforcement of an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) award in its favor worth more than $1.8 billion against telecommunications companies and an Iraqi businessman that was confirmed in 2024 but denied the venture’s request for sanctions.
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October 08, 2026
CARSON CITY, Nev. — On rehearing, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed a $7.9 million attorney fee award to a bicyclist who won a $14.1 million verdict after he was struck by a man driving for his employer, finding that the calculation of the fee award was based on counsel’s work during the entire case, rather than only on work performed after the bicyclist made a $1 million offer of judgment.
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October 07, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Declining to impose spoliation sanctions on a defendant accused of breaching its contract in a dispute over referrals, a California federal magistrate judge said in part that the plaintiff “has not shown that anything was lost due to” the defendant’s “failure to change its WhatsApp settings when this action was filed.”
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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by an attorney who represented himself and his firm in a case in which he sought collaborator’s fees and who asked the justices to decide two questions concerning consideration of contracts and other materials outside a complaint at the dismissal stage.
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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied separate requests from a patent holder and its counsel William P. Ramey III for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel’s decision to affirm a Texas federal judge’s dismissal of the patent holder’s suit against Volkswagen Group of America Inc. and an award of more than $200,000 in attorney fees to the car maker; the order also leaves in place the panel’s timeliness finding that led it to reject Ramey’s appeal of the judge’s order holding him jointly and severally liable.
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October 06, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California significantly slashed a more than $2.5 million request for attorney fees and costs filed by counsel representing an African American construction products supplier employee who was awarded $5 million in a racial bias suit, finding that the attorneys must have been “grossly negligent in” the preparation of the request “because no lawyer in their right mind would knowingly submit bills to any court for working more than 24 hours a day, for attending a deposition they didn’t attend, and for violating almost every standard billing practice known to ethics.”
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October 02, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge on Oct. 1 granted Honeywell International Inc. and its subsidiary’s cross-motion to confirm an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) award worth approximately to $43 million, including more than $20 million in attorney fees and arbitration costs, against a Mexican company for breach of a contract to fabricate gas processing units and denied the Mexican company’s petition to vacate, finding that the tribunal did not engage in misconduct, disregard the parties’ contract or exceed its powers.
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October 02, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Georgia federal judge failed to adequately explain why a plaintiff-appellee technology company’s infringement suit was reasonable despite a summary judgment ruling of invalidity, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating the judge’s denial of the defendant-appellant’s motion for attorney fees and sanctions and remanding for further proceedings.
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September 30, 2026
SEATTLE — Denying a petition for rehearing en banc without substantive explanation, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 29 let stand an unpublished memorandum disposition in which it briefly upheld the trial court’s ruling requiring recalculation of withdrawal liability under Ninth Circuit precedent but declined to award attorney fees for the appeal.
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September 30, 2026
ATLANTA — A Georgia federal judge denied a spray foam manufacturer’s motion for attorney fees from a homeowner who filed suit after falling ill from the effects of allegedly toxic foam used to insulate her home, ruling that even though the plaintiff’s claims against the manufacturer were dismissed on summary judgment, they were “not so substantially groundless as to warrant a fee award.”
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September 30, 2026
FORT MYERS, Fla. — A federal magistrate judge in Florida rejected a request for $215,401.60 in fees and instead ordered an attorney in a dispute between two medical marijuana companies to pay $6,720 in attorney fees spent responding to fictitious citations in his motion.