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October 15, 2026
MIAMI — A Florida federal judge issued an order setting a schedule for bellwether jury trials in a mass action brought by current and former servicemembers and their family members against several military housing companies who owned, operated and managed their rental housing at Naval Air Station Key West (NAS Key West) and are accused of concealing toxic mold, asbestos and other conditions at the properties that caused the plaintiffs to suffer various health consequences and emotional distress.
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October 15, 2026
ST. LOUIS — The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied in a three-sentence order a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc filed by a settlement objector after the appellate panel in September in a single opinion rejected four appeals seeking to set aside more than $110 million in settlements that were part of more than $1 billion collected for home sellers who accused National Association of Realtors (NAR) and real estate franchises of conspiring to artificially inflate residential real estate commission costs.
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October 15, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Consumers seeking to represent a class in a case challenging animal testing claims on John Paul Mitchell Systems (JPMS) hair product labels presented an insufficient proposed classwide damages model, a split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating a class certification order and remanding for further proceedings.
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October 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Video Privacy Protection Act’s (VPPA) reach is not limited to video-related services, the attorney representing a California man who brought a putative class complaint regarding data sharing against Paramount Global under the VPPA argued Oct. 14 before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case debating the meaning of “consumer” under the act.
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October 14, 2026
NEW ALBANY, Ind. — A federal judge in Indiana on Oct. 13 granted a motion by four female student-athletes for an emergency preliminary injunction in their putative class action halting Hanover College’s plans to eliminate its women’s swim team; the college’s motion to dismiss that was filed in the meantime remains pending.
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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 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In pleadings filed one day apart, the federal government and a provisionally certified class of prisoners, who were granted a preliminary injunction that enjoins the enforcement of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) February 2026 near-total ban on gender-affirming care, debate a stay the government seeks from the U.S. Supreme Court.
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October 14, 2026
TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida judge granted final approval of a data privacy settlement in which a nationwide waxing provider has agreed to pay up to $5 million — including one-third of the gross total for class attorney fees, as well as payments to class representatives and members — after third parties allegedly accessed client information without the clients’ consent in violation of federal and state laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
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October 14, 2026
ATLANTA — Overruling the 1985 decision Mason v. Continental Group, Inc. and its progeny “to the extent they hold that” the Employee Retirement Income Security Act “requires exhaustion of statutory claims,” the en banc 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Oct. 13 reversed dismissal of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) valuation case and remanded to the panel that initially decided the appeal “for any further proceedings that may be necessary.”
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October 13, 2026
SAN ANTONIO — On remand after the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that certain arbitration provisions at issue in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case violate the effective vindication doctrine, a Texas federal judge held that those provisions are not severable under Texas law; the ruling means that the plan amendment that the defendants argued required arbitration of representative claims cannot be enforced as to those claims.
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October 13, 2026
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington Privacy Act (WPA) doesn’t prohibit Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) from using Meta Platforms Inc. technology to track the searches and clicks of users of the SCH public website and SCH’s automated responses and from sharing that data with Meta to create targeted ads, the Washington Supreme Court majority ruled in a putative class lawsuit brought by website users.
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October 13, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California judge dismissed a woman’s putative class suit alleging that she received unsolicited spam emails from web-based eyewear retailer Warby Parker Inc. and that Warby Parker used tracking pixels on its website without her consent, finding that her claim under California law related to receipt of spam email is preempted by federal law and that she lacks standing to bring the remaining claims under the California Trap and Trace Law and for intrusion upon seclusion.
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October 09, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A federal judge in Missouri dismissed two consolidated putative class action lawsuits filed by student loan borrowers against the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA) and the U.S. Department of Education, finding that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to hear the claims against the federal agency and that MOHELA has sovereign immunity from all but the breach of contract claims, which the borrowers failed to sufficiently allege.
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October 09, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A Missouri state court judge granted final approval to a $1.25 million settlement resolving class claims brought against three insurers for allegedly violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by allowing their agents to send “incessant telemarketing calls and text messages” to individuals on the national Do Not Call (DNC) registry, with the insurers agreeing to pay up to $160 per phone number and more than $396,000 in attorney fees and expenses while denying any wrongdoing.
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October 08, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a lower court’s dismissal of investors’ class action alleging that a biotechnology company and its top officer misled investors through certain financial disclosures that when corrected caused the stock’s price to drop, finding that the lower court relied on a categorical materiality rule when dismissing the case after the U.S. Supreme Court held that categorical rules cannot be used in a materiality analysis.
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October 08, 2026
NEW YORK — A federal judge dismissed shareholders’ second amended putative class action complaint alleging that a software company and two former and current executives misled investors about the success of their turnaround strategy before the company’s stock price dropped when the strategy was found to be unsuccessful, finding that the shareholders’ claims failed to sufficiently plead scienter.
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October 08, 2026
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel denied the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.’s (Freddie Mac) petition to rehear its decision reviving a securities fraud suit brought by a pension fund; the panel had vacated the lower court’s denial of class certification and directed the lower court to allow the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) to file a new motion.
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October 07, 2026
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal judge in Connecticut denied dismissal of a lead plaintiff retirement fund’s putative class action against Stanley Black & Decker Inc. and three of its former executives for allegedly misleading investors about customer demand for the company’s products and causing the company’s stock price to drop, finding the retirement fund plausibly alleged material misstatements about consumer demand and inventory levels.
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October 07, 2026
SANTA FE, N.M. — Two oil trading companies and one trader filed an amended putative class action complaint against several independent shale oil producers as part of multidistrict litigation against an alleged cartel of oil companies accused of conspiring to fix the prices of fracked shale oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil in “collusive orchestration” with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in violation of federal antitrust laws.
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October 07, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Pennsylvania federal judge granted a college’s motion for summary judgment on a former student’s claim for unjust enrichment but denied the motion as to breach of implied contract in a putative class action suit against Dickinson College for its alleged failure to partially refund tuition and mandatory fees, finding that the “unjust enrichment claim” lacks viability because Pennsylvania law prohibits unjust enrichment claims when parties are governed by a contract whether it is express or implied.
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October 07, 2026
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal judge granted final approval to a $12.5 million nonreversionary settlement to be funded by a health system that was accused of installing the Meta Pixel and Google Analytics on its websites, allegedly resulting in the interception and disclosure of patients’ personally identifiable information and protected health information without consent.
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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on Oct. 6 in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act case concerning whether fund underperformance claims must allege a “meaningful benchmark” to survive dismissal, with retirement plan participants arguing that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals improperly imposed a categorical rule that prohibits a holistic analysis of the allegations and plan fiduciaries and amicus curiae the U.S. government contending that the Ninth Circuit correctly decided that an apples-to-apples comparison is necessary in such cases.
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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
DALLAS — Nearly a year after a settlement was preliminarily approved, a Texas federal judge granted final approval to the $177 million deal that resolves multidistrict litigation over two data security incidents involving AT&T Inc., with the delay attributable in part to the original judge’s recusal while the final approval motion was under advisement.
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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 Sunoco Inc. and Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P. (together, Sunoco) that asked the high court to decide whether a court is permitted under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 or Article III of the U.S. Constitution to certify a class and award damages in a case where ascertainability has never been satisfied.