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October 27, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — American Honda Motor Company Inc.’s nearly year-and-a-half appeal of a trial court’s award of attorney fees and costs that was much larger than the monetary settlement for a consumer class who alleged defective HandsFreeLink (HFL) Bluetooth systems in certain Acura vehicles that cause excessive electric drain was terminated by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals after the parties notified the appellate court that they reached a settlement.
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October 27, 2026
DENVER — An Employee Retirement Income Security Act class action challenging an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) deal would be resolved under an unspecified agreement in principle the parties announced three days before a bench trial had been slated to begin in Colorado federal court.
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October 27, 2026
CHICAGO — In a pair of rulings in a multidistrict litigation in which consumers allege wrongful death and other injuries from endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in chemical hair relaxers (CHRs), a federal judge in Illinois stated that the parties agreed on the final five bellwether cases and, addressing a motion to exclude the 10 general causation experts, partly denied the motion as to two of the experts presented by the consumers.
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October 27, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated the class certification order in a securities fraud class action against a biopharmaceutical company and certain of its executives, finding that the lower court did not properly assess evidence of market inefficiency.
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October 26, 2026
\PORTLAND, Ore. — Amazon Data Services (ADS) and a group of residents from in and around the Lower Umatilla Basin separately filed oppositions on Oct. 23 to omnibus motions filed by the Port of Morrow, agricultural companies, food processors and an electric utility to compel discovery or modify a stay in two related putative class action suits in Oregon federal court alleging violations of state law and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) over alleged groundwater contamination.
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October 26, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — No federal court has jurisdiction to review “‘questions of law and fact’” that arise from the removal of noncitizens “except through a petition for review of a final removal order,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other parties argue in a petitioner brief filed Oct. 23 in the U.S. Supreme Court in an appeal challenging a February ruling by a federal court in Massachusetts that declared the DHS’s March 2025 third-country removals policy “unlawful.”
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October 26, 2026
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — On remand from the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari brought by Union Carbide Corp. and an affiliate, a West Virginia federal judge denied a plaintiff’s motion to certify a class of approximately 37,000 people allegedly exposed to ethylene oxide (EtO) and denied her motion to redefine the class as based on a “blatantly false” argument.
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October 26, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — The Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued the mandate in an artificial intelligence hotel pricing case after declining to rehear a ruling in which a panel reversed a judge’s finding that a proposed class had not adequately alleged that the use of algorithmic pricing tools constituted a conspiracy to fix hotel prices.
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October 23, 2026
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal judge granted final approval to a $1.05 million settlement resolving consolidated class action litigation against an accounting and business consulting firm over a September 2023 data breach that allegedly compromised the sensitive personal information of more than 85,000 individuals.
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October 23, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Oct. 22 vacated a preliminary injunction in a putative class lawsuit barring enforcement of a new Mississippi law, House Bill 1193, that prevents government-run schools and post-secondary institutions from requiring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) activities and ordered that the case must be reassigned on remand to a different judge, calling the trial court proceedings “a botch job.”
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October 23, 2026
PHOENIX — An Arizona federal judge granted final approval to a $3.03 million privacy class action settlement with LifeStance Health Group Inc., including more than $1 million in attorney fees, after previously denying preliminary approval of an earlier agreement over concerns about inadequate settlement valuation, disproportionate attorney fees and potential collusion.
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October 23, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A restaurant customer who alleges in a putative class complaint that he and others were misled into believing that they were being fed fresh, local fish by a Mississippi establishment that pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to misrepresent what they were selling sufficiently alleged a particularized injury, a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, reversing a trial court’s dismissal of the case and vacating the denial of leave to amend.
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October 22, 2026
SEATTLE — A day after conducting a fairness hearing in a case that was among the many challenging a common use of forfeited nonvested matching retirement contributions, a Washington federal judge on Oct. 21 issued an order granting final approval of a settlement with an estimated value of $42,724,532 and approving the requested awards of $5,880,539 for attorney fees, $24,461 for litigation costs and $5,000 as a service award to the named plaintiff.
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October 22, 2026
FORT MYERS, Fla. — A data privacy putative class action survived a motion to dismiss after a Florida federal judge found that the alleged publication of the wife’s personal information on the dark web and her husband’s efforts to mitigate the resulting risk of identity theft sufficiently allege injury.
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October 22, 2026
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a divided decision enabled a putative class action lawsuit to proceed against nine Michigan corrections officials but ruled that five others were entitled to immunity on certain claims in a lawsuit alleging that they had knowledge of but failed to remediate mold at a women’s prison, which has allegedly sickened multiple inmates.
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October 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 21 denied an application to stay filed by President Donald J. Trump and other federal government parties seeking to halt a preliminary injunction in a provisionally certified class case that enjoins the enforcement of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP’s) February 2026 near-total ban on gender-affirming care.
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October 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals did not create any conflict with other circuits when it ruled in a putative class case that the termination of grants by President Donald J. Trump and other government officials that were based on the perceived viewpoint of the research likely violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, researchers argue in their brief opposing the government parties’ petition seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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October 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court denied Chicago vehicle owners’ petition seeking review in their putative class case alleging that Chicago’s vehicle forfeiture scheme violates the U.S. Constitution’s takings clause; however, Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a statement in which Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined to “encourage courts considering this issue to take care that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights.”
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October 21, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — The parties in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit seeking millions in severance benefits for a putative class of former Twitter Inc. employees have reached an unspecified settlement in principle, they told a California federal court in a joint filing.
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October 20, 2026
SEATTLE — The owner and operator of several Potbelly Sandwich Shop restaurants appealed a Washington federal court’s dismissal of its breach of contract lawsuit seeking employment practices liability coverage for an underlying putative class action alleging that it violated the Washington Equal Pay and Opportunities Act, arguing to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the lower court erred by failing to apply the “liberal-construction principles” that govern coverage disputes under Washington law and misapplied Washington law when it analyzed the insurance policy and underlying allegations.
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October 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 19 asked retirees to respond to three certiorari petitions filed over two similar rulings that revived putative class suits on the grounds that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act requires the use of “reasonable” actuarial assumptions when calculating certain pension benefits.
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October 20, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a California federal judge’s ruling certifying three classes of drivers suing Tesla Inc. and its affiliates for unfairly marketing cars as having “self-driving” technology in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws, writing that the lower court “erred by inferring” that an entire class was exposed to allegedly deceptive statements by Tesla regarding the ability of hardware in its cars to provide full self-driving (FSD).
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October 19, 2026
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Concluding that health plan participants are entitled to summary judgment on all six claims, a Missouri federal judge on Oct. 16 ordered damages briefing in the class action that is part of a wave of Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenges to health plan tobacco surcharges; he noted that the plaintiffs seek a total of $47,808,402.09 on five claims and $37,647,290.50 on the other claim and that the defendant argues that the second amount would constitute improper duplicative damages.
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October 19, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal magistrate judge issued the public version of a previously sealed ruling denying a plaintiff’s motion to certify a statewide class allegedly deceived into purchasing nutritional drinks based on their health claims in violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws, writing that the plaintiff failed to show that her damages model could reliably calculate classwide damages and partly excluding consideration of her damages experts after finding them “unreliable.”
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October 19, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge adopted as final a tentative ruling and granted a plaintiff’s motion to certify a statewide class accusing a contact lens manufacturer of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by allegedly sending customers contact lenses that do not satisfy federal requirements for contact lens prescription fulfillment and denied a defense motion to exclude the plaintiff’s expert on materiality and damages.