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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument today 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.
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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Retirees whose putative class actions were revived in a split Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision have waived their right to respond to separate certiorari petitions concerning that opinion, which ruled that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act “prohibits employers from using unreasonable, inappropriate actuarial assumptions” when calculating certain pension benefits.
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October 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 invited the solicitor general to file a brief expressing the views of the United States on a petition for a writ of certiorari by drug makers seeking consideration of two antitrust questions after the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the dismissal of a putative class complaint by federally funded health centers and clinics alleging that there is a concerted effort to restrict drug discounts offered to contract pharmacies.
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October 05, 2026
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — An Illinois federal judge excluded two experts’ opinions in their entirety and limited testimony from three others in a certified class action accusing Apple Inc. of violating the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) through the iOS Photos app’s People album feature, finding in part that certain opinions proposed by the experts are outside the scope of the dispute (Jane Doe, et al. v. Apple Inc., No. 20-421, S.D. Ill., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 224606).
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October 05, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 denied Zillow Group Inc. and its executives’ petition for a writ of certiorari arguing that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals applied the wrong standard when it affirmed class certifications in a securities fraud case, choosing not to address what Zillow characterized as a circuit split over rebutting the presumption of reliance at the class-certification stage.
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October 05, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Finding that a group of employers, labor unions and foreign workers would likely succeed on claims that federal agencies skipped required rulemaking and threatened employers’ ability to retain and hire workers by implementing a proclamation issued by President Donald J. Trump that conditions certain H-1B visas on employers making a $100,000 payment to the federal government, a California federal judge partially granted a preliminary injunction and vacated the policies guiding the proclamation’s implementation and barring enforcement of the policies until the agencies conduct notice and comment rulemaking and required analyses under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA).
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October 05, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by United Airlines Inc. concerning class certification in a case by workers who accuse the airline of discrimination by failing to provide religious and medical accommodations from the COVID-19 vaccine requirement; the high court’s orders list noted that Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh would have granted the petition.
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October 05, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 granted the federal government’s petition for a writ of certiorari in a putative class lawsuit over the Homeland Security secretary’s termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuela and Haiti, vacated the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ judgment in the case and remanded it for further consideration in light of the June decision in Mullin v. Doe.
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October 05, 2026
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Firefighters, unions and the Uniformed Professional Fire Fighters Association of Connecticut (UPFFA) who filed a putative class complaint alleging harm from certain personal protective equipment containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have presented “apparently contradictory positions” on medical monitoring claims, a federal judge in Connecticut wrote, denying the plaintiffs’ motion to certify two medical monitoring-related questions to the Connecticut Supreme Court without prejudice.
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October 05, 2026
Thirty-four class settlements below $5 million were proposed, granted preliminary approval or finalized between mid-February and late September in Employee Retirement Income Security Act cases that concerned alleged mismanagement of retirement plans.
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October 02, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a text-only docket entry, the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 1 requested a response to a certiorari petition seeking review of a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision that cites the Fourth Circuit’s recent Trauernicht v. Genworth Fin. Inc. ruling and concerns what constitutes “appropriate relief” under part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
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October 02, 2026
NEW YORK — In a lengthy docket order, a New York federal judge denied class certification in a suit alleging that Dollar Tree Stores Inc. sold lead-contaminated fruit pouches, adopting a magistrate judge’s findings that individualized questions about each child’s exposure, injuries and medical history prevented class treatment and that the plaintiffs had not established standing or a workable framework for a medical-monitoring class.
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October 02, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal magistrate judge granted in part a pasta maker’s motion to strike a plaintiffs’ expert witness evidence indicating consumer deception as “biased,” granted the company’s motion for summary judgment on claims accusing it of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by allegedly deceiving consumers into believing its pasta was made in Italy and denied as moot a defense motion to decertify the plaintiffs’ statewide class.
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October 02, 2026
HAMMOND, Ind. — An Indiana federal judge granted in part and denied in part a motion for class certification filed by 11 minors who are suing manufacturing companies for contaminating the area where they lived and attended elementary school with lead, granting certification of their proposed medical monitoring class but denying certification of the proposed personal injury class because the plaintiffs “suffer from dozens of different conditions.”
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October 01, 2026
NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York dismissed pension funds’ putative class action against a clinical development and commercialization services company and certain of its former executives for allegedly making misrepresentations about the profitability of certain pre-spin investment projects and the company’s plans to reduce operational expenses after the company was spun off from another company, finding that the pension funds failed to plead their allegations with the requisite scienter.
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October 01, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A trial court did not abuse its discretion in certifying injunctive and damages classes in a lawsuit accusing a company that digitizes yearbooks and offers users various levels of access to the information of violating California’s statutory right of publicity, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled, rejecting the company’s arguments that individual questions predominate and that the lead plaintiff will not adequately represent the injunctive class.
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October 01, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two federal student loan borrowers filed a putative class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education in a federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of themselves and other former students of “predatory for-profit institutions,” alleging that they have been deprived of “their legal entitlement to a clean financial slate” when the Education Department represented to consumer credit bureaus that they owe on student loan debts that were extinguished “years ago.”
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October 01, 2026
Customers affected by oil prices filed two separate putative class complaints, one in New York federal court and one in Delaware federal court, accusing shale oil producers of violating antitrust laws and conspiring since 2021 to fix gas prices by allegedly coordinating “production decisions” and slowing production of shale oil from hydraulic fracturing to rates “that are lower than would be seen in a competitive market, despite high oil prices and healthy global demand.”
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October 01, 2026
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals directed decertification of a provisionally certified class and vacated a preliminary injunction ordering that Oregon’s Department of Corrections (ODOC) end housing transgender women in men’s facilities without further review, opining that the trial court erred when it found that the state corrections officials “applied a ‘default presumption’ that ‘transgender’ inmates be assigned to men’s prisons.”
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October 01, 2026
ST. LOUIS — The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a two-sentence per curiam unpublished opinion addressing three appeals affirmed approval of settlements between home sellers, real estate franchise and The National Association of Realtors (NAR) found by a jury to have conspired to artificially inflate the cost of commissions in residential real estate transactions.
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October 01, 2026
GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge in Maryland partially granted federal government parties’ motion to dismiss and dismissed without prejudice a putative Privacy Act class complaint by four former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees who were terminated based on directives issued by the Trump administration and who alleged that their employment records were incomplete and inaccurate, finding that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) “provides the exclusive means for the Plaintiffs to obtain judicial review of this adverse personnel action.”
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September 30, 2026
SAN DIEGO — A California federal judge on Sept. 29 granted a woman’s motion to certify a statewide class bringing claims against a tampon manufacturer for violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) and other laws by allegedly misrepresenting its tampons as safe when they in fact contained lead in its tampons and granted in part and denied in part a defense motion to exclude the plaintiff’s expert witness.