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June 04, 2026
BOSTON — Declining to issue an injunction pending appeal in a dispute that is playing out in two federal jurisdictions over a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) administrative subpoena, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the movant “simplyhas not shown the irreparable harm required to obtain that ‘extraordinary’ relief.”
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June 04, 2026
FORT WORTH, Texas — Because there is reason to believe that Elon Musk conducted X Corp. or x.AI LLC business through email at his other businesses, those accounts are subject to a motion to compel discovery in the antitrust suit against Apple Inc. and OpenAI entities, a federal judge in Texas said in overruling objections to a magistrate judge’s ruling.
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June 04, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Children who were exposed to opioids in utero tell a California federal court that McKinsey & Co. “should be sanctioned with the harshest of sanctions available” for destroying “documents, cell phones, computers, and laptops, despite its knowledge that legal actions were pending against” the consulting company’s client Purdue Pharma LP, the maker of OxyContin.
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June 03, 2026
FORT WORTH, Texas — Two Elon Musk companies that have sued Apple Inc. and OpenAI for colluding to limit the market for artificial intelligence chatbots told a federal court in Texas that Musk is not a party to the suit and that there were no grounds to order him to produce emails associated with other companies he owns.
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June 03, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Issuing a June 2 en banc ruling featuring a partial concurrence, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a discovery sanction that struck a man’s claim to $1,106,775 that was seized from a vehicle he was driving and remanded for further proceedings, concluding that “the district court was operating in a difficult area that lacked extensive case law from this court” but under the circumstances it was an abuse of discretion to end the civil forfeiture case for allegedly insufficient responses to special interrogatories concerning standing.
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June 02, 2026
NEW YORK — Keller Postman LLC and Ashley C. Keller, plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel in the acetaminophen autism spectrum disorder-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ASD-ADHD) multidistrict litigation, on June 1 conditionally agreed to donate $50,000 to March of Dimes instead of paying attorney fees as a sanction for failing to comply with a protective order in the MDL.
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May 29, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — Concluding that the actions of Vincent “Vince” K. McMahon and other World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) senior officers constituted spoliation of evidence, mostly concerning “ephemeral” messages on the Signal app, the Delaware Chancery Court imposed sanctions consisting of “a narrow set of presumed facts and a heightened standard of proof” in a class action where WWE stockholders allege fiduciary misconduct in connection with a merger.
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May 28, 2026
TAMPA, Fla. — The American Securities Association (ASA) notified a federal court in Florida that it had reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in its suit against the SEC for allegedly violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by withholding all responsive documents related to the agency’s investigations of broker-dealers that used unauthorized personal devices to communicate with clients during the COVID pandemic.
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May 26, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — The opinions expressed during the deposition of a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who was retained as an expert for plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation involving diabetes and diet drugs that consumers allege caused gastrointestinal and other injuries were adequately disclosed in pretrial reports, the Pennsylvania federal judge overseeing the MDL ruled in denying a motion to limit his testimony.
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May 18, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — Concluding that the record showed that it was an abuse of discretion to dismiss an indictment without prejudice for the government’s late disclosure of two pieces of evidence, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 15 reversed the dismissal order and remanded with instructions to reinstate the indictment in the case concerning charges of disaster relief fraud and wire fraud.
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May 18, 2026
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Despite determining that the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery in a toxic chemical exposure case was untimely, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas ruled on the merits of the motion and denied it as “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and not proportional to the needs of the case” because it sought documents spanning a 65-year period. The magistrate judge ruled that discovery was limited to a 10-year period dating from the filing of the complaint in 2015.
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May 18, 2026
BISMARCK, N.D. — Exercising its supervisory jurisdiction but denying the petition for a supervisory writ in a dispute concerning the state’s journalist shield statute and a subpoena duces tecum that touches a murder case, the North Dakota Supreme Court said in part that the lower court “should have addressed the motion to quash before ordering an in camera review.”
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May 18, 2026
CHICAGO — In an Employee Retirement Income Security Act challenge to a multiemployer benefit plan amendment under which the end of a Social Security Administration (SSA) disability award results in termination of disability pension benefits, an Illinois federal judge denied the defendants’ motion to stay discovery and granted the claimant’s request to pursue limited discovery outside the administrative record.
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May 15, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Finding no abuse of discretion, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed imposition of a $38,507.44 sanction and denial of a motion to depose a law firm, noting that the trial court determined that the motion constituted a willful violation of an order that said no additional discovery regarding the finances of a third-party defendant would “‘be permitted absent new evidence of fraudulent or voidable transactions.’”
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May 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Three litigation funders filed a petition for a writ of certiorari urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel’s ruling finding no jurisdiction over their attempt to arbitrate a discovery application, writing that the ruling contradicts high court precedent and that their petition should be held pending resolution of a similar issue in another high court case.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — Keller Postman LLC and Ashley C. Keller, plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel in the acetaminophen autism spectrum disorder-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ASD-ADHD) multidistrict litigation, have appealed to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals a ruling by the MDL judge imposing sanctions on the firm and its senior partner for failing to comply with a protective order in the MDL.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a New York federal judge’s decision to deny adidas America Inc.’s motion for a new trial in a trademark dispute with Thom Browne Inc.; the panel agreed that while Thom Browne failed to disclose certain emails, adidas failed to show how those emails would have changed the jury’s verdict.
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May 13, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge issued letters rogatory allowing two vendors to seek overseas discovery in the United Kingdom from personnel of a dismissed insurance broker in connection with the vendors’ remaining negligence claims against another broker over political violence coverage and reinsurance allegedly procured for a 1.3 million-square-foot warehouse in Afghanistan that the Taliban seized in 2021.
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May 11, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court will decide in the coming months whether asbestos bankruptcy trusts must face a suit challenging document retention policies after hearing oral arguments pitting a claim that repeat litigants cannot hope to secure unlimited document preservation from a third party against the claim that an equitable bill allows for such preservation in the unique asbestos litigation setting.
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May 11, 2026
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Florida appeals panel on May 8 reversed a lower court’s final judgment in favor of a property insurer in a breach of contract lawsuit arising from storm damage, holding that the lower court erred in using the insurer’s motion in limine to summarily dispose of the insureds’ case before trial.
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May 08, 2026
DENVER — A Colorado federal magistrate judge on May 7 granted in part a motion to compel discovery of certain text messages sent by a woman whose company sued its business owner’s insurer for breach of contract for its purported failure to cover a claim for fire damage to her retail store, finding in part that privacy considerations related to the text messages are outweighed by the need to view them in connection with an arson investigation related to the fire.
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May 08, 2026
CINCINNATI — Saying in part that the administrator of a long-term disability (LTD) plan “adequately considered the evidence . . . and arrived at a reasoned decision,” a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on May 7 affirmed judgment against a project director who stopped working because of symptoms she attributed to long COVID, was denied LTD benefits and then unsuccessfully asserted breach of contract and bad faith claims; the panel also affirmed the lower court’s denial of the claimant’s requests for both broad and limited discovery.
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May 08, 2026
NEW YORK — Rejecting arguments that two Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. factors did not favor authorizing subpoenas for use in shareholder derivative litigation in South Korea under Title 28 U.S. Code Section 1782, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a summary order upholding three discovery rulings.
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May 07, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia federal judge correctly concluded that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) properly withheld draft decisions in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, agreeing that the materials were “predecisional” and “deliberative” under the meaning of a FOIA exemption.
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May 07, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal magistrate judge granted Anthem Inc.’s motion to seal documents that were previously placed under provisional seal in the U.S. government’s suit against Anthem alleging violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) related to alleged inaccurate diagnosis codes submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for services provided to Anthem’s Medicare beneficiaries, finding that “the limited presumption of public access is outweighed by the higher values of protecting non-party confidentiality and preventing competitive harm.”