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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.”
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May 06, 2026
OLYMPIA, Wash. — In an en banc decision affirming discovery rulings in favor of former foster children who accuse Washington state of negligence for purportedly failing to protect them from physical and sexual abuse, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in part that the documents are privileged under state law but must be produced because a statutory exception applies.
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May 05, 2026
Three attorneys told Mealey’s Publication that artificial intelligence is creating new questions about work product and attorney-client privilege protections, and all three indicated that their firms are taking steps to address the issues and create a playbook for both attorneys and clients in the wake of recent rulings.
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May 01, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Personnel actions and recommended personnel actions will be designated confidential, but the names, work email addresses and work telephone numbers of lower-level Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers will not, a federal judge in California ordered, ruling on a motion for a protective order filed by federal government parties in a lawsuit by unions, groups and local governments challenging an executive order (EO) and memorandum implementing the EO that resulted in widespread layoffs of federal workers.
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April 30, 2026
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal magistrate judge in Connecticut has approved a modified protective order outlining broad topics related to the handling of confidential information and the use of generative AI in discovery in an injury lawsuit related to exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances(PFAS) brought by firefighters, firefighter unions and parties that purchased gear for firefighters against the makers of PFAS. Among other things, the order establishes that confidential material that is uploaded into a generative AI tool should not be hosted on public cloud servers or used to train public AI models.
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April 29, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unanimously reversing a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 held that pregnancy center operator First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc.has standing to challenge a subpoena from New Jersey’s attorney general in federal court because “First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights.”
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April 28, 2026
NEW YORK — Issuing a brief summary order upholding denial of a motion for accounting or postjudgment discovery in a partially successful class action over a 1998 conversion that turned a traditional defined-benefit pension plan to a cash-balance plan, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals called the challenged decisions “careful and thorough” and said it affirmed them based on “substantially the reasons” the lower court cited.
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April 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For two hours on April 27, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a lawsuit over whether a geofence warrant that enabled police to obtain cell phone location evidence from a technology provider violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with both sides stressing the breadth of the issues the high court could address in the case.
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April 22, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — A district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to amend a scheduling order to extend an expert disclosure deadline for a man who alleges that he was injured by the defective stapler, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held, affirming summary judgment for the manufacturer.
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April 21, 2026
ALEXANDRIA, La. — A home improvement store asked a court to expand its order to show cause why two attorneys should not be sanctioned for misciting material in a brief, saying the problem appears to go further and that a review shows that the entire firm exhibits an “unchecked habit of misstating law, misquoting, and misleading multiple courts.” One of the attorneys took responsibility for the errors in his response, saying he took steps to prevent future mistakes and that the court should ignore unsolicited input from the defendant.
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April 21, 2026
ABERDEEN, S.D. — Ordering the parties to file a revised discovery report in a suit challenging termination of long-term disability (LTD) benefits, a South Dakota federal judge referenced an allegation that the defendant “hired an attorney to” help the plaintiff pursue Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits, saying that such an act “may imply a preference for insureds to seek and obtain SSDI in lieu of plan benefits” and could not be proved from the administrative record.
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April 20, 2026
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Resolving an appeal that involved several aspects of Minnesota’s physician-patient evidentiary privilege, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld admission of medical records and run sheets but on different grounds than the state court of appeals had, and several justices signed onto a concurrence opining that the lack of “procedural safeguards” in the decision “leaves patients with no mechanism for protecting their privileged materials before their disclosure to law enforcement.”
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April 17, 2026
NNEW ORLEANS — Contending in part that “this case is not an institutional‑law watershed,” a Texas county prosecutor’s office urged the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to deny en banc rehearing of a 2-1 ruling that applied the collateral order doctrine, dismissed a habeas corpus petition’s selective prosecution claims and vacated a federal magistrate judge’s order that compelled the nonparty office to produce “discovery of charging memoranda for comparator capital murder defendants within a thirty-year span.”
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April 16, 2026
CONCORD, N.H. — Affirming a jury trial conviction for criminal threatening in a case involving allegations of a mass shooting threat, the New Hampshire Supreme Court said in part that “the State showed an essential need for the defendant’s communications that justified the court’s piercing of the therapist-patient privilege”; the ruling drew a special concurrence criticizing the court’s privilege-piercing precedents.
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April 15, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Concluding that the trial court wrongly applied a 1997 decision and that here the circumstances mean that “state sovereign immunity does bar enforcement of” a subpoena duces tecum for third-party deposition from Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) in a suit over a fatal shooting, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed denial of a motion to quash the subpoena.
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April 15, 2026
CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge granted a motion by Juul Labs Inc. (JLI) and one of its wholesalers to reconsider an order granting a company’s motion to file a fourth amended complaint accusing JLI of antitrust law violations, vacated the order and affirmed a previous order dismissing the complaint with prejudice due to “misinformation” from the plaintiff regarding the status of discovery proceedings.
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April 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge denied motions by the Kingdom of Spain to stay discovery and quash subpoenas filed by an investment entity seeking to enforce a previously confirmed International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) award against Spain worth more than 79.5 million euros and granted the investor’s motion for relief allowing it to execute on the award.
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April 10, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Because the plaintiff’s attorney in an employment discrimination case promptly corrected an “erroneously submitted” opposition brief and assured the court that her firm has taken action to prevent such filings in the future, a federal magistrate judge in California denied the employer’s motion to sanction the attorney for filing a brief containing what it claimed was a hallucinated case citation generated by artificial intelligence; the magistrate judge did, however, sanction the plaintiff and attorney for the last-minute cancellation of a scheduled deposition.
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April 08, 2026
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee federal judge affirmed a magistrate judge’s ruling denying a motion for protective order by medical staffing companies in a suit filed by UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. and related entities alleging that the staffing companies were “upcoding” claims, resulting in millions of dollars in overpayment, finding that the magistrate judge did not err in determining that the companies failed to show that the audit documents at issue should be protected under attorney-client privilege.
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April 07, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. DOGE Service (referred to as both DOGE and USDS), the DOGE acting administrator, Elon Musk and others in the federal government filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to take up for the second time questions concerning discovery in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case regarding DOGE’s authority and role in mass firings in the federal government.
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April 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Granting the FBI’s petition for a writ of certiorari in a state secrets privilege case about governmental surveillance and religious discrimination, the U.S. Supreme Court in its April 6 orders list vacated the challenged judgment and instructed that the case be remanded “to the district court for reconsideration in light of recent factual developments pertinent to this case and the government's motion to dismiss.”