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October 15, 2025
CINCINNATI — Investors filed a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, seeking clarity and confirmation that the panel did not vacate the lower court’s deposition testimony order when the panel granted FirstEnergy Corp.’s petition for mandamus and found that investigatory documents from law firms retained by FirstEnergy are protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.
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October 15, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Filing an Oct. 14 merits brief in a case the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider, New Jersey’s attorney general argues in part that the ruling the operator of pregnancy centers seeks would turn “every quotidian subpoena dispute into a federal case — a result not even the Federal Government can stomach, as it demands a bespoke exception for its own administrative subpoenas.”
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October 15, 2025
SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on Oct. 14 granted a motion by Amazon.com Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary Audible Inc. to compel responses by a putative class action plaintiff to interrogatories supporting “her central legal theory” that the defendants violated California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by enrolling her in an Audible subscription and charging renewal fees without consent.
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October 14, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI entities will no longer have to preserve all ChatGPT outputs after reaching an agreement with news plaintiffs about the scope of what must be saved for copyright litigation consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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October 14, 2025
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge denied a motion by an asbestos plaintiffs’ expert to quash a subpoena for documents and deposition testimony in a discovery dispute with Johnson & Johnson spinoff Pecos River Talc LLC, finding that the requested discovery is relevant and would not be burdensome to produce.
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October 14, 2025
CLEVELAND — The judge overseeing the Suboxone film multidistrict litigation told certain parties, both plaintiffs and defendants, to show cause why they should not be held in contempt for failing to comply with a discovery order and ordered them to appear at a show-cause hearing on Oct. 30.
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October 14, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 14 denied an inmate’s petition for review of whether a prosecutor intentionally listening to his phone call with his counsel violated his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution “without a showing of discrete, trial-specific prejudice.”
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October 14, 2025
ATLANTA — An 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Florida federal judge’s finding of bad faith against an energy drink maker’s counsel in a trade dress infringement dispute against rival drink makers, agreeing that the attorneys engaged in sanctionable conduct during the discovery process; however, the panel vacated the judge’s nearly $250,000 sanctions award, finding it to have been improperly calculated.
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October 13, 2025
RICHMOND, Va. — A district court decision to award summary judgment to the manufacturer of a surgical stapler “rested on two key erroneous facts,” a man who alleges he was injured by the defective stapler argues in his opening brief in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
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October 13, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Arguing in a petition for a writ of certiorari that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “adopted improper and wholly novel procedural requirements that essentially negate the [state secrets] privilege in myriad cases,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation urged the U.S. Supreme Court to again consider a case in which it previously reversed the Ninth Circuit; the ruling established a new procedure for courts to consider information covered by the state secrets privilege rather than simply excluding all such information from a lawsuit alleging improper surveillance of Muslims.
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October 09, 2025
MILWAUKEE — Concluding in part that the plaintiff didn’t show that the fiduciary exception to attorney-client privilege applies, a Wisconsin federal judge upheld termination of long-term disability (LTD) benefits in a case that involved disputes regarding the duties of the claimant’s “regular occupation” as a customer service representative who worked remotely.
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October 09, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8 requested responses to a petition challenging a South Carolina justice’s appointment of a receiver over the insurance assets of a solvent Canadian company as a sanction for its failure to participate in discovery in an asbestos action.
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October 08, 2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California said music publishers’ artificial intelligence copyright claims against Anthropic PBC may proceed just days after the company asked for relief from a magistrate judge’s conclusion that the case’s novelty and complexity permitted delaying the disclosure of potential damages.
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October 08, 2025
OAKLAND, Calif. — Days after granting the plaintiffs’ third motion for class certification in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit over alleged underpayment for out-of-network behavioral health treatment, a California federal judge issued a tentative order on Oct. 7 for a law firm representing the plaintiffs to pay $50,000 for disclosures to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that she found constituted “a knowing and intentional breach of” a stipulated protective order in the case.
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October 07, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge granted nonparty John Doe’s motion to quash a subpoena issued to website security company Cloudflare Inc., requiring it to produce information about the operators of a website that purportedly defamed a British citizen, finding that the citizen’s court filings and the motion to quash by Doe, a journalist who wrote for the site and wants to keep his identity secret, “make clear that the subpoena should be quashed.”
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October 07, 2025
CLEVELAND — A pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) in the nationwide opioid multidistrict litigation on Oct. 6 objected to a ruling by the special master overseeing the MDL denying its motion for a protective order regarding a deposition that the PBM says will give counsel for the plaintiffs “two bites at the apple.”
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October 07, 2025
CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted FirstEnergy Corp.’s petition for mandamus related to an order to compel investigatory documents from law firms retained by FirstEnergy, which was suspected of wrongdoing in a securities bribery scandal; the panel found that the documents are protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.
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October 07, 2025
PHILADELPHIA — A law firm and its managing partner, who represented plaintiffs who claimed that they suffered birth defects as a result of their mothers being given the drug thalidomide to treat morning sickness during their pregnancies, tell a Pennsylvania federal judge in response to a show cause order that sanctions are not warranted for the firm’s alleged misconduct during the litigation, which began in 2011.
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October 07, 2025
HARRISBURG, Pa. — In an Oct. 6 decision it said involved a matter of first impression, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court disagreed with the reason a state court cited for overruling Pennsylvania Parole Board discovery objections in a parole dispute but upheld the result on the grounds that the board lacks authority “to create an evidentiary privilege.”
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October 07, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected a medical product company’s petition for a writ of certiorari in which it told the court that a North Carolina federal court violated its due process rights by changing both the time to trial and the time for discovery in a patent infringement case for which the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has already ordered a new trial.
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October 07, 2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Anthropic PBC told a federal judge in California that music publishers already have all the information they need to calculate damages and neither the novelty nor the complexity of an artificial intelligence copyright case requires delaying the disclosure.
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October 07, 2025
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Supreme Court granted a petition for writ of mandamus and issued a writ directing a lower court to set aside its order denying a summary judgment motion filed by a defendant in a suit by two men against the defendant and other parties over injuries sustained in an altercation outside a nightclub, finding that the plaintiffs failed to use due diligence in their discovery efforts to learn the identity of the defendant and the claims against him are time-barred pursuant to the relevant statute of limitations.
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October 06, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A school district’s petition for a writ of certiorari that asking U.S. Supreme Court justices to clear up conflicting court interpretations regarding enforcement of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) alongside state public records acts (PRAs) was denied by the high court on Oct. 6.
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October 06, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Insurance and business interests told the U.S. Supreme Court that jurisdiction ends at a state’s borders and urged the court to reject a South Carolina justice’s appointment of a receiver over the assets of a solvent Canadian company as a discovery sanction in an asbestos case.
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October 06, 2025
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — An Illinois federal judge issued rulings on cross-motions to compel discovery for documents related to litigation in a similar case and insurance filings, among other things in a refinery owner’s case against several oil companies alleging violations of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act over environmental contamination.