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November 14, 2025
LOS ANGELES — Johnson & Johnson defended its request that a California court not enter judgment on an asbestos verdict that included $950 million in punitive damages, arguing that it would be unfair to make what it calls a clearly unconstitutional award enforceable.
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November 13, 2025
BALTIMORE — A treating physician cannot testify that a car accident exacerbated a woman’s existing temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) because that conclusion is speculative and not based on a reliable methodology, a Maryland federal judge held.
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November 12, 2025
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Walgreens of Massachusetts LLC on Nov. 11 filed an answer in Massachusetts federal court to a lawsuit originally brought in state court against it and tobacco companies by a 58-year-old smoker diagnosed with lung cancer who seeks damages for his cancer and for the companies’ alleged violations of a consumer law.
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November 11, 2025
NEW YORK — A panel of the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of a New York federal court that dismissed a lawsuit against New York state officials and nursing homes brought by survivors of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 after state executive orders prevented nursing homes from denying admission to patients having or suspected of having COVID-19.
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November 11, 2025
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Recklessness by United Parcel Service Inc., General Electric Co. and Boeing Co. caused the Nov. 4 crash of a UPS MD-11 cargo aircraft as it attempted to depart a Louisville airport for Hawaii, airport neighbors allege in a putative class complaint filed in a federal court in Kentucky.
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November 11, 2025
PHILADELPHIA — An insured is required to reimburse its insurer for the insurer’s payment of a punitive damages award entered against the insured in an underlying asbestos bodily injury suit because punitive damages are uninsurable pursuant to the terms of the policy and applicable law, the insurer says in a complaint filed in Pennsylvania federal court.
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November 10, 2025
ATLANTA — A panel majority of the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated and remanded a trial court’s $13.7 million attorney fee award entered in favor of the claimants in a medical malpractice suit after determining that the trial court abused its discretion because the award included attorney fees that were incurred on appeal, which is not supported under Georgia’s offer of settlement statute.
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November 07, 2025
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A Fourth District Florida Court of Appeal panel on Nov. 6 issued a per curiam affirmance of a $475,000 punitive damages verdict awarded to a smoker’s estate, which a tobacco company had argued on appeal should be subject to reversal or remittitur because it is 11 times greater than the compensatory damages awarded.
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November 06, 2025
MINOT, N.D. — A couple has filed an amended complaint in North Dakota federal court seeking compensatory and punitive damages for a traumatic brain injury and other ailments suffered by the husband, who was injured when storage tanks at a hydraulic fracturing site exploded.
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November 05, 2025
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Issuing a partial reversal and remand, the Kentucky Supreme Court said there was enough evidence that an out-of-state handgun manufacturer that faced a product liability lawsuit fell within Kentucky’s long-arm statute, but the record is insufficient as to due process because the manufacturer’s “failure to timely meet its discovery obligations until shortly before the trial court’s ruling deprived [the appellant] of an ‘ample opportunity’ to conduct and complete jurisdictional discovery.”
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November 04, 2025
ATLANTA — A Georgia trial court applied the incorrect standard for determining the admissibility of expert testimony on general causation in a case alleging that exposure to ethylene oxide caused cancers and birth defects, a Georgia appeals court ruled in a consolidated appeal, vacating an order that allowed testimony from one expert but barred it from two others.
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October 31, 2025
SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico state court jury returned a defense verdict in favor of a tobacco company and local retailer, rejecting all claims brought against them by a dead smoker’s daughter for causing her father’s death from laryngeal cancer through the marketing, manufacture and sale of defectively designed cigarettes.
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October 31, 2025
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Johnson & Johnson filed a notice that it would appeal a Connecticut verdict in which the judge awarded $10 million in punitive damages and declined to grant a new trial in the wake of a $25 million asbestos-talc verdict against the company and various related entities.
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October 30, 2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida jury awarded $20 million to a man for his father’s death from mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos in Johnson & Johnson talc-based consumer products, sources told Mealey Publications.
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October 28, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge on Oct. 27 denied as moot a stay sought by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a lawsuit by a man seeking to force HHS to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Injury Table (VIT) so he can be compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), noting that the district’s chief judge had extended all filing deadlines in the district past the end of the funding appropriations lapse.
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October 27, 2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — No coverage is owed for an underlying lawsuit filed by a tenant of an insured who alleges that she and her child sustained bodily injuries as a result of a rat infestation in her rental unit because the policy’s organic pathogens exclusion and total pollution exclusion bar coverage for the underlying suit, an insurer says in an Oct. 24 complaint filed in Florida federal court.
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October 27, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government on Oct. 24 sought a stay from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a lawsuit by a man seeking to force the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Injury Table (VIT) so he can be compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), citing the ongoing government shutdown due to lack of funding appropriations.
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October 27, 2025
CHICAGO — The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Lands’ End Inc. and Lands’ End Outfitters Inc. (together, Lands’ End) in a suit brought by airline employees who alleged that their uniforms caused symptoms such as rashes, headaches and hair loss, finding that none of the employees’ experts proved causation and that the employees also failed to abide by the warranty's terms.
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October 27, 2025
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota Court of Appeals panel affirmed a trial court’s finding of jurisdiction over a South Korean battery maker in a personal injury lawsuit brought against it by a man who says he was burned when one of its lithium-ion batteries acquired for use with an e-cigarette device exploded in his pocket, rebuffing the battery defendants’ argument that they did not intend their batteries to be used with vapes.
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October 24, 2025
LOS ANGELES — Finding a jury’s award of $25 million in future noneconomic damages — part of a $48.8M total award — to a man who has been in a coma since he was struck by a city garbage truck “grossly disproportionate to the evidence” and likely prompted by improper argument by counsel, a California judge granted the city’s motion for a new trial as to the issue of past and future general damages unless the man accepts a remittitur reducing future noneconomic damages to $3 million.
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October 22, 2025
BOSTON — Several parties filed amicus curiae briefs to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in a tobacco company’s appeal regarding a state court jury’s award of $1 billion in punitive damages to the family of a smoker who died from lung cancer in 2017, later reduced to $56 million by remittitur, with some recommending reforms such as bifurcated trials to reduce the risk of “excessive” verdicts.
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October 20, 2025
COLUMBUS, Ga. — Experts who support a woman’s claim that negligence by the operators of an apartment complex directly caused a fire that killed a man can testify, a federal judge in Georgia ruled, also rejecting a motion from the complex for partial summary judgment.
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October 20, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A man seeking to force the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Injury Table (VIT) so he can be compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) on Oct. 17 moved a District of Columbia federal court to alter or amend its order granting the government’s motion to dismiss.
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October 20, 2025
TACOMA, Wash. — A Washington state jury awarded more than $12.7 million to a man and his son who suffered severe injuries when a truck driven by a lawn care company employee made a left turn in front of the man’s car.
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October 17, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — A Delaware state court judge dismissed with prejudice a suit filed by a woman and her daughter against Snap Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Apple Inc. and the man convicted of sexually assaulting the daughter after communicating with her on Snapchat, asserting that the corporate defendants played “a critical role in facilitating the harm,” finding that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) provides immunity for the “third-party communications” between the man and the daughter.