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August 10, 2026
AMARILLO, Texas — In separate orders, the latest of which was filed Aug. 7, a Texas federal magistrate judge denied Amazon’s motions to exclude two experts retained by a woman who says she was injured and her husband was killed in a collision with an Amazon delivery contractor’s truck, finding that Amazon can challenge the experts through cross-examination.
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August 10, 2026
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida appellate panel heard oral argument in a tobacco company’s appeal of a verdict worth more than $34 million to the widow of a smoker who died at 38, in which the tobacco company said the widow failed to meet the standards for reliance required under Florida Supreme Court precedent, while the widow’s attorney argued that evidence that the smoker saw and repeated messages from advertising supports the conclusion that he relied on the ads.
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August 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California jury returned a verdict of more than $47 million for the family of a countertop fabricator in a case that’s one of hundreds of silicosis cases pending in California, many of which are coordinated in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
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August 07, 2026
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida appellate court reversed a lower court’s grant of judgment in favor of an estate in its lawsuit alleging that an insurer breached its contract by failing to defend its assisted living home insured against the estate’s underlying wrongful death lawsuit, holding that there was no claim made on behalf of the injured resident until the wrongful death action was filed in 2014, which was one year after the relevant policy expired.
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August 07, 2026
MINOT, N.D. — A jury trial was reset for Oct. 26 in a federal court in North Dakota in a case brought by a couple in that state who seek compensatory and punitive damages for a traumatic brain injury and other ailments suffered when the husband was injured by exploding storage tanks at a hydraulic fracturing site while performing a welding job on the connected pipes.
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August 06, 2026
OKLAHOMA CITY — A frac technician’s lawsuit against a well services company and the fracking operator for a slip-and-fall incident and alleged discrimination that followed ended after the worker accepted a $200,000 offer of judgment from Rocanda USA Inc., according to the judgment entered in a federal court in Oklahoma.
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August 05, 2026
CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge granted a motion by a smoker with lung cancer and her husband to remand their lawsuit against three tobacco companies and local retailer Walgreen Co. to state court, finding that the tobacco companies failed to establish that the retailer was fraudulently joined.
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August 04, 2026
SAVANNAH, Ga. — An air carrier and its aviation insurers and reinsurers voluntarily dismissed their complaint in a Georgia federal court that sought contribution and indemnification, alleging that the manufacturer of a business jet involved in a fatal crash was responsible for millions of dollars in hull, crew and passenger death settlements that the carrier and its insurers and reinsurers were compelled to pay.
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August 03, 2026
LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan appellate court reversed and remanded a lower court ruling granting summary disposition to a hospital and rehabilitation facilities in an estate representative’s medical malpractice suit over the death of a senior patient from sepsis, finding that the defendants failed to show a nexus between the alleged negligent treatment of the decedent’s pressure ulcers and the COVID-19 pandemic to establish immunity under the Pandemic Health Care Immunity Act (PHCIA).
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July 31, 2026
CINCINNATI — More than 190 class members who opted into the personal injury payment portion of a settlement reached in a case over a chemical release that occurred after a train derailed in Ohio in February 2023 filed an appellant brief in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that while the $600 million settlement doesn’t need to be reweighed, the trial court committed six legal errors when it denied their motions for relief from the personal injury payment releases after they discovered what they say is new evidence of fraud and misconduct by class counsel.
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July 30, 2026
ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida issued an omnibus order explaining and memorializing three rulings made during a jury trial that ended in a verdict for Lockheed Martin Corp. on claims that contaminants from an Orlando facility resulted in three children’s birth defects and developmental delays.
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July 29, 2026
CHICAGO — A woman who alleges that her infant daughter developed necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) after consuming cow’s milk-based-infant formula (CMBF) manufactured by Abbott Laboratories Inc. before dying did not show that an alternative warning label would have prevented her child’s death, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held in affirming a grant of summary judgment for the manufacturer in the first bellwether case in multidistrict litigation pending in Illinois.
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July 29, 2026
HONOLULU — A tobacco company filed its opening brief in Hawaii state appellate court seeking the reversal and remand of a judgment against it worth more than $89 million in favor of a smoker who developed laryngeal cancer and his wife, writing that the jury’s $85 million punitive damages award was unconstitutionally excessive in comparison to the compensatory damages awarded and that the trial court’s other rulings in the case were flawed.
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July 28, 2026
CHICAGO — A federal magistrate judge in Illinois ruled that three experts retained by a driver injured in a highway work-zone accident may testify after finding that objections raised by a highway construction and traffic control company go to the credibility and weight of the opinions rather than their admissibility.
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July 24, 2026
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a New York federal court’s dismissal of claims brought by a reinsurer and a management general agency under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) over an alleged workers’ compensation fraud scheme at the center of several lawsuits, concurring with the district court that they failed to establish proximate causation in either their first amended complaint or their rejected second amended complaint.
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July 23, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge on July 22 found that opinions offered by an expert retained by one of the few plaintiffs remaining in the M/L Taper hip multidistrict litigation are unreliable and that he could not establish what caused the man’s device to fracture; the judge also granted summary judgment to the manufacturer because of the exclusion of the expert testimony.
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July 21, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Two consumers filed a nationwide putative class complaint in California federal court accusing an agriculture and produce company worth $8 billion of liability for the “entirely avoidable” contamination of shredded lettuce and leafy greens distributed nationwide with cyclospora, accusing it of negligence, violation of California and New York consumer protection laws and other claims.
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July 21, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A Missouri gun owner lacks standing to sue over a pistol’s alleged defective features that can cause it to be inadvertently discharged because he admitted he has never experienced that or any other issues, an Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating a trial court’s class certification order and remanding with instructions to dismiss the case.
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July 21, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — No coverage is owed for an underlying bodily injury suit arising out of toxic mold exposure in an insured apartment because a policy’s fungi and bacteria exclusion and pollution exclusion bar coverage for the suit filed against the insureds who operated an apartment complex where the underlying plaintiffs were allegedly exposed, an insurer says in a complaint filed in Pennsylvania federal court.
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July 20, 2026
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In reversing and remanding a split appellate majority’s decision for reconsideration under the proper legal standard pursuant to Florida’s workers’ compensation law, the state Supreme Court held that injuries sustained by a general manager of an Orlando car rental business who was shot while performing job duties late at night could be compensable, even though the motive of the shooter was unknown.
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July 17, 2026
DETROIT — A Michigan appellate panel affirmed a lower court’s ruling granting summary disposition for a hospital and physician in a man’s suit alleging gross negligence, medical malpractice and violations of his civil rights over a hospital’s alleged failure to admit him for his purported COVID-19 symptoms, finding that the hospital and physician were entitled to immunity under the Pandemic Health Care Immunity Act (PHCIA) for medical malpractice because the claims involved negligence rather than gross negligence and because the gross negligence “claim sounded in medical malpractice such that it was also barred by immunity.”
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July 14, 2026
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on July 13 vacated rulings excluding the testimony of four general causation experts retained by parents who allege that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen causes autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the resulting judgments, remanding to the multidistrict litigation judge, who had dismissed the cases for lack of causation.
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July 13, 2026
DENVER — Issuing an unpublished order and judgment affirming the exclusion of an expert witness in a medical malpractice case as a sanction for discovery violations, refusal to allow untimely substitution of that expert and the resulting grant of summary judgment for the defendants, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in part that the trial court had “ample reason to conclude Plaintiffs’ missteps actually interfered with the judicial process.”
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July 09, 2026
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York state appeals court reversed a lower court ruling denying dismissal of a claim for gross negligence against a nursing home by the estate of a decedent alleging that he contracted COVID-19 while residing at the nursing home, resulting in his death, finding that the allegations failed to establish gross negligence or intentional harm needed to overcome immunity under New York’s Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA).
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July 06, 2026
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — ChatGPT spent nearly a year actively aiding a 20-year-old student in planning a shooting at Florida State University, including providing guidance on the best times to do the shooting and how to ensure the most media coverage, a female student who was wounded in the shooting says in a complaint filed in a Florida court.