SCRANTON, Penn. — A federal court in Pennsylvania dismissed the wrongful death and negligence claims brought against a county by a married couple whose unborn daughter died after an ambulance took over an hour to arrive during the wife’s medical emergency. Their claims do not sustain a constitutional violation, and without this, their state law questions are not appropriate for the federal court to consider.
WASHINGTON — The D.C. Circuit ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services may not hide behind the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption 5, which protects intra-agency memos, to bar the release of documents related to Republicans’ attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.
WASHINGTON — A federal court in Washington, applying precedent from the Federal Circuit, ruled that the doctrine of prosecution laches may be invoked as an affirmative defense by those who seek a finding that a patent is unenforceable. When the Patent and Trademark Office can show a patentee’s delay in prosecution is unreasonable and that such delay prejudiced an accused infringer, the defense may render the patent in question unenforceable.
HARRISBURG, Penn. — An appeals court in Pennsylvania upheld the life sentence of a criminal defendant who committed a hired murder when he shot and killed the romantic partner of his client’s former paramour. He says certain witness testimony should not have been admitted and that his due process rights were violated, but these arguments are meritless.
HOUSTON — An appeals court in Texas vacated a $222 million judgment granted to the widow of a worker who was killed in a steam accident at a Kansas coal-fired power plant. The “grossly excessive” award was partially due to improper arguments made by the widow’s counsel, who encouraged the jury to punish the industrial services provider that had serviced the plant’s relief valves before the accident. Additionally, the case belongs in Kansas, so it is dismissed for forum non conveniens.
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s high court reversed an appellate division’s ruling in a lawsuit between wounded employees and the Bronx hospital that employed them. A former worker committed a mass shooting in the building, killing one doctor and himself and wounding five others. An injured employee’s claim for workers’ compensation will proceed because there is a “rebuttable presumption ” that, when an injury occurs at work, it arose from the injured worker’s employment. That presumption applies and was not rebutted in this case.
EL PASO, Texas — An appeals court in Texas upheld the trial court’s decision to admit a confession and evidence obtained in a warrantless search during the trial of a former Border Patrol agent accused of murdering four women, all sex workers. He “voluntarily waived his right to remain silent” when he told investigators that “he was ‘clean[ing] up the streets’ of Laredo,” and authorities had probable cause to search his vehicle when they saw a purse belonging to a woman who escaped from him “in plain view” on his truck’s floorboard.
FRESNO, Calif. — A federal court in California granted Clovis Community College’s motion to dismiss two professors’ free speech discrimination claims, according to which the school’s anti-discrimination and harassment policies violated the First Amendment. One’s claims are based on “hypothetical and conclusory future and ongoing injuries,” and the other’s censorship claims are based on “self-inflicted injuries,” so they lack standing to sue.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit declined to rehear, en banc, a matter involving a nonprofit’s request for a preliminary injunction that would stop a land exchange allowing copper mining to commence on land that Apache tribes consider sacred.
SCRANTON, Penn. — A federal court in Pennsylvania granted New York Magazine’s motion to dismiss a self-described criminal profiler’s claims of false light and invasion of privacy after it published an article calling him a “fraud.” The man, who is often flown out to trials as a professional expert witness, says the magazine omitted several critical facts, but he identified no falsehoods in it and has not shown the journalist acted with actual malice.
CHICAGO — A federal court in Illinois granted a parent’s motion to join some Nevada doctors as defendants to her complaint against Abbott Laboratories, a bellwether case for the hundreds of lawsuits filed against the baby formula manufacturer over its tainted formula. The product allegedly caused infants to develop necrotizing enterocolitis, and the doctors in Nevada may have been negligent in treating her own child with the condition. The case will be remanded to Cook County court.
