The appeals court left it to the district court to determine whether Ohana and the Ellison Trust’s employer status may be decided as a matter of law or must be submitted to a jury. Following the bankruptcy filing of Hawaii Island Air, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that the owners of two-thirds of the airline’s stock—the Au Defendants—were an “employer” under Hawaii’s Dislocated Workers Act. However, the appeals court reversed the lower court’s rulings as to employer…

While the company may have acted fraudulently, the plaintiffs failed to show that the alleged fraud actually caused their losses. A California federal district court again dismissed an action against Fate Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, finding that while the investor plaintiffs adequately pleaded that company officials made misrepresentations with scienter, they did not show that the alleged fraud caused their losses. However, the court gave the plaintiffs “one last opportunity” to…

Several federal agencies refused to provide information to the Government Accountability Office for a probe into whether personnel from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) adhered to privacy and cybersecurity standards in their work at the agencies, GAO said in a report published today. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau went so far as to accuse GAO of “serving at the behest of a few congressional members to harass and impede the CFPB and its efforts to implement the…

The court’s ruling clarifies that Orange Book listing is proper when a patent claims a drug’s active ingredients and dosage form, even if it does not specifically claim the drug’s noncovalently bound complex form. A federal district court in New York dismissed an employee health fund’s antitrust, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment claims against Novartis, concluding that the company properly listed its Entresto patent in the FDA’s Orange Book. The court held that the patent claimed…

The Fed adopted two final stress test rules and proposed a revised noninterest income model for the 2027 stress test. The Federal Reserve Board has finalized two rules that require annual public input on its supervisory stress test models and scenarios and that average stress test results over two years when setting stress capital buffer requirements, according to a Fed press release. The Fed also requested comment on a revised noninterest income model for the 2027 stress test. Governor…

Hearst’s FIRST WARNING WEATHER and TRAFFIC marks are sufficiently similar to Gray Local Media’s registered FIRST ALERT marks to support plausible allegations of consumer confusion. The similarity between competing television stations’ weather and traffic marks, combined with their use for essentially the same services in the same markets, allows Gray Local Media to pursue trademark claims against Hearst, a media corporation, over its FIRST WARNING WEATHER and FIRST WARNING TRAFFIC branding.…

The court only dismissed one parent company because there was no facial indication that it participated in or ratified the alleged price-fixing scheme. Industrial equipment renters plausibly alleged that various rental companies and Rouse Services LLC (Rouse), a construction equipment information services company, entered into an unlawful agreement in both restraint of trade and information exchange, held the federal district court in Chicago. The court also found the plaintiffs alleged…

The manufacturer established that the issue was reviewable, but CPSC’s basis for its decision was not clear enough to support a ruling. In a lawsuit filed by a manufacturer of weighted baby blankets and swaddles against the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for publishing a statement that the products were dangerous, the federal district court for the District of Columbia determined that there was not adequate evidence in the record to support the statement and ordered the matter be…

Among other things, the employee allegedly overheard trainers say that “white people are cannibals,” that “racism is in white people’s DNA,” and that “white people are like the devil.” Reversing in part a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the City of Seattle against the racial discrimination claims asserted by a former city employee, the Ninth Circuit determined that the evidence presented by the employee, accepted as true, would show that he was subjected to racially…