Wendy Biddle, J.D., M.L.I.S

The limitations period is governed by where the applicant received notice of the employment decision, not where the employer made it. The Eighth Circuit has affirmed the dismissal of an applicant’s disability and race discrimination claims, holding that the 180-day deadline for filing an EEOC charge applied because the applicant was notified in Arkansas that his conditional job offer had been withdrawn, even though the employer made the decision at its Kansas headquarters. The court also…

The plaintiffs' allegations fall short of showing that Best Buy knew of the hazard before the recall. A federal court in Norfolk, Virginia allowed negligence and implied warranty claims to proceed against Samsung Electronics America, Inc. over an alleged range design defect that caused a fire, while dismissing the claims against Best Buy and its related entities. The court held that the complaint plausibly alleged a design defect and causation as to the manufacturer, but did not allege facts…

Exempting a correction officer from the COVID-19 vaccine requirement would have imposed an undue hardship. A federal district court granted summary judgment to the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) in a suit by a former correction officer who was fired for refusing to comply with the state's COVID-19 vaccination mandate due to his Catholic faith. The court assumed that the plaintiff's religious objection was sincere but concluded that the undisputed record showed an exemption would…

The issuing court's familiarity with the case and the risk of inconsistent rulings provided reason enough to transfer the motion. The federal district court in Minneapolis, Minnesota transferred a non-party debt collector's motion to quash a subpoena to the Eastern District of California, where the underlying antitrust class action is pending. The court concluded that Experian Information Solutions, Inc. had shown exceptional circumstances under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(f) for the…

The FTC alleges the deal would let Publicis use a dominant data connectivity provider to foreclose rivals in media agency and audience data services; a five-year order is designed to prevent that. The FTC issued an administrative complaint challenging Publicis Groupe S.A.'s proposed acquisition of LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. and simultaneously accepted for public comment, an Agreement Containing Consent Orders along with a Decision and Order and Order to Maintain Assets that would allow the…

Excluding men from a paid, employer-sponsored conference plausibly caused harm under Muldrow , the court found, and a candidate-pool-expansion rationale did not support dismissal. A federal district court in New Hampshire denied dismissal of a Title VII suit challenging a beverage bottler's decision to send only women to a two-day professional forum, concluding that the EEOC plausibly alleged that excluded male employees suffered cognizable harm. The agency identified three alleged harms: lost…

The supplement maker failed to show consumer deception or injury for most challenged marketing statements. The federal district court in Dallas, Texas granted in part and denied in part a defendant's motion for partial summary judgment in a dispute between two iron supplement competitors. The court concluded that the plaintiff lacked evidence of actual consumer deception for most of the challenged statements and lacked evidence of injury or damages on its Lanham Act claim. It allowed a…

A San Diego broker and three executives allegedly used account proliferation and IP masking to defeat issuers' technological controls and resell millions of tickets. Acting on referral from the FTC, the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint against ticket broker REPS & Company, Inc. and three of its senior officers. It alleges the company systematically circumvented the technological controls that ticket issuers use to enforce purchase limits, in violation of the Better Online Ticket…

A facially neutral veteran-status requirement draws only rational-basis review absent discriminatory intent. The District of Massachusetts dismissed a self-represented gay police officer's constitutional challenge to the denial of retirement service credit under the Massachusetts HERO Act, concluding that the officer's equal protection and due process theories failed because the statute and its application are neutral on their face and the complaint alleged no facts suggesting discriminatory…

The court dismissed all but the copyright claim due to failure to state a claim and preemption. When a marketing firm allegedly lifted a flood-control company's product photos to build a website for a business tied to a defendant already under a permanent injunction, the flood-control company sued. The court held that the flood-control company’s state-law claims for deceptive trade practices, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy are preempted by the Copyright Act because each rest on the…

The court allowed the defect theories to proceed on the defendants' own evidence while cutting off claims where the plaintiff's record fell short. The federal district court in Nevada allowed strict liability design and manufacturing defect claims over a heating pad burn to proceed against both the manufacturer and the retailer, while dismissing most of the remaining theories. The court found that the defendants' own testing and corporate testimony created genuine fact disputes on defect, but…

Big Sipz mark was not distinctive when BuzzBallz acquired lookalike domain names. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted summary judgment to ready-to-drink cocktail maker BuzzBallz, LLC on the remaining counterclaims brought by rival MPL Brands NV, Inc., d.b.a. Patco Brands. The court held that Patco's cybersquatting counterclaim failed because its Big Sipz mark was not distinctive when BuzzBallz registered or acquired similar domain names, and that Patco's…

The FDA's delisting of tirzepatide injection products was neither procedurally defective nor arbitrary and capricious. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in favor of the FDA and Eli Lilly & Company in a challenge brought by compounding pharmacies and their trade association over the FDA's December 2024 decision to remove tirzepatide injection products from the federal drug shortage list. The court held that even assuming the FDA should have employed notice-and-comment…

A multi-page website specimen satisfied the display-associated-with-goods standard despite requiring several clicks to complete a purchase. In a non-precedential opinion, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board reversed a refusal to register the mark RAISED RIGHT RR VETERINARY SUPPORT, finding that a website specimen spanning multiple pages adequately functioned as a point-of-sale display even though the applied-for mark appeared only on the first page and consumers had to navigate through…

The Commission granted early termination of its HSR review of a vertical merger in the nascent quantum computing sector. The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has terminated its antitrust review of IonQ, Inc.'s proposed acquisition of SkyWater Technology, Inc. on July 28, 2026, clearing the path for a vertical merger that drew split views within the Commission, not on whether competitive concerns existed, but on whether those concerns were substantial enough to justify a behavioral…

The retaliation claim survived on the strength of disputed facts and the defendant's shifting termination rationale. An African-American warehouse worker who was fired on the same day she reported to HR that her white supervisor had called her a slave may proceed with her retaliation claim, a federal district court found. She brought claims of race discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, arguing that her supervisor had treated her poorly…

The plaintiff's allegations were too conclusory to survive Rule 12 scrutiny and insufficient to support standing for products she never purchased. A federal district court in New Jersey dismissed all claims in a putative class action against UPPAbaby, an infant products manufacturer, holding that the plaintiff's complaint relied on conclusory labels and assumptions rather than the factual allegations required to plausibly state a claim under the Iqbal/Twombly standard. The plaintiff’s claims…

The officer’s supervisors were entitled to qualified immunity on Fourth Amendment claims over tracking an employer-owned vehicle. A federal court in Wisconsin granted summary judgment to the City of Superior and four individual police supervisors, dismissing a former narcotics investigator's claims that she was discriminated against because of her pregnancy and maternity status. The former officer alleged that her supervisors engaged in a series of discriminatory acts, including derogatory…

The former lead installer's sex discrimination and retaliation claims rested on conclusory allegations rather than record evidence. A construction employee had complained that her supervisor demeaned her and after an internal investigation, in which the employee never brought up sex discrimination, the employee was offered a transfer to a different jobsite at the same pay rate. The employee declined the transfer, resigned, and sued for sex discrimination and retaliation. The district court…

Claims centered on the imitation of a person's voice fall outside the subject matter of copyright, even when artificial intelligence is the alleged imitator. A federal district court in the Northern District of California ordered the remand of a lawsuit brought by NPR radio host David Greene against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., holding that Greene's state law claims are not preempted by the Copyright Act because they are fundamentally about the unauthorized use of his voice, an output of…