In an opinion today, Judge Furman certified for interlocutory appeal a question about calculating economic losses in the GM ignition switch litigation (covered here).  One reason for doing so, he ruled, was that in the context of an MDL, where there are powerful pressures to settle, these sorts of questions would never otherwise be the subject of a final judgment that would be heard in an ordinary appeal:…

In a opinion today, the Second Circuit held that two financial institutions must comply with recent subpoenas issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Financial Services Committee seeking information related to the Trump Organization and Trump family businesses.  President Trump and others had filed a suit to prevent the banks from complying with the subpoenas (see our previous coverage here). The Second Circuit affirmed in part Judge Ramos’ earlier…

In an order last week, Judge Kaplan denied a serial plaintiff attorney’s request that the judge recuse himself for referring to the plaintiff’s attorney as a “troll” in an opinion (see our previous coverage here).  Judge Kaplan observed that the request was based on several inaccurate assertions:…

In an opinion today, Magistrate Judge Wang denied a motion for sanctions premised on (among other things) the “sheer volume” of objections during two depositions, including, in one instance, a deposition with an objection on approximately 80% of the transcript pages. Judge Wang concluded that the number of objections alone was not enough, given that the objections were largely appropriate:…

In a 147 page opinion today, Judge Engelmayer vacated the so-called “conscience rule” that would have allowed health care providers who receive federal funds to decline to provide services to patients based on religious or moral grounds.  The plaintiffs, a group of state and local governments, challenged the regulation based on improper rulemaking, violations of the Establishment Clause, and because the threat of denying federal funds to health care providers who did not allow employees to…

In an opinion this morning, the Second Circuit largely affirmed the decision by Judge Marrero (covered here) to allow the Manhattan DA to enforce a grand jury subpoena to President Trump’s accountants seeking (among other things) President Trump’s tax returns. The Second Circuit acknowledged that the President, occupying “a unique position in the constitutional scheme,” could be shielded from certain types of judicial process, but concluded that a subpoena to his accountants did not…

In a motion this week, a lawyer representing photographers in copyright suits asked that Judge Kaplan recuse himself after a recent order observed that other judges in the District had referred to the lawyer as a “copyright troll.”  The order described the over one thousand cases filed by this particular lawyer as “strike suits, designed to extort settlements.”  According to the motion, the word “troll” was “meant to defame, degrade, and stereotype a person as…