“The FLSA’s silence does not resolve the issue.” A public official may not invoke qualified immunity in an FLSA retaliation suit, the Fifth Circuit held in a matter of first impression. The common law did not immunize malicious retaliation when Congress authorized private FLSA retaliation suits, and the policies underlying qualified immunity do not justify extending the defense to such claims, the federal appeals court found. The underlying case involved an academic advisor at Texas A&M…

The agency’s filing follows Utah’s October 20 state enforcement action against prediction markets run by Kalshi and Susquehanna. The CFTC has sued the state of Utah and Utah Attorney General Derek Brown in a bid to block Utah’s efforts to shut down CFTC-registered contract markets using state laws. The lawsuit follows Utah’s decision to file civil enforcement actions in state court against CFTC-regulated markets, including the Kalshi exchange (U.S. v. State of Utah , No. 2:26-cv-01055 (D. Utah…

The top Democrats on three House committees have asked leading AI (artificial intelligence) developers to tell lawmakers within 48 hours about incidents involving autonomous hacking and other misbehavior by AI models. The Democrats made their request in letters sent yesterday to the chief executive officers of Anthropic, Google LLC, Meta Platforms, Inc., OpenAI, and SpaceXAI. The letters were signed by Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D., N.J.), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee; Zoe…

The drugmaker’s attempt to rely on a corrected FDA approval letter failed because the original approval triggered the statutory 60-day filing period, leaving its patent term extension applications one day late. A pharmaceutical company lost its bid to extend two patents associated with a cancer drug after a federal district court in New Jersey has upheld the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) rejection of its applications as untimely. The court held that the 60-day filing period under…

The plaintiffs also seek to stop FinCEN from deleting previously collected beneficial-ownership data. Oregon and 20 other plaintiff jurisdictions have sued to vacate the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) 2025 interim and 2026 final beneficial-ownership reporting exemptions, alleging the agency exceeded its authority by excluding almost all companies covered by the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). They also seek an injunction and an Administrative Procedure…

The inventor could enforce the assigned design patent without being named as its inventor, and the settlement agreement did not require the manufacturer to correct inventorship. A treadmill manufacturer prevailed in a longstanding dispute with an inventor who claimed the company appropriated his curved, non-motorized treadmill design and later breached a settlement agreement by refusing to recognize him as an inventor. The federal district court in New York granted summary judgment to Woodway…

A franchise agreement’s integration clause did not bar Lanham Act and state false advertising claims alleging misleading representations about franchise profitability and product ingredients. The federal district court in Columbus, Ohio largely denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a Magnolia Soap & Bath Co. franchisee alleging false advertising, fraud, breach of contract, and violations of Ohio law arising from alleged misrepresentations about franchise profitability, operating…

A jury’s separate verdicts favoring both the driver and the manufacturer on strict liability and negligent design, respectively, were irreconcilable as both claims rested on the same design and evidence. In an action brought against an automaker by a driver who sustained injuries following a crash due to alleged defects in his vehicle’s airbags, a New York appellate court upheld the evidentiary basis for the jury’s finding that the car’s driver-side airbag was defectively designed and breached…

“Defendants’ argument that Article II bars Congress from regulating the removal of AUSAs flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent, rooted in the text of the appointments Clause, holding that Congress may generally restrict the removal of ‘inferior officers.’” Maurene Comey’s removal from her role as Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York was unlawful, a federal court in New…