Oral Arguments from the U.S. Court of Appeals

Case Summary: In Di Fraia v. Ransom, Jonathan DiFraia is appealing from the dismissal of his federal civil-rights and disability-discrimination suit arising out of the termination of his medication for opioid use disorder while incarcerated in a Pennsylvania state facility, with the appeal now pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit under docket number 24‑2673 and argue...

Case Summary: In Bochat et al. v. Ambit Illinois, LLC et al., a putative class action filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (No. 1:24‑cv‑03116), plaintiffs Gregg Bochat and Philip Simons sued Ambit Illinois, LLC, Vistra Corp, and Volt Asset Company, Inc., alleging contract‑based claims on behalf of themselves and similarly situated retail electricity custo...

Case Summary: In the lower court, Northfield Insurance Company filed a declaratory judgment action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, case number 1:23‑cv‑03596, seeking a declaration that it owed no duty to defend or indemnify its insured, North Brook Industries, Inc., doing business as United Inn and Suites, in an underlying sex‑trafficking civil action brou...

Case Summary: In the lower court, Kylie McKenzie sued the United States Tennis Association Incorporated and USTA Player Development Incorporated in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (Case No. 6:22‑cv‑00615), alleging that while she was a young professional player training in the USTA’s player development program, her coach, Anibal Aranda, sexually assaulted her in 2018 and...

Case Summary: Ballard Spahr LLP v. Official Committee of Equity Security Holders is a civil bankruptcy-related appeal in which the law firm Ballard Spahr LLP is challenging an adverse ruling in favor of the Official Committee of Equity Security Holders and related parties, with the appeal pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit under docket number 25‑2134 and oral arg...

Case Summary: United States v. Jddarrian Irons is a federal criminal appeal in which Jddarrian Christopher Irons, the defendant in the underlying prosecution, is challenging the judgment entered against him in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, docket number 24‑12112, with oral argument held before that court on January 27, 2026.

Case Summary: United States v. Alexander Alli is a federal criminal appeal in which Alexander Alli, the defendant in the underlying criminal case, is appealing his conviction and/or sentence in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit , docket number 24‑11945, with oral argument held on January 27, 2026

Case Summary: Rinat Akhmetshin v. William Browder is a defamation case in which lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin sued investor and activist William Browder, alleging that Browder falsely accused him of being a Russian intelligence operative and of involvement in hacking and other wrongdoing, and the court ultimately ruled in Browder’s favor, finding that Akhmetshin did not prove the statements were actio...

Case Summary: United States v. Gamble, No. 23‑2105, involves a federal criminal defendant, Michael Gamble, whose case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was argued on January 22, 2026. Before reaching the Third Circuit, Gamble was prosecuted in federal district court, where he faced charges arising out of federal criminal conduct, was convicted and sentenced, and then filed an appe...

Case Summary: Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church and two Houston coffee businesses, Antidote Coffee and Perk You Later, brought a First Amendment challenge to Texas gun‑trespass signage laws, arguing that the statutes force them to post large, highly specific handgun‑exclusion signs if they want to keep all guns off their private property, while only minimal signage is required to exclude othe...

Case Summary: Anash, Inc., doing business as Wyoming Valley Yeshiva, and Rabbi Shimon Hellinger filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against the Borough of Kingston and local officials, challenging the condemnation and zoning-related closure of two properties at 44 and 239 Pierce Street used for religious and educational activities, and alleging religious d...

Case Summary: In People v. Johnson (Docket No. 2-25-0165), the defendant was prosecuted in an Illinois trial court for driving under the influence of alcohol after an incident in which he was found slumped over in a vehicle at a gas pump, exhibiting multiple signs of impairment observed by responding officers. Before trial, the defense moved to suppress evidence arising from the stop and investiga...

Case Summary: The United States sued the State of Texas, the Governor, and state officials in federal district court to challenge Texas Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4), a state law that creates new state crimes for unlawful entry and reentry by noncitizens and authorizes state officers and judges to arrest, prosecute, and order the removal of noncitizens based on immigration violations. The federal governm...

Case Summary: W.M.M. v. Trump is a habeas class-action challenge brought by Venezuelan detainees held in Texas after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) through a March 2025 presidential proclamation to detain and remove alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. After the Supreme Court ruled in related litigation that challenges to remova...

Case Summary: Andre De Moya, a Washington, D.C.–area concert venue operator and bar owner, was prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for his role in a multiyear bribery scheme involving a senior official at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. Federal prosecutors alleged that De Moya and a co-defendant paid bribes to the tax official in exchange for erasing or reducing...

Case Summary: NimbeLink Corp., a subsidiary of Airgain that develops Skywire cellular modem technology, sued Digi International Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota alleging that certain Digi Internet of Things connectivity products infringed two NimbeLink patents related to its Skywire cellular modems, U.S. Patent Nos. 9,497,570 and 9,838,066. In a lawsuit filed in Septem...

Case Summary: Marcus L. Swearengen was a civilian Electronics Mechanic Leader for the Department of the Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, who was removed from his position based on two agency charges: making inappropriate remarks to a coworker and creating a disruption in the workplace during a loud verbal exchange in the shop bay that other employees could hear. He appealed his removal to the Merit Sy...

Case Summary: Netflix, Inc. petitioned for inter partes review of DivX, LLC’s patents relating to streaming video technology, including features such as trick‑play functionality (fast‑forward, rewind, and scene skipping) and handling encrypted multimedia content on playback devices. In IPR proceedings, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected Netflix’s invalidity challenges, finding, among other...

Case Summary: IPA Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of WiLAN that licenses patents originally developed at SRI International, sued Google LLC in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that Google’s virtual assistant technologies, such as Google Assistant, infringe several patents related to speech‑based control and intelligent personal assistant architectures. After the distri...

Case Summary: Gerald K. Kandel and a class of former employees brought a pay‑related class action against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims, ultimately securing two lump‑sum settlements approved by that court in 2020 and 2021 totaling just over $305,000 for the class. After those settlements, the plaintiffs moved under the Equal Access to Justice Act (28 U.S.C. § 2412(b)) to require...

Case Summary: James E. Miller is a veteran who sought to obtain an earlier effective date for service-connected disability benefits for a heart disorder, based on VA proceedings that began in the 1970s. In 1978, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals considered his claim, and in 1980 the VA sent him a letter requesting new and material evidence relating to that decision. Years later, Miller argued that th...

Case Summary: Q Technologies, Inc., a technology company that owns patents covering methods of sharing digital content using unique identifiers, sued Walmart, Inc. in the Western District of Texas for patent infringement based on patents including U.S. Patent Nos. 9,635,108, 10,567,473, and 10,594,774. Walmart moved for summary judgment, arguing that the asserted claims were invalid under 35 U.S.C...