Practical Rhetoric – Pleading & Plausibility

On August 21, 2026, the Tenth Circuit granted the NCAA’s stay request in Wisne v. NCAA, temporarily restoring the NCAA’s age-based eligibility rules pending resolution of the appeal. Three weeks earlier, Judge Sweeney of the District of Colorado had issued a nationwide injunction that permitted athletes in the Class of 2022 to pursue a fifth year of eligibility.

The top ten largest class action settlements in securities cases in the U.S. have recouped tens of billions of dollars in damages.

A Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling harshly criticizes a federal district judge for relying on AI-generated content in legal orders, revealing fabricated facts and poor legal analysis. The decision raises critical questions about the use of generative AI in legal practice and whether lawyers who adopt such technology are compromising their ethical obligations of competence, confidentiality, and integrity.

On the morning of July 4, 2025, catastrophic flooding on the Guadalupe River took 135 lives across the Texas Hill Country. Twenty-eight of them—25 school-aged campers, two young counselors and the camp's co-executive director—were at Camp Mystic, a century-old girls' camp near Hunt.

A federal court in California denied preliminary approval of a $2.3 million data breach settlement affecting over 220,000 individuals, finding seven critical deficiencies in the proposed agreement. The decision highlights the rigorous scrutiny courts apply to class action settlements, particularly regarding claims-made distribution processes, inadequate documentation of settlement value, and unexplained disparate treatment among class members.

Two federal courts have reached opposing conclusions on whether expert witnesses must disclose their AI prompts during discovery. While one court treats prompts as discoverable methodology, another protects them as mental impressions while requiring disclosure of AI-generated outputs the expert consulted.

A federal court rejected TikTok's attempt to use two prior nationwide class action settlements—totaling over $93 million—to dismiss new privacy claims brought by minors alleging violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The ruling hinged on whether the current plaintiffs were demonstrably members of the earlier settlement classes based solely on the pleadings, raising critical questions about the scope and enforceability of broad settlement releases in successive privacy litiga

An ICC tribunal has ruled in favor of Galp in its dispute with Venture Global over the Calcasieu Pass LNG facility, finding that Venture Global breached its obligation to declare the facility operational in a timely manner. This decision adds to a series of contrasting outcomes in similar disputes involving other buyers, with damages yet to be determined in a hearing scheduled for 2027 or 2028.

The U.S. Supreme Court will review a constitutional challenge to an 1868 federal law banning home distilleries, creating an opportunity to resolve a circuit split between the 5th and 6th Circuit Courts of Appeals. The case centers on whether the prohibition violates the Constitution's Taxation Clause or represents a legitimate exercise of congressional power to prevent tax evasion.

A US federal court confirmed a $350 million arbitral award against the Republic of Georgia and enforced a contractual post-judgment interest rate of SOFR plus four percent, compounding monthly, rather than the lower statutory rate. The decision demonstrates how carefully drafted contractual language extending interest "after as well as before judgment" can result in substantially higher recoveries for creditors in international arbitration enforcement proceedings.

On Jan. 21, 2025, President Donald Trump, alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, announced a private sector plan to invest billions of dollars.

A health insurance company announced today that it has been the victim of a sophisticated cyber-attack and data breach of information of current and former covered persons.

Yesterday three important regulatory developments occurred in the clean energy space.

Since its independence in 1991 Kazakhstan has been rapidly developing to become a country with a market economy establishing and strengthening its economic and trade ties with foreign countries, encouraging foreign investment, and liberalizing trade.

On Feb. 6, 2012, UK-based medical device company Smith & Nephew settled a civil and criminal investigation of alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by agreeing to pay a total of $22.6 million and committing to certain measures designed to reduce the possibility of repeat conduct.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split on the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) in a decision that emphasizes the importance of how organizations manage access to their systems.

Kazakhstan's commercial banking sector has grown dramatically in recent years.

Renovus Capital Partners has announced the acquisition of Superior Health Holdings.

The article was based on a July 21 Subject to Inquiry blog post by Alex and Ryan that was published under the same title at www.subjecttoinquiry.com.

If a county, city or town contributes a pollutant of concern to a waterbody it may need to modify its municipal stormwater management program to meet state and federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulations. Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) and the Virginia Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) will require MS4 communities to make improvements and retrofits to existing stormwater management programs.