The Appellate Record Blog: Argument Week In The SCOTX

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

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.

This monthly newsletter examines critical developments in product liability and mass tort litigation, including FDA guidance on PFAS in medical devices, state-level AI regulation in legal practice...

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.