In a brief opinion filed August 3, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment in docket No. 25-1162.

Weill Cornell Medicine has reached a settlement with Manhattan federal prosecutors to resolve a criminal investigation into allegations that the institution failed for years to prevent a physician’s sexual abuse of patients. The matter, handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, is notable not only because of the underlying misconduct allegations, but because prosecutors trained their focus on the institution’s response — or lack of response — to warning signs and complaints.

That distinction matters.

The Third Circuit’s August 5, 2026 opinion in No. 25-3032 is now available, but practitioners should note an immediate limitation for analysis: the public case information provided here identifies the court, docket number, and filing date, but does not include the text of the opinion itself. That means any substantive assessment of the panel’s holding, its reasoning, or its precedential effect depends on reviewing the opinion directly.

For lawyers tracking developments in the Third Circuit, that distinction matters.

The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division has announced that it is resuming a more targeted Hart-Scott-Rodino merger review process, an important procedural shift for companies navigating premerger notification in 2026. Although this is not a court filing or enforcement complaint, it is still a meaningful legal development: it tells dealmakers and their counsel how one of the government’s primary antitrust enforcers intends to allocate resources and frame early-stage merger scrutiny.

At a practical level, a “targeted” review approach suggests the Division is moving away from a broader, more expansive initial review posture and returning to a process more closely tailored to transactions that present identifiable competitive risks.

The Justice Department’s proposed settlement with Willow Bridge Property Company LLC marks another important step in the government’s expanding antitrust challenge to rent-setting tools and shared market data in multifamily housing. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, fits into a broader enforcement push targeting allegations that landlords used common pricing software and competitively sensitive information to coordinate rents.

While the specific terms of the proposed resolution will matter, the headline takeaway is already clear: DOJ is not treating rental algorithms as a niche issue.

The Tenth Circuit’s August 4, 2026 order in appeal No. 26-6021 appears to be a procedural disposition rather than a published merits opinion, and that matters for how practitioners should read it.

The Justice Department said on August 6 that Duke University School of Law intentionally discriminated on the basis of race in admissions for its 2023, 2024, and 2025 entering classes, concluding that the school’s practices violated Title VI and the Supreme Court’s ban on race-based admissions in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al.

The finding is significant not only because it targets a prominent law school, but because it shows continued federal enforcement activity after Students for Fair Admissions. That 2023 decision reshaped the legal framework for admissions nationwide, holding that the use of race in college admissions could not survive constitutional scrutiny.

The Justice Department has announced a $400 million settlement to cover healthcare costs for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, marking one of the larger recent federal settlements and an important development at the intersection of tribal healthcare, federal funding obligations, and government-liability litigation.

For legal professionals, the size of the resolution is only part of the story.

The Ninth Circuit’s August 4, 2026 opinion in No. 61 OPINION (Milan D), Docket No. 26-1444, is worth watching for practitioners handling federal appeals in the circuit. Based on the available case information, the decision appears to address issues significant enough to merit a published opinion, which usually signals the panel intended to provide guidance beyond the immediate parties.

Although the caption information currently available is limited, the practical takeaway for litigators is straightforward: when the Ninth Circuit issues a precedential opinion rather than a memorandum disposition, counsel should assume the court is clarifying doctrine, refining a procedural standard, or resolving uncertainty that may recur in district courts.

The Justice Department has announced a $36.4 million settlement with Access DX Laboratory, its former CEO Michael Stewart, and Florida businessman Harold Shatz to resolve allegations that the defendants participated in a kickback-driven scheme involving medically unnecessary genetic testing billed to Medicare and Medicaid. The case is the latest sign that federal healthcare-fraud enforcement remains sharply focused on laboratory testing arrangements, referral relationships, and claims tied to questionable medical necessity.

According to the government, the settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act arising from payments intended to generate referrals for expensive genetic tests, along with the submission of claims to federal healthcare programs for tests that were not medically necessary.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a fresh enforcement push against senior leaders of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, pairing new criminal charges with reward offers in a coordinated action involving DOJ, DEA, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS-CI, CBP, and other agencies.

In a July 29, 2026 final written decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board held that the petitioner failed to prove any challenged claim unpatentable in IPR2025-00574. The judgment, issued under 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), is a complete defense win for the patent owner: none of the instituted challenges succeeded.

At a high level, that means the Board was not persuaded that the prior art and supporting expert testimony carried the petitioner’s burden by a preponderance of the evidence.

The Third Circuit’s July 30, 2026 decision in Opinion, No. 25-1116, is a useful reminder that appellate outcomes often turn as much on procedure as on merits. Although the case title released on the docket is generic, the court’s ruling appears to focus on whether the appeal was properly before the court and what qualifies as a reviewable order under federal appellate practice.

At a high level, the court addressed the threshold question every appellate practitioner must confront: is there a final decision, or some other basis for immediate review, that gives the court of appeals jurisdiction? In doing so, the panel reinforced the Third Circuit’s consistent approach to finality under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the limited scope of exceptions such as interlocutory review, collateral-order doctrine, or Rule 54(b) certifications.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has concluded that Department of Homeland Security and ICE guidance failed to comply with an earlier court order restricting warrantless immigration arrests in the District. The ruling, from Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, marks an unusually direct judicial rebuke: not just disagreement over policy, but a finding that agency conduct did not match the limits the court had already imposed.

At the center of the dispute is the scope of ICE’s authority to make warrantless arrests and whether revised agency guidance meaningfully honored the court’s prior restrictions.

Google LLC has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in IPR2026-00429, opening another closely watched front in the company’s broader patent defense strategy. The proceeding, filed on July 29, 2026, is captioned simply Google LLC, but as with any PTAB matter, the key questions for patent practitioners will be which patent claims are under attack, what prior art combinations are being asserted, and whether the Board views the petition as a strong candidate for institution.

At this early stage, the docket signals the beginning of the challenge rather than its resolution.