Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights commentary regarding the oral argument at the Supreme Court in Maine, Moda, and Land of Lincoln, a summary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Peter v. Nantkwest, and a report on an attorney (who recently made news for his arguments in an appeal at the Federal Circuit) being ordered to leave a courtroom in the Second Circuit.
A New York Times headline reported that the “Supreme Court may back insurers in $12 Billion Obamacare case,” referring of course to the recent oral argument in the combined cases of Maine, Moda, and Land of Lincoln. According to the article’s author, Adam Liptak, “[t]he Supreme Court seemed inclined . . . to require the federal government to live up to its promise to shield insurance companies from some of the risks they took in participating in the exchanges established by President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act.” We reached the same conclusion in our argument recap.
Ron Mann at SCOTUSBlog provided his summary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Peter v. NantKwest, concluding that “[p]erhaps the most surprising thing about this case is that the government appealed, and the Supreme Court chose to review, the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision refusing to award the fees the government sought.” We also summarized the opinion in this case.
Debra Cassens Weiss filed an article with the ABA Journal, reporting that “[a] New York lawyer was ordered to leave a federal appellate courtroom Wednesday, just days after he was in the news for losing his bid to cancel a restaurant’s registered trade dress because it was demeaning to goats.” According to Weiss, the attorney “sarcastically commented about the [Second Circuit] judge reading the briefs.” This followed the Federal Circuit’s recent ruling that the attorney’s “concern about demeaned goats did not give him standing to challenge the [trade dress] registration.”