Commercial Litigation Update

The U.S. Supreme Court decision yesterday that likely will get the most attention is Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, in which a 6–3 Court that lined up according to the conservative vs. liberal stereotype, held that “Section 1396a(a)(23)(A) of the Medicaid Act does not clearly and unambiguously confer individual rights enforceable under 42 U.S.C. §1983.”

The question before the Court was whether individual Medicaid beneficiaries may sue state officials under §1983, the venerable civil rights statute, for failing to comply with the “any qualified provider” provision of the Medicaid law. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates two clinics in South Carolina, serving both Medicaid and other patients alike. Among the services it provides is performing abortions. In 2018, South Carolina, citing state law prohibiting public funds for abortion, expelled Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program. At the same time, the state took steps that it claimed would ensure that other providers would continue offering necessary medical care and family planning services. Planned Parenthood and a patient named Julie Edwards brought a class action suit, claiming that the exclusion of Planned Parenthood violated the any-qualified-provider provision of the statute by depriving her and others of their preferred providers of gynecological care.

Justice Gorsuch, writing for himself and the other five jurisprudential conservatives, noted that §1983 allows private parties to sue state actors that violate their “rights” under the federal “Constitution and laws.” “But federal statutes do not automatically confer §1983-enforceable ‘rights.’ This is especially true of spending-power statutes like Medicaid, where ‘the typical remedy’ for violations is federal funding termination, not private suits.”

Effective April 1, 2015, the Commercial Division of the New York State Supreme Court promulgated a series of reforms to the Rules of Practice for the Commercial Division, including the addition of new Rule 11-e, which provides specific requirements for responding and objecting to document requests. In particular, Rule 11-e(a)-(b) requires parties to provide particularized responses and specify in detail whether documents are being withheld in response to all or part of the requests, and Rule 11-e(c) requires a date for the completion of document production prior to depositions. These are markedly different than those required by the Uniform Civil Rules that govern non-Commercial New York State Supreme Courts and County Courts, and have been the subject of much discussion by courts and practitioners in the ensuing years. However, one significant requirement of Rule 11-e that is often overlooked concerns Rule 11-e(d).

In particular, Rule 11-e(d) provides as follows:

(d) [b]y agreement of the parties to a date no later than one (1) month prior to the close of fact discovery, or at such time set by the Court, the responding party shall state, for each individual request: (i) whether the production of documents in its possession, custody or control and that are responsive to the individual request, as propounded or modified, is complete; or (ii) that there are no documents in its possession, custody or control that are responsive to the individual request as propounded or modified.

With six more decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court decided no fewer than 11 cases in two business days last week, following 12 others over the previous two weeks.

In other words, summer vacation is upon us, as the Court’s term is likely to end soon.

The most recent decisions are, as predicted, more controversial than the spate of unanimous or near-unanimous decisions of earlier weeks. None of the newest decisions, nor indeed any of the cases yet to be decided, are likely to provoke the level of public attention given to the Court’s decision in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding a state’s law prohibiting certain medical treatments for transgender minors.

However, the latest batch of decisions offers considerable guidance to litigators with respect to the level of review that federal courts may exercise under several very active statutory regimes and as to important procedural issues such as standing and venue.

In June, Maine and Oregon joined a growing list of states that now prohibit the reporting of medical debt to a consumer reporting agency.

On June 9, 2025, the governor of Maine signed into law LD558, which amends the Maine Fair Credit Reporting Act to prohibit medical creditors, debt collectors and debt buyers from reporting a consumer’s medical debt to a consumer reporting agency. Under the Maine law, a “medical creditor” is defined as “an entity that provides health care services and to whom a consumer incurs medical debt or an entity that provided health care services to a consumer and to whom the consumer previously owed medical debt if the medical debt has been purchased by one or more debt buyers.” Additionally, the Maine law forbids consumer reporting agencies from reporting medical debt on consumer reports. Consumers whose medical debt is reported in violation of the new amendments can seek civil remedies against the medical creditor, debt collector, debt buyer, or consumer reporting agency that reported the medical debt pursuant to the Maine Fair Credit Reporting Act for actual damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and either treble damages or statutory damages depending on whether the violation was willful or negligent.

To anyone who has followed the case of United States v. Skrmetti, especially those who attended or listened to the oral argument, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6–3 holding that a Tennessee law prohibiting certain medical procedures for transgender minors was not subject to heightened or strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should have come as no surprise.

Although there was an array of concurring and dissenting opinions, the majority opinion, written by the Chief Justice, was joined by the Court’s other five jurisprudentially conservative Justices, while the three “liberals,” Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, dissented.

As the end of the term seems to be rushing towards us, the U.S. Supreme Court issued six more opinions yesterday, mostly unanimous or near unanimous. In other words, the Court is clearing the shelves of the “easy ones.” More profound disagreements are likely on the horizon, but not this time. Notably, in one case that was not unanimous, we find Justice Jackson and Justice Thomas together in a concurring opinion. While not landmarks, yesterday’s “Pick Six” are all interesting cases, several of which will affect the practices of many readers of this blog, and one of them hearkens back nostalgically to a case this writer argued and won years ago. So, let’s get going.

Hospitals and health systems are familiar with traditional medical malpractice cases, but as healthcare is increasingly seen as a business, healthcare providers need to understand the potential for, and limitations of claims brought under the guise of consumer protection laws. 

Consumer protection laws can be tempting causes of action for individuals who believe they have been wronged by the healthcare system. Unlike medical malpractice claims, which require expert testimony and may include damages caps, consumer protection statutes often include treble damages, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees. Consumer protection laws may also offer injunctive relief as a remedy, do not require a plaintiff to prove causation or damages, and have the potential for class action lawsuits. To prevent plaintiffs from reframing a negligence case to sidestep the limitations of medical malpractice cases, some courts and states have drawn boundaries between consumer protection and medical malpractice cases.

As this term draws to a close, the U.S. Supreme Court is getting busy in reducing its inventory of pending cases. Yesterday, six of them were resolved.

Unfortunately for me, as well as other lawyers who frequently deal with class actions, the case I was most eagerly awaiting, Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Davis, was resolved summarily with a one-liner indicating a “DIG,” that is, “cert. dismissed as improvidently granted.”

Usefully for us interested lawyers, though, Justice Kavanaugh dissented from this per curiam decision, and his dissenting opinion gives us a good idea of what the other eight Justices were thinking and how the issue in the case might come up again in future terms.

California courts are increasingly handling class action lawsuits alleging that cookies and other web technologies violate privacy laws by collecting personal data without consent. A key issue in these cases is whether California courts can exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state companies operating location-neutral websites.

A recent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is raising the stakes for any business that operates a website collecting user data. In Briskin v. Shopify, decided in April 2025, the court held that California courts can exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state company—Shopify—for allegedly collecting personal data from a California resident without proper disclosure or consent. This decision signals a significant shift in how courts view digital jurisdiction in the age of online commerce and widespread data collection.

For more than a decade, California courts have wrestled with the challenge of how to resolve disputes over the authenticity of electronically signed arbitration agreements.

While the State Supreme Court has not yet offered conclusive guidance, decisions by the State’s various appellate courts offer insight into what factors a court is likely to consider.

As we have noted before, the holding in Epic Systems v. Lewis contributed to a proliferation of arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers. Our prior analysis predicted certain datapoints one should ...