A year ago, when the Alabama Supreme Court wiped out $250 million in verdicts against pharmaceutical companies, defense lawyers predicted that the ruling would chill other states' cases accusing big pharma of deliberately overcharging for drugs by manipulating average wholesale price reports. Looks like they were wrong.

In their defense against the SEC's fraud allegations, lawyers for former Bear Stearns' managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin argued that some claims were barred by the Supreme Court's ruling last year in Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders. But it's unclear if the Janus ruling, which arose from a private shareholder suit, applies with equal force to an SEC enforcement action. With the apparent settlement of this case, we'll have to wait for another case to find out.

Six years have passed since a federal judge's ruling in favor of patent licensing company NTP Inc. nearly shut down BlackBerry service in the United States. But the legacy of the RIM litigation has been troublesome for NTP.

Lawyers for Teva, Barr, and Mylan convinced a federal judge in New Jersey that the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling in Pliva v. Mensing doomed the plaintiffs state-law claims that they failed to warn patients about the risks of generic versions of Fosamax.