In a high-stakes decision on expert exclusion authored late last month, the District Court for the Northern District of California granted defendants’ motion to exclude plaintiffs’ general causation expert witnesses in In re Baby Food Products Liability Litigation—a consolidated mass tort of over 100 pending cases regarding the alleged presence of toxic heavy metals in baby food.

States continue to implement new premerger notification regimes and expand the scope of existing requirements, with California and Rhode Island recently adding new premerger notification requirements that dealmakers must navigate to successfully complete transactions.

On February 12, 2026, the Eastern District of Texas overturned the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) new Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act notification form that has been in effect for the last year.