Geller v. Uber: Illinois Supreme Court Closes an Arbitration Loophole
The Illinois Supreme Court decided Geller v. Uber Technologies Inc., Case No. 132066, on September 24, 2026, reversing the First District Appellate Court. Gloria Sheridan Geller, as administrator of her husband Mark's estate, sued after his April 2022 death in an Uber-related collision. Uber argued that Gloria's own rider-app arbitration clause bound the estate's wrongful death claim.
The court disagreed, writing that signing up for an application like Uber does not compel any controversy imaginable to arbitration, only ones the parties actually agreed to arbitrate. Mark Geller never signed anything. His widow's individual click-through agreement covered her own rides, not a derivative claim belonging to his estate.
Clifford Law Offices of Chicago obtained the reversal, and the case now returns to the circuit court for litigation on the merits. For counsel nationwide, Geller is citable authority against the increasingly common TNC argument that any household member's app account can sweep in a decedent's separate cause of action.
Counsel defending wrongful death intake for rideshare fatalities should pull Geller immediately when a carrier raises arbitration based on a passenger-companion's account rather than the decedent's own agreement.
Florida's Fourth DCA Reads Near-Total Immunity Into the 2020 TNC Statute
On May 13, 2026, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, in an opinion authored by Judge Jonathan Lott, delivered the first appellate-level construction of Florida Statute 627.748(18), enacted as HB 1352 in 2020. The panel described the immunity as very broad, sweeping in practically any claim tied to a ride so long as the transportation network company satisfied background-check and insurance obligations and did not own or lease the vehicle.
That reading leaves Florida plaintiff counsel with a narrower pleading path than in most other states. A complaint that simply alleges driver negligence during a ride will likely be dismissed on the statute's face.
Surviving a motion to dismiss now requires specific factual allegations that the TNC itself failed a background-check duty, breached its own insurance-policy obligations, or owned or bailed the vehicle involved. Generic negligent-hiring boilerplate will not clear this bar in Florida's Fourth District, and firms statewide should expect defense counsel to cite this opinion aggressively at the pleading stage.
Florida PI intake teams need rideshare-specific pleading checklists now, not after the next dismissal order.
Depo-Provera MDL 3140 Settlement Firms Up at 6,294 Plaintiffs
MDL 3140, pending before Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida, confirmed a settlement in principle on June 15, 2026, with a signed Master Settlement Agreement following on July 21. The docket has grown from 78 cases in March 2025 to 6,294 pending plaintiffs as of the JPML's August 3 report, and roughly 80 percent of those plaintiffs are estimated eligible under the current terms.
The settlement amount has not been publicly disclosed, which leaves individual firms doing their own math on per-plaintiff allocation once eligibility categories are finalized. That uncertainty is itself useful data for case managers triaging remaining intake.
The general causation Daubert hearing, originally set for June 24-25, moved to July 27, and the Toney v. Pfizer bellwether trial that had been scheduled for December 7, 2026, is now vacated. Both moves signal that the parties expect the settlement framework to resolve the bulk of the docket without further bellwether exposure.
Firms with pending Depo-Provera meningioma claims should confirm eligibility-category documentation now, since the 80-percent estimate leaves a meaningful minority still litigating causation.
California's MICRA Stacking Math and the Billed-vs-Paid Divide
California's AB 35 reform framework took effect January 1, 2026, setting non-fatal non-economic damages at a $470,000 cap, rising $40,000 annually to $750,000 by 2033, and wrongful death non-economic damages at $650,000, rising $50,000 annually to $1,000,000. Economic damages remain fully uncapped, which keeps lien documentation as critical as ever.
The multi-defendant carve-out recognizes three separate categories, an individual physician or provider, a hospital or institution, and an unaffiliated provider such as an ambulance service, each carrying its own cap. Stacked correctly across all three categories, theoretical non-economic recovery reaches roughly $1.41 million in non-fatal cases and $1.95 million in wrongful death cases.
Separately, Pebley v. Santa Clara Organics LLC remains good law in 2026: uninsured and lien-based patients can introduce full billed amounts as evidence of reasonable value, while insured plaintiffs stay bound by Howell v. Hamilton Meats to amounts actually paid, with Corenbaum v. Lampkin still barring billed figures from anchoring pain-and-suffering math for that insured group.
Medical providers extending treatment on lien in California should flag insurance status at intake, since that single fact determines whether their full billed rate survives into the damages case or gets compressed to the Howell-paid figure.
California counsel structuring multi-defendant med-mal and wrongful death matters should map each defendant to its own MICRA category before settlement talks, not after.
UM/UIM Structure Fights in New Mexico and Oregon
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in June 2026 that insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on a per-vehicle basis and disclose per-vehicle premiums. The decision restored Albuquerque plaintiff Jared Kileen's damages suit after his insurer failed to structure coverage options properly following his 2018 collision.
The ruling raises insurer disclosure obligations statewide and opens legacy multi-vehicle policies to coverage-structure challenges that were previously foreclosed by boilerplate policy language.
In Oregon, Rogers v. Farmers Insurance Company of Oregon, decided by the Court of Appeals in May 2026, examined UIM stacking where a plaintiff insured a Mazda and a Lexus under two distinct Farmers policies, each carrying $100,000 UIM limits. The court's analysis of whether stacking applies across same-household separate policies gives Oregon counsel a framework for auditing multi-vehicle household coverage before accepting a low UIM tender.
Counsel in both states should re-audit existing UM/UIM files for undisclosed per-vehicle coverage options or unexamined stacking opportunities across household policies.
Oklahoma's $40 Million Bad-Faith Verdict and the Telematics Gap
An Oklahoma federal jury returned a $40 million verdict against Progressive after the insurer's initial UIM offer to a seriously injured Tulsa-area claimant was $710. The gap between that offer and the verdict is driving bar discussion of bad-faith handling as an independent damages multiplier rather than a procedural footnote.
Telematics data played a central evidentiary role in rebutting the insurer's early valuation, giving counsel a concrete tool for pre-empting low-ball offers before they calcify into a bad-faith record.
For medical providers tracking lien-based cases through a directory platform, the lesson runs parallel: documentation that quantifies severity early, imaging, telematics, treatment timelines, strengthens both the underlying claim and any later bad-faith exposure against the carrier.
Firms handling Oklahoma UIM claims should start building a telematics and severity record at intake, before the first lowball offer arrives.