Practice Areas
California
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February 22, 2012
Enviros Sue EPA Over Shell's Alaskan Drilling Permits
A coalition of environmental groups launched a suit Tuesday in the Ninth Circuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its decision to allow Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, challenging one of the first off-shore drilling permits to be issued after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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February 22, 2012
Sheen, Asner Among SAG Members Fighting AFTRA Merger
Actors Martin Sheen, Ed Asner and other members of the Screen Actors Guild filed a lawsuit Wednesday in California federal court seeking to block a vote on a proposed merger with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
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February 22, 2012
9th Circ. Chucks $1M Verdict Against FedEx In Bias Case
The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday affirmed a decision to throw out a nearly $1 million jury verdict against Federal Express Corp. in a former manager's race discrimination and retaliation suit, saying a review of the record showed no factual basis for the verdict.
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February 22, 2012
Calif. AG, App Giants Unveil New Privacy Blueprint
California's attorney general announced an agreement Wednesday with Apple Inc., Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and three other mobile app platform operators that effectively establishes a nationwide, legally enforceable standard for app privacy policies.
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February 22, 2012
Justices Remand Challenge To Calif.'s Medicaid Cuts
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to decide whether plaintiffs can use the U.S. Constitution's supremacy clause to challenge California's cuts to Medicaid, ordering the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case now that the federal government has approved the challenged cuts.
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February 22, 2012
Payless Wraps Up Text Spam Class Action For $6M
A class of consumers asked a California federal judge Tuesday to sign off on an up to $6.25 million settlement to end a suit accusing Payless ShoeSource Inc. of violating federal law by sending unsolicited text messages.
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February 22, 2012
Judge Narrows Jaco's Targets In LCD Price-Fixing Case
A California federal judge on Wednesday refined Jaco Electronics Inc.'s antitrust claims in multidistrict litigation against a slew of liquid crystal display panel makers, clarifying that Jaco is only allowed to recover damages from entities directly involved in the massive price-fixing conspiracy.
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February 22, 2012
Office REIT Seeks Unpaid Rent From LA Law Firm
Los Angeles litigation boutique Iverson Yoakum Papiano & Hatch LLP was hit with a complaint Friday in California court alleging it owes $167,500 in unpaid rent at the downtown Los Angeles US Bank Tower.
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February 22, 2012
Judge Won't Revive Suit Over Facebook's Data Sharing
A California federal judge refused Tuesday to revive a claim in a defunct class action accusing Facebook Inc. of improperly sharing consumers' personal information with advertisers, saying the claim's dismissal did not hinge on the nature of the plaintiffs' communications with the company.
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February 22, 2012
Toyota Can't Narrow Shareholder Suit Over Defects
A California federal judge on Tuesday rejected Toyota Motor Corp.’s bid to throw out part of a putative class action alleging the car maker inflated its stock price by misleading the public about a brake defect.
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February 21, 2012
AEG Slips Michael Jackson Wrongful Death Suit
Concert promoter AEG Live LLC on Tuesday escaped a wrongful death suit brought by the father of the late pop star Michael Jackson, after a California state judge found Joseph Jackson's claims were mirrored in an ongoing suit filed by his wife.
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February 21, 2012
Evanston Insurance Tries To Shake Bratz Coverage Suit
Attorneys representing Evanston Insurance Co. told a California federal judge on Tuesday that the insurer doesn't have a duty to defend MGA Entertainment Inc. in its ongoing trade secrets feud with Mattel Inc. over the Bratz doll line.
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February 21, 2012
LA County OKs Permits For Santa Clarita Development
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved several zoning recommendations and conditional use permits to allow Newhall Land Development Inc. to begin the first phase of its 12,000-acre megadevelopment in Santa Clarita, Calif.
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February 21, 2012
MGA's $1B Bratz Antitrust Suit Against Mattel Jettisoned
A California federal judge on Tuesday tossed MGA Entertainment Inc.'s $1 billion antitrust lawsuit claiming Mattel Inc. tried to sabotage its Bratz doll line, ruling that MGA's claims had already been litigated during the companies’ ongoing intellectual property war.
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February 21, 2012
Plaintiffs' Experts Will Testify In LCD Screen MDL: Judge
A California federal judge has greenlighted the testimony of two expert economists in multidistrict litigation alleging a major price-fixing conspiracy in the liquid crystal display panel industry, ruling Tuesday the LCD makers failed to establish that the experts' findings should be barred.
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February 21, 2012
Panda Express Faces Seating Class Action
Panda Express Inc. was hit with a putative class action in California court Thursday claiming the fast-casual restaurant chain doesn't provide seating for its cashiers and workers while they're on duty in violation of the state's labor code.
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February 21, 2012
K&L Gates Snags Bryan Cave Partner For LA Corporate Team
K&L Gates LLP has lured to its corporate practice a Bryan Cave LLP transactional partner with experience representing domestic and international companies and private equity funds in the aerospace and technology sectors, the firm announced Monday.
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February 21, 2012
CBS Ditches Model's 'Price Is Right' Pregnancy Bias Suit
A California judge on Tuesday tossed a former “The Price is Right” model's pregnancy discrimination suit against CBS Corp., saying she wasn't fired until after she gave birth and there was no evidence Drew Carey objected to pregnant models after he replaced longtime host Bob Barker.
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February 21, 2012
Boeing Escapes Supreme Court Review Of Chopper Crash Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling in favor of The Boeing Co. and other government contractors in a lawsuit bought by the families of soldiers killed in a 2007 helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
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February 21, 2012
Supreme Court Remands GPS Surveillance Rulings
The U.S. Supreme Court told the Seventh and Ninth circuits on Tuesday to reconsider findings that authorities acted constitutionally when they tracked a suspected criminal's vehicle using GPS technology, considering the high court's recent decision to the contrary in a similar case.
Expert Analysis
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In Calif., Not All Appellate Costs Are Created Equal
In light of the California Supreme Court ruling in Rossa v. D.L. Falk Construction Inc., if your client must borrow funds in conjunction with obtaining a bond to stay enforcement because it either cannot afford to bond itself or provide the necessary collateral without financing, it cannot recover the incurred interest — even after a win in the appellate courts, says David Berkley of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.
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Workers' Comp Insurance: The Most Important Tool
Unless a contractor is exempt from having workers' compensation insurance, its failure to maintain such coverage results in an automatic suspension of its license in California. Two key cases — Wright v. Isaak and Loranger v. Jones — illustrate this point, says Matthew Hicks of Sedgwick LLP.
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Stop The Madness (Before It Starts): UCL Abstention
When plaintiffs try to use California's Unfair Competition Law claims to enforce statutory schemes that are too complex or too undefined to support judicial enforcement, defendants may be able to invoke the doctrine of abstention. There are three themes that stand out as potentially winning defense strategies, say attorneys with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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Law School, Meet Litigation PR ...
The single most important thing law schools can do to manage their reputations in the face of litigation is apply the lessons learned from Wall Street during the recent financial crisis and strive for transparency in all communications. One need only look to Goldman Sachs’ woes or the struggles of Jon Corzine’s MF Global as examples of the catastrophic results of a campaign based on anything but complete honesty, says Spencer Baretz of Hellerman Baretz Communications.
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Daubert At Class Certification: Is Less More?
In Bruce v. Harley-Davidson, a federal judge in California has tried to shed light on the analysis of expert opinions during class certification by adopting a limited Daubert analysis. However, this "focused" standard would provide defendants in class actions that are ultimately certified with two bites at the Daubert apple, say attorneys with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
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Building Momentum Against An Expanded Duty To Warn
The separate court decisions in Conner v. Alfa Laval Inc. and O’Neil v. Crane Co., despite both arising in the context of asbestos exposure, have potentially wide application to any other industries in which a manufacturer’s product could be used in conjunction with other products, say Joseph Hovermill and Matthew Schroll of Miles & Stockbridge PC
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The Wide-Ranging Applications Of Calif. Anti-SLAPP Law
Although there are a number of subject matters to which California's anti-strategic lawsuits against public participation statute has been applied in the last few years, it is not always obvious whether a newly filed complaint can be targeted with such a motion, say Jeremy Rosen and Josephine Mason of Horvitz & Levy LLP.
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Tracking The Implications Of US V. Jones
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in U.S. v. Jones that the government’s attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment likely will not — at least in California — impact an employer’s ability to place devices on its own vehicles to track employee movement when there is a legitimate business reason to do so, says Elizabeth Arce of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore.
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Examining Comcast's Calif. SBE Loss
The California State Board of Equalization recently ruled against Comcast Corp., holding that Comcast was unitary with QVC Inc. and the fee Comcast received for a failed merger with MediaOne Group Inc. was business income. Although the case results in a taxpayer loss, discussions by the board demonstrate that a unitary analysis is subjective, say attorneys with Reed Smith LLP.
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A Green Light For Repetitive Class Action Litigation
Most employers assume that if they successfully defeat a plaintiff’s motion for class certification in a wage and hour class action, the same class claims cannot be raised again in another case. However, the California Court of Appeal has dashed that commonly held assumption in Bridgeford v. Pacific Health Corp., says Remy Kessler of Reed Smith LLP.