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California
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May 16, 2013
Judge Backs Class Cert. In PHH Reinsurance Kickback Suit
A California magistrate judge on Tuesday recommended certifying a class of borrowers claiming that mortgage lender PHH Corp. used a shady reinsurance scheme to rake in an unlawful cut of the premiums they paid for mortgage insurance, finding the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Comcast ruling didn't create a barrier to certification.
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May 15, 2013
$1.5M Attys’ Fees Scuttle HP Printer Defect Deal In 9th Circ.
The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday scrapped the settlement of a consumer class action alleging Hewlett-Packard Co. deceptively marketed printer ink cartridges, finding the trial judge's award of $1.5 million in attorneys' fees was incorrectly calculated under the Class Action Fairness Act.
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May 15, 2013
RINO, Execs Pay $3.5M To Settle SEC Skimming Suit
Project finance company RINO International Corp. and two executives on Wednesday reached a settlement worth more than $3.5 million with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations the executives spent millions skimmed off of a securities offering for luxury purchases.
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May 15, 2013
Bar On Fees Tossed On Appeal In Trade Secrets Suit
A California appeals court on Tuesday overruled a lower judge who found that she couldn't consider motions for attorneys' fees in a trade secrets suit because the two companies involved had reached a settlement before trial.
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May 14, 2013
Starbucks Gets Ex-Barista's Wage Suit Clipped
A California federal judge on Tuesday trimmed a proposed class action alleging Starbucks Corp. failed to pay proper regular and overtime wages by rounding down the hours employees worked, finding the claims either weren't proven or were time-barred.
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May 14, 2013
Haynes And Boone Can't Shift Howrey Feud To DC Court
A California bankruptcy judge on Saturday squashed Haynes and Boone LLP's bid to take to a Washington, D.C., court its fight with Howrey LLP over profits from work it inherited when it hired one of the collapsed law firm's former partners.
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May 13, 2013
Calif. AG Won't Back Down After Delta Privacy Suit Setback
A California judge last week tossed the state attorney general's first attempt to enforce a statute requiring websites to post privacy policies clearly, but attorneys say the hiccup won't deter the attorney general or other state regulators from continuing to aggressively pursue companies they believe aren't handling consumer data properly.
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May 13, 2013
NRC Panel Grants Hearing Over Nuke Plant Restart
Nuclear regulators on Monday granted an environmental group's bid for a hearing on Southern California Edison Co.'s plans to restart its San Onofre nuclear plant, which was shut down due to a leak, saying a letter asking the utility to take certain steps before restarting constituted a license amendment.
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May 13, 2013
PNC Can't Dodge Suit Over 'Banker's Interest' Calculation
A California magistrate judge on Friday kept alive a putative class action brought by an apartment building owner alleging PNC Bank NA used an unfair calculation of the so-called banker's interest rate it charged borrowers that wrongfully hiked rates on commercial loans.
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May 13, 2013
Citing Brinker, Calif. Appeals Court Backs Guards' Class Bid
A California appeals court on Friday said security guards accusing Boyd & Associates Inc. of wage-and-hour violations are entitled to class certification, reversing its previous ruling in the wake of the state Supreme Court’s landmark Brinker decision.
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May 13, 2013
OfficeMax Settles ZIP Code Collection Suit
OfficeMax North America Inc. on Friday agreed to hand out $600,000 in merchandise vouchers to settle a proposed class action accusing the company of illegally asking to record customers’ ZIP codes during credit card transactions.
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May 10, 2013
Ex-DOE Lab Workers Win $3M In Wrongful Firing Case
Five former longtime employees of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scored a $2.7 million victory Friday when a California jury found that the lab had breached its employment contracts by laying them off in 2008 rather than eliminating temporary employees first.
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May 10, 2013
Edison Unit Gets FERC's Tariff Ruling Nixed In DC Circ.
The D.C. Circuit on Friday backed Southern California Edison Co.’s challenge to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision to nix its proposed transmission tariffs, affirming the agency’s methodology but saying it illegally updated the return on equity without properly considering evidence provided.
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May 10, 2013
Ex-UCLA Prof Cops To DARPA Nanotech Fraud
A former University of California, Los Angeles, physics professor agreed Thursday to plead guilty to charges that he defrauded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency by faking bills for nanotechnology research, a crime that will cost him nearly $1.7 million in penalties.
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May 10, 2013
Siliconware Exits Microchip Patent Fight With Tessera
Siliconware Precision Industries Co. Ltd. has reached a settlement with Tessera Inc. to resolve long-running claims that the company infringed Tessera's semiconductor chip technology patents, according to court documents filed Thursday in a California federal court.
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May 10, 2013
San Francisco Defeats Enviro Challenge To Redevelopment
A California appeals court on Thursday blasted two environmental groups' lawsuit claiming San Francisco's environmental review of a 22-parcel redevelopment flouted state laws, finding the city's assessment of the project was more than adequate and refusing to block it from moving forward.
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May 10, 2013
RBS, Kroger Can't Duck Arbitration In Robo Call Action
A California federal judge refused Thursday to reconsider sending to arbitration a proposed class action over alleged robo calls to consumers by Kroger Co. and a Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC subsidiary, saying that case law "tucked away" in a footnote didn't change his analysis.
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May 10, 2013
Hospital Not Liable For Doctor Fees, Calif. Appeals Court Says
A California appeals court on Thursday affirmed the dismissal of a putative class action over Watsonville Hospital Corp.’s alleged failure to prevent emergency room doctors at the hospital charging excessive fees, ruling it is not responsible for the independently contracted doctors’ rates.
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May 9, 2013
Calif. Court Reverses Arbitration Of Temp Agency OT Case
A California appeals court on Thursday denied Labor Ready Southwest Inc.'s bid to compel arbitration in a class action alleging the temporary employment agency didn't compensate workers who waited hours to get job assignments, ruling the request was untimely.
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May 9, 2013
Delta Dodges Calif. Privacy Suit Over Smartphone App
A California state judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit accusing Delta Air Lines Inc. of violating a state privacy policy with its smartphone application, dealing a major blow to California's attorney general in the first test of California's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Expert Analysis
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Split On Calif. Code Upgrade Coverage Remains Unresolved
In Reichert v. State Farm General Insurance Co., California’s Fourth Appellate District Court recently interpreted the law and ordinance exclusion to preclude coverage when the enforcement of a law causes the loss. The court did not, however, resolve the current conflict in code upgrade coverage, leaving it up to another court to determine the split of authority, say attorneys with Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.
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Calif. FCA Ruling Could Impact Federal FCA Cases
If the reasoning in a recent California False Claims Act decision — Contreras v. First Student Inc. — is extended to its logical conclusion, it would mean that qui tam plaintiffs and their attorneys could routinely contact the employees of defendants in state or federal FCA matters without the defendants’ consent or knowledge, say attorneys with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
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A Setback For Apple In Privacy MDL
As a result of Apple Inc.'s failure to comply with discovery obligations, a judge in the Northern District of California recently denied Apple's motion for summary judgment in a privacy class action by iPhone and iPad owners and ordered the plaintiffs to withdraw their class certification motion and refile later. Having now shown its cards on grounds for its dispositive motion and for opposing class certification, Apple could be in a quandary, says Evan Nadel of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
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Credit Card Privacy Case Is Bad News For Mass. Retailers
In Tyler v. Michaels Stores Inc., the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts recently ruled that asking for customers' ZIP codes during a credit card transaction violates a state consumer protection law. Without a doubt, this is a bad decision for Massachusetts retailers. The active Song-Beverly plaintiff’s bar in California may now set its sights on the Bay State, say attorneys with Sedgwick LLP.
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Finally, 8 Factors Governing FIRREA Civil Penalty Awards
The recent decision by the Central District of California in United States v. Menendez may finally give the government and FIRREA defendants a framework for their discussions. The ruling, in a small civil bank fraud case brought against an individual, appears to be the first judicial decision setting forth the factors that a court should consider when imposing civil penalties under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, say attorneys with BuckleySandler LLP.
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A New Duty Of Care Owed To Calif. Borrowers
In light of the California Court of Appeal opinion in Jolley v. Chase Home Finance LLC, borrowers embroiled in disputes with their lenders with respect to the lenders’ performance under a construction loan agreement — especially where the bank representatives indicated the likelihood of a loan modification — may be able to state a cause of action for negligence, misrepresentation and/or promissory estoppel, says Andrew Howard of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.
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New CEQA Bill — Cure Or Band-Aid?
In response to a business community campaign calling for broad California Environmental Quality Act reform, Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Calif., released his highly anticipated CEQA "modernization" bill. So far, the bill is more remarkable for what it lacks than for what it contains, but it still could reduce CEQA delay and uncertainty, says Barbara Schussman of Perkins Coie LLP.
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5th Circ. Stirs The Artificial Impairment Pot
The Fifth Circuit decision in Western Real Estate Equities LLC v. Village at Camp Bowie I LP may renew debate among the circuit courts and bankruptcy courts regarding how far a plan proponent may go in engineering an impaired class of creditors to cram down a plan, say Luc Despins and Robert Winter of Paul Hastings LLP.
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9th Circ. Clears The Air For Mine Owners
In the recent case, Center for Biological Diversity v. Salazar, the Ninth Circuit ruled that mining plans of operations do not expire after temporary closures. This decision marks notable, favorable precedent for the mining industry and project proponents and helps settle expectations for mining plans of operations, says Tyler Welti of Perkins Coie LLP.
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Novel Approach To Opposing Class Certification Rejected
Current and former student-athletes are one step closer to forcing the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member institutions to share their profits with them now that the Northern District of California ruled they can proceed to class certification. Lawyers should take note that the judge made it clear that the defendants' motion to strike the certification motion was not the correct avenue to take, say attorneys with Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP.