Litigation

Cal Supremes Rule Life Insurance Not A Service Under CLRA

Posted on April 20, 2009
The Consumer Legal Remedies Act (Civ. Code section 1750 et seq.) prohibits various unfair and deceptive acts and practices in a "transaction intended to result or which results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer."...

DRI Product Liability Conference: Summing Up

Posted on April 18, 2009
This has been a fun and busy three days. I learned a thing or two, met some great people, and put up a ton of posts. Page views were very high, so I guess somebody was reading. And I appreciate...

Final Presentation From DRI Product Liability Conference: An Explosion Investigation, or Ignorance Meets Ignition

Posted on April 18, 2009
I wasn't able to stick around for all of this, but did hear SEA Inc.'s Mark Mulcahy do a demo of an explosion investigation he conducted involving a fellow who saw fit to weld around a highly volatile separation tank...

Blogging From DRI's Product Liability Conference: Chemical And Toxic Torts

Posted on April 17, 2009
I want to learn more about this, but if it works as advertised, this is something pretty amazing. Bruce Gillis, M.D., MPH, from The Cytokine Institute made a presentation yesterday afternoon. The institute describes its business related to toxic torts...

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More From DRI's Product Liability Conference: The Sophisticated User Defense

Posted on April 16, 2009
I surprised several non-Californians attending here last night by saying that I consider the California Supreme Court to be a fairly conservative court. Of course, non-Californians all read about the Court?s same sex marriage decision, and many assumed that the...

DRI Product Liability Blogging Continues: Green Acres Is The Place To Be ? Will ?Green Buildings? Be Fertile Ground For Novel Theories of Liability Against Building Product Manufacturers and Building Developers?

Posted on April 16, 2009
Speakers are Sky Woodward, Dominic DiCicco and Jonathan Rodriguez. We begin with the propositions that: (a) the construction industry has been one of the greenest industries in the world; (b) huge federal, state and local impetus for green construction; (c)...

Blogging From DRI's Product Liability Conference: Preemption

Posted on April 16, 2009
For years, I would hear from associates from UCLA School of Law that Professor Erwin Chemerinsky was the best law professor in the world. He later moved on, first to Duke, then to the position of Dean of the newly...

DRI Product Liability Conference: Clarification on Europe's Influence on California

Posted on April 16, 2009
CalBizLit blogged on one of the early sessions at DRI, quoting Sidley Austin's Chris Bell that "California, in addition to Proposition 65, has been 'bringing the EU to the state. If it can?t be marketed in Europe, it can?t be...

Greenwashing ? What Manufacturers Need to Know About Their Environmental Product Representations

Posted on April 15, 2009
As previously announced, I'm attending DRI's Product Liability Conference in San Diego, and providing summaries as time permits. Not quite live-blogging, but trying to keep it current. There is nothing affiliated with DRI about these posts. Needless to say, my...

The Future is Green ? A Panel Discussion on the Emerging and Regulatory Landscape in the U.S. and the E.U.

Posted on April 15, 2009
This is a panel, moderated by Thomas C. Regan of LeClairRyan in Newark, and with Christopher Bell of Sidley Austin LLP and Rod Freeman, of Lovells LLP in London. It occurred to me that no defense lawyer (including the publisher...

DRI Product Liability Conference: The Grass Is Not Always Greener on the Other Side

Posted on April 15, 2009
Well, between the hotel's wireless connection and Verizon Wireless's problems, the live blogging got off to a slow start today, but we're ready to post on some of the presentations now. Leading off today's conference is this presentation by Best,...

Non-Party Insurer Can't Be Sanctioned For Failure To Negotiate In "Good Faith" At Settlement Conference

Posted on April 13, 2009
Almost every California jury trial is preceded by one or more "mandatory settlement conferences," usually supervised by a judge, and usually a week to a month before the trial. Local rules generally require that the parties, insurers and others with....

AG Posts 2008 Proposition 65 Settlements

Posted on April 10, 2009
Each year since 2000, the California Attorney General has posted a summary of Proposition 65 settlements for the previous year, and the report for 2008 is now up. The trend is up, not for the number of settlements but for...

Live Blogging from DRI's Product Liability Conference

Posted on April 09, 2009
The Defense Research Institute is the international organization of attorneys defending the interests of business and individuals in civil litigation. The DRI Product Liability Committee is one of its largest and most active committees. Next week, from April 15 to...

Court of Appeal Strikes Blow For Social Networking

Posted on April 06, 2009
Unlike the United States Constitution, with its various "penumbras," the California Constitution has an explicit right of privacy (also unlike the US Constitution, the Cal Constitution has been amended more than 435 times, but that is for another discussion)...

More Charlie the Tuna: Blog Commentary On Experts Hired By Judges

Posted on April 01, 2009
I posted here about three weeks ago on the Court of Appeals decision in People ex rel. Edmund G. Brown Jr. v. Tri-Union Seafoods, LLC (March 11, 2009) ___Cal.App.4th___ (A116792), particularly discussing the court's wistful longing for replacement of today's...

California Green Building Blog

Posted on April 01, 2009
Here's something in the blawgosphere that's pretty cool, and like nothing I've seen before. Four lawyers in the "green building practice group" at the Oakland construction law firm of Bell, Rosenberg & Hughes LLP have a very active and really...

A New Twist In The Law Of Good Faith Settlements

Posted on March 30, 2009
If you have a multi-defendant product liability or other high-stakes tort case in California and don't know about the concept of "good faith settlements," you need to. And then you really need to know about this case, Long Beach Memorial...

Fraud Alleged in Cases Against Dole

Posted on March 24, 2009
CalBizLit reported here in 2007 on the first verdict in the DBCP cases brought by Nicaraguan banana workers against Dole Foods, and "California Punitive Damages an Exemplary Blog" (to whom a hat tip goes for this update) later reported on...

Courtroom of the 21st Century

Posted on March 23, 2009
Like many blawgers, I subscribe to feeds from lots of other blawgers, and I make a particular effort to follow posts from lawyers on the plaintiff side of the kinds of kinds of cases I defend. Among those, one of...

Trial By i-Phone, and How To Stop It

Posted on March 17, 2009
This isn't exactly a California story, but it's something I can just about guarantee is going to be an everywhere story. It's really interesting, and has tons of implications. Today's NY Times reports on jurors using their Blackberries, i-Phones, etc...

Market Share Liability and Punitive Damages

Posted on March 16, 2009
In Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories (1980) 26 Cal.3d 588, the California Supremes pioneered the "market share" liability theory for plaintiffs alleging injury caused by generic, fungible products whose producers could not be identified. The ruling allowed plaintiffs who claimed injury...

Skadden Arps Asbestos Litigation Report

Posted on March 13, 2009
Skadden has just issued a "Trends" report on asbestos litigation, which reports, not surprisingly, that California is one of the leading jurisdictions for these cases. Skadden notes that nationwide, the number of filings peaked at 80,000 in 2002, and the...

Charlie the Tuna 1, State of California 0

Posted on March 11, 2009
In January, CalBizLit posted about then scheduled argument in People v. Tri-Union Seafoods, LLC, the Proposition 65 mercury in canned tuna case. I mentioned then that my tea-leaf reading indicated, from the Court of Appeal's pre-argument letter to the parties,...

Parent-Subsidiary Relationship Not Enough To Create Personal Jurisdicition -- And Neither Is "Alter-Ego" Relationship

Posted on March 10, 2009
From time to time I have occasion to re-state the purpose and target audience for CalBizLit: while all are welcome, this blawg is aimed at companies within and without California who are only infrequent (and usually involuntary) visitors to the...

Cal Supremes To Decide Impact of Proposition 64 In Class Action UCL Cases

Posted on March 04, 2009

California Judges: Recusal For Campaign Contributions?

Posted on February 24, 2009
As lots of people know, oral argument is set before the US Supremes next week in Caperton, et al. v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., et al. As the SCOTUS docket summary puts it: The question presented is whether Justice Benjamin's...

Another Welding Rod Defense Verdict

Posted on February 12, 2009
Not too long ago, it looked as though welding rod litigation might be the next big thing in mass / toxic tort litigation. There were thousands of claims, many in the federal MDL, in which plaintiffs claimed Parkinsonism and other...

Product Liability Defense White Paper Available

Posted on February 10, 2009
One of CalBizLit's goals this year is to increase its output of white papers. The white papers are generally designed to give good subject matter overviews for corporate clients from out-of-state and others who haven't had the pleasure of spending...

Why We On The Defense Side Like Removal Jurisdiction

Posted on February 06, 2009
The latest California Verdict Search (reports available in paper version only) reports a defense verdict in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California (that's San Diego) in a case called Wawanesa General Insurance Company v...

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