Litigation

Misuse of Discrimination Laws: Lawyers With Too Much Time on Their Hands Division

Posted on November 26, 2008
CalBizLit almost never blogs about unpublished decisions, because under California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), they aren't citeable or otherwise authority for anything. And CalBizLit almost never blogs about lawyers and parties who stretch the limits of discrimination and other...

Proposition 65: Finality of Consent Judgments and Protection From Multiple Bounty-Hunters

Posted on November 24, 2008
Regular readers (all five of you) and California practitioners by now know the Proposition 65 enforcement drill: a private-party enforcer, or "bounty hunter," uses a lead-seeking gun to find lead-containing products without warnings on a retail shelf, or buys products...

Warning: Off Topic Sports Post, Living In The Past Division

Posted on November 21, 2008
Tomorrow is the Cal Stanford Big Game. I've lost track of how many I've been to, but I've been going since the 1960's. Go Bears!Here's the final seconds of the greatest one of all, 1982. Unlike many who say they...

Cal Supreme Court: Pre-Litigation Settlement Efforts Not a Prerequisite to Obtaining Private Attorney General Fees

Posted on November 20, 2008
California's private attorney general fees statute, Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, allows fees to lawyers bringing suit in the public interest, and sets forth the criteria for when fees will be allowed. CalBizLit did a lengthy post on this...

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Too Many Lawyers -- California Business Division

Posted on November 20, 2008
There are lots of places we can go to read about the misuse and abuse of the civil justice system, usually by attorneys representing plaintiffs in personal injury, pharma, consumer or other litigation (Overlawyered.com and its sister site PointofLaw.com come...

The California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program and Medical Monitoring

Posted on November 18, 2008
CalBizLit seems to be citing Beck and Hermann's Drug and Device Law Blawg an awful lot lately. Not that they need it -- I think they have approximately 100 bazillion page views to date, compared with CalBizLit's 57. But here...

Clayworth v. Pfizer: Supreme Court Extends Time For Granting Review

Posted on November 17, 2008
In August, I blogged on Clayworth v. Pfizer, Inc. (July 25, 2008) ___ Cal.App.4th )___ (A116798), an antitrust case where a California Court of Appeal for the first time considered the "pass on defense" and held that it applied to...

More on Conte v. Wyeth

Posted on November 14, 2008
On Monday, CalBizLit posted here about Conte v. Weyeth, where the Court of Appeal last week held that Wyeth could be held liable for alleged misrepresentations in its labeling even when the plaintiff took only the generic version of the...

Trial of Legal and Equitable Issues in California Courts

Posted on November 13, 2008
You all remember courts of chancery, right? They were the ones where the chancellor tried equitable issues, without a jury. And the artifact of those courts, of course, is the distinction between ?legal issues? and ?equitable issues.? In California, and,...

Lucky Thing We Have a Court of Appeal

Posted on November 13, 2008
For resolving critical, weighty disputes like this one.

California's Remedy For Frivolous LItigation

Posted on November 12, 2008
The original point of this blawg, other than to give me a place to post off-topic Youtube videos of long-gone jazz, blues and r & b musicians, is to provide useful information about California litigation issues for businesses much like...

Off-Topic Post -- Veterans Day

Posted on November 11, 2008
My father, John Nye, his brother, Don Nye, and my father-in-law,Sam Elkind, all helped save our world in the early nineteen-forties, and are now all gone. My dad's brother, Frank Nye, died on the Arizona sixty-seven years ago next month.I...

Court of Appeal Stands Product Liability Law On Head?

Posted on November 10, 2008
CalBizLit left early on Friday to go to Los Angeles for the Cal vs. USC debacle, and until today, missed the Court of Appeal's decision in Conte v. Wyeth (November 7, 2008) ___Cal.App.4th___. Here's the story: Wyeth develops and brings...

Two Hundred Million Here, Three Hundred Million There -- Soon You're Talking About Real Money

Posted on November 03, 2008
A Los Angeles jury kicked off its Halloween weekend by clobbering Boeing with a $236.86 million punitive damage award in favor of ICO Global Communications. This was on top of the $370.6 million in compensatory damages awarded last week. ICO's...

Why I Want to Practice Plaintiff Animal Attack Law -- New Case Stats From Our Government

Posted on October 30, 2008
The U.S. Justice Department has a "Bureau of Justice Statistics" that issues reports on civil bench and jury trials in state courts every four years. The 2005 survey is just out, and it is full of all kinds of interesting...

Blawg Review #183 -- A Great Resource for California Blawgs

Posted on October 27, 2008
Kimberly A. Kralowec's always excellent UCL Practitioner hosts Blawg Review #183 this week, and provides a wealth of information on California-centric law blogging. She not only provides links to several comprehensive lists of bay area and California blawgers, but surveys...

New Automotive Safety Preemption Case

Posted on October 23, 2008
As many readers of CalBizLit know, federal preemption is a recurringissue in product liability cases. The law of preemption California just took a step in the direction of automobile manufacturers. The requirements for passenger vehicle restraint systems in the United...

A Lesson on Default Judgments

Posted on October 17, 2008
We have this happen at least a couple of times a year: an out-of-state company calls us, tells us they were sued, they turned the summons and complaint over to (a) an insurer; or (b) their local counsel; or (c)...

New Auto Dealership Case: New Cars, Used Cars and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act

Posted on September 25, 2008
This is a development of potential significance to our automobile dealership clients. The most valuable California statute for the plaintiff in consumer litigation is often the Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA; Civ.Code section 1750 et seq.) The CLRA lists 23...

Court of Appeal Endorses Early Use of Code of Civil Procedure Section 998 Offers of Judgment

Posted on September 09, 2008
I?ve blogged often on California?s Code of Civil Procedure Section 998 ? recent previous posts are here and here. Briefly, Section 998 is our version of FRCP 68, and can be effective for obtaining pre-judgment interest, and for shifting both...

Stunner Verdict Against Utility for Failing to LIght Tower

Posted on September 08, 2008
When I was a young associate in an insurance defense firm about 300 years ago, our senior partner made one of the other associates try a plaintiff death case. I say "made him" try it, because the theory was that...

Mattel v. Bratz Verdict In

Posted on August 26, 2008
As discussed here and lots of other places in lots of blawgs, Mattel's Barbie has been duking it out with MGA Entertainment's Bratz in Federal Court in Riverside since last May. The jury previously found copyright infringement and has been...

Citation Links in Cal Biz Lit

Posted on August 26, 2008
When Cal Biz Lit posts on California law, new cases, statutes, etc., I try to include relevant links so readers can easily see them for themselves. The links to California cases come predominantly from three free sites, the links to...

Cal Biz Lit: The Riverside Report

Posted on August 22, 2008
Ever since California's courts adopted their "fast track" programs some twenty years ago, state court cases here have generally moved along at a pretty good clip. Even somewhat complex cases can be set for trial, and go to trial, within...

California Discovery Motion Department -- Finger-wagging at judges division

Posted on August 20, 2008
In yesterday's post, I reported on Felton-Shepherd Industries, Inc. v. Delta Packaging Products, Inc. (August 19, 2008) ___ Cal.App.4th ___, where the Court of Appeal strictly applied the time limits in California's Discovery Act, reversing a trial court judge for...

California Discovery Motions -- This Just In: Judges and Attorneys Have to Follow the Law

Posted on August 19, 2008
As I've shown in my White Paper on discovery, California has a remarkably lengthy and convoluted set of discovery procedures, which differ substantially from the Federal Rules. Our discovery act addresses in a ponderous set of about 192 statutory sections...

The Pass-On Defense: My Bad

Posted on August 14, 2008
In a post day before yesterday, I noted that the Court of Appeal in Clayworth v. Pfizer, Inc. (July 25, 2008) ___ Cal.App.4th ___ (A116798) had held that the "pass-on defense" barred the plaintiffs' Cartwright Act suit because, while the...

Court of Appeal Rules Pass-On Defense Applies in Cartwright Act Anti-Trust Suits

Posted on August 12, 2008
California has long had its own anti-trust law, the Cartwright Act (Bus. & Prof. Code §§16700 and following), and the California anti-trust jurisprudence is similar, but by no means identical to, that deriving from the Federal Sherman Anti-Trust Act (15...

Personal Injury Plaintiff Recovers Full Amount Billed for Medical Services -- Not Just Amounts Paid By Insurance

Posted on July 22, 2008
Anyone who has had major medical experience in the past thirty years or so knows there is a big difference between what gets billed for medical services and what providers accept from insurers as payment in full. Health insurers typically...

Air Travel Just Isn't As Glamorous As It Was

Posted on July 18, 2008
Pity the poor flight attendant. The French diplomat's wife kicks her in the back. The pilot raises his fist at her and throws her off the plane. The airline suspends her, sends her to a shrink and won't give her...

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