Posts

In a consumer class action case against Pottery Barn, trial court ruling sustaining defendant’s demurrer is reversed as the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971’s regulation of what may be asked of credit card customers is not a regulation of what can be sent in commercial e-mails and is not in any manner specific to e-mail, and thus, Song-Beverly is not preempted by the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM)....

Last week the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a patent case that will have wide-reaching ramifications across the nation, across industries. The case, Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, deals with a very basic issue: is computer software patent-eligible under the Patent Act? Section 101 of the Patent Act allows for the patent eligibility of “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof....

Issue of whether plaintiff was a nonexempt employee in a suit against UPS Taylor v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., B225089, concerned a challenge to a trial court’s grant of United Parcel Service’s (UPS) motion for summary judgment on the grounds that plaintiff was exempt executive and administrative employee and therefore not entitled to overtime payments and the related benefits given to nonexempt employees, in plaintiff’s suit against his employer, UPS, seeking recovery of unpaid overtime compensation, penalties for missed meal and rest periods, and other related claims....

In a dispute involving veterans’ disability ratings, Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims judgment is affirmed where, although only the Under Secretary for Benefits and the Director of the Compensation and Pension Service are authorized to assign an extra-schedular disability rating under Department of Veteran’s Affairs regulations, DVA regional offices and the Board of Veterans’ Appeals may conduct initial screenings and fact finding of disability claims and may refer to the Under Secretary or the Director those claims that have a plausible basis for extra-schedular consideration....

Decision of the Court of Federal Claims affirming its Special Master’s rejection of a petition for compensation under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act is affirmed where: 1) Markovich controls this case and under it the Chief Special Master correctly dismissed the petition as untimely; and 2) the grounds upon which plaintiff seeks to distinguish or avoid Markovich are unpersuasive, as plaintiff’s petition was filed more than thirty-six months after the occurrence of the first symptom of the child’s injury....

A school in Waterbury, Connecticut hired, then fired, a music teacher after she admitted to being a card carrying medicinal marijuana patient. Now that music teacher is suing, and the issue may come down to timing. Abigail Peck was visiting Connecticut over the summer from Florida, and interviewed for a music teacher position at an elementary school. After being offered the job, before signing the contract, Peck admitted to being a legal medicinal marijuana user to treat her ulcerative colitis....

I don’t know about you, but when I’m waiting for the airplane to get going, I reach into the seat-back pocket for the one thing that I know will always be there. The SkyMall catalog, I know, will provide at least a few minutes of amusement, from its $100 “designer litter box enclosure” (placed in the living room, for some reason) to its $150 “French wine barrel side table.” OK, kidding aside, there are actually a few good things in the SkyMall catalog that a law firm associate or solo practitioner might find useful....

Who needs to pass the bar exam anyway? Having a license to practice law may not be as important as it used to be, as new law grads face the worst legal job market in decades, a new report finds. The Class of 2011 reports an overall employment rate of 85.6%, the lowest since 1994 when only 84.7% of new law-school graduates found work, according to the National Association for Law Placement’s annual Employment Report and Salary Survey....

Guy Edward Jones just couldn’t wait to eat and that landed him jail on an arson charge. Authorities say that when he came home for a late dinner and his wife didn’t have it on the table, the 60-year-old man got so angry he allegedly set his own house on fire. The sheriff’s department said that he was angry that his wife, Beverly Jones, didn’t have dinner on the table....

When baseball star Roy Halladay crashed his plane and died, it was a tragedy for people and an industry. It shocked family and friends who knew the 40-year-old, former major league pitcher. It also troubled makers of the ICON A5; it was the third fatality in the new design. Amateur video showed that Halladay was flying dangerously close to the water, and witnesses said he was showboating. Still, the manufacturer is reeling from the impact of a sport plane that was the darling of the light aircraft industry....

Two former professional wrestlers have filed a proposed class action brain injury lawsuit against World Wrestling Entertainment. Vito Lograsso and Evan Singleton – who wrestled under the names Skull Von Krush and Adam Mercer – filed the lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia, Reuters reports. The 50-year-old LoGrasso, who also wrestled under the name Big Vito, was a WWE wrestler from 1991 to 1998 and again from 2005 to 2007. Singleton joined the WWE in 2012 at the age of 19....

In a recent interview with Oprah promoting her new book Becoming, Michelle Obama dropped some knowledge, from an unlikely source, on unhappy lawyers everywhere. Apparently, when finally confiding to her mother that she, Michelle Obama, who had graduated from Harvard Law, hated her job as a lawyer, was told: “Make the money, worry about being happy later.” Obama’s mama wasn’t playing around. Reading the full interview with Oprah, you might learn more about Michelle’s life than you ever knew....

In plaintiffs’ suit against defendant for damages arising out of their sexual molestation by defendant’s husband, trial court’s judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part where: 1) trial court properly sustained the demurrer with regard to plaintiffs’ second and fifth causes of action for negligence; but 2) trial court erred in sustaining the demurrer to plaintiffs’ third and sixth causes of action for intentional misconduct. Read Joseph v. Johnson, No....

With January’s arguments completed, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has embarked on a legal “listening” tour of Egypt and Tunisia, one year after the “Arab Spring” uprisings began. The Supreme Court’s elder jurist landed in Egypt on Friday, the start of a politically significant weekend there. Justice Ginsburg, 78, is traveling with her daughter, Columbia law professor Jane Ginsburg, according to the State Department. Justice Ginsburg’s visit to Egypt will be followed by a stop in Tunisia where the Arab Spring uprisings began, the State Department reports....

When it comes to choosing an arch-nemesis, a 12-year-old boy selling lemonade and cookies from a front-lawn card table seems like a peculiar choice. But a Florida man seems determined to shut down a neighborhood boy’s pop-up lemonade shop, claiming the lemonade stand is an “illegal business” that reduces the value of his home, reports the Tampa Bay Times. How are the neighbor’s complaints going over with local authorities? ‘We’re Not in the Business of Trying to Regulate Kids’ The concerned neighbor, 61-year-old Doug Wilkey, has emailed Dunedin, Florida city officials at least four times over the last two years to complain about the boy’s stand....

All those excuses about being too busy with work to exercise? Well, you knew they were crap, but now you have this lady to hold up as motivation. Annie Bersagel is a recent Stanford Law graduate. She’s a lot more than that, actually: She was a college All-American, the 2006 NCAA Woman Of The Year, a Fulbright Scholar, a California-licensed attorney and now she works in investments in Norway. She’s also a professional athlete in her spare time, with a U....

It’s one thing when a lawyer ‘fails to appear’ in court, and it’s another thing entirely when that lawyer fails to respond to the order to show cause (OSC) as to why the lawyer initially failed to appear. It’s a gutsy move that usually won’t end well. Recently, an attorney from Nebraska, best known for being one of convicted murderer Anthony Garcia’s attorneys, didn’t just fail to appear for a state court hearing or some minor line on the docket either, he failed to appear at an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals oral argument, and then failed to respond to the OSC....

As the popularity and cultural cache of certain neighborhoods, cities, and states increases, long-time and even life-time residents can get priced out of their homes. Case in point: Portland, Oregon has been a hipster mecca for about a decade, and CBS talked to a local woman whose landlord of seven years suddenly raised her rent 25 percent. When Gloria Marin protested, her landlord simply evicted her without cause, potentially leaving her homeless....

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has filed a lawsuit against the NCAA over sanctions the collegiate body handed down to Penn State following the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Corbett’s Penn State lawsuit is an antitrust claim that argues the NCAA’s penalties harm consumers and businesses in Pennsylvania and goes against a competitive marketplace, reports Reuters. However, many legal experts say the governor’s lawsuit is a long shot, if not frivolous....

Conviction of defendant for possession of drugs and a firearm is affirmed as the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies and the evidence obtained by virtue of a search incident to arrest may not be suppressed despite the retroactive applicability of Gant to this case. Read People v. Branner, No. C059288 [HTML] Read People v. Branner, No. C059288 [PDF] Appellate Information Filed December 17, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Robie...