The Fourth Circuit today affirmed a judgment awarding $100,000 in punitive damages despite a compensatory award of only $8,000. The court held that the 12.5:1 ratio didn’t offend due process concerns. Equal Emp. Opp. Comm’n v. Federal Express Corp., No. 06-1724 (4th Cir. Jan. 24, 2008).
A different panel of the court reversed a
A resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute led an opinion piece in The New York Sun — Enron: Extortion, Interrupted — with this about the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in Regents of Univ. of Calif. v. Merrill Lynch, 06-1341 (U.S. Jan. 22, 2008):
Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal
Enron investors lose another round. Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied a request for review of a class-killing decision by the Fifth Circuit in a case involving securities fraud claims by Enron investors against investment banks whose support enabled Enron to inflate its stock price. See Regents of the Univ. of Calif. v. Credit Suisse
The Ninth Circuit today upheld a Washington district court’s refusal to enforce a ban on joining multiple claimants in a single class-wide arbitration. The court followed a Washington Supreme Court decision, which struck down a similar ban on class arbitrations, and its own earlier ruling, in which it held that the federal Arbitration Act doesn’t
The Supreme Court’s Order List of today includes this surprise:
06-1341 REGENTS OF THE UNIV. OF CA V. MERRILL LYNCH, ET AL.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. Justice Kennedy took no part in the consideration of decision of this petition.
Blawgletter predicted the Court would vacate the decision and remand
Stephen Colbert’s image shares a wall with entrances to the ladies’ and mens’ restrooms in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.
I don’t mean to brag, but as it contains three portraits, my portrait has more portraits than any other portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
All employees must wash hands before returning to
At the end of his march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, Dr. King spoke on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.
I know some of you are asking today, "How long will it take?"
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not
Talk about an excellent post — The UCL Practitioner outdid itself today with its play-by-play of the oral argument yesterday in County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court (ARCO), No. H031540 (Cal. Ct. App.). UCL’s alter ego, the estimable Kimberly A. Kralowec, observed the hearing in the flesh and sums up thus:
As
Yesterday Blawgletter posted Tort Reform and the Right to Jury Trial, in which we took a commenter on the WSJ Law Blog to task for calling a jury in a securities fraud trial "too stupid to do the right thing" and for citing their $280 million verdict as "[e]xhibit one in our effort to
Blawgletter said last June that the decision in Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights Ltd., 127 S. Ct. 2499 (2007):
turns on what Congress meant 12 years ago by "strong inference" of scienter in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. The Court holds that the complaint as a whole must give "cogent" reasons