Whole Foods’s quest to eat Wild Oats got another jolt yesterday. The D.C. Circuit stayed consummation of the merger until it gets more briefing on the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to block it on antitrust grounds. Washington Post story here.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman denied the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction on
People come up to Blawgletter on the street all the time and ask: "How do you find out about federal court of appeals decisions so fast? What secret do you have?"
Simple. We’ve found the shortcuts to the courts’ opinion pages.
You can get them, too. Below find links to the 10 best court of
In a major decision today, the en banc Federal Circuit saved Seagate’s patent litigation counsel from having to produce confidential communications with the company and turn over attorney work product. On its way, the court clarified the patent law standard for a finding of "willful infringement" — a finding that may trigger a doubling of
Alert Blawgletter readers will recall that, back in February, we wrote about a Ninth Circuit case involving a tax shelter scheme with an alluring moniker — "Bond-Linked Income Premium Structure" or BLIPS. The court reinstated claims by a KPMG client for taking his $1 million to shelter $18 million in a sham, or sham-ish
Pliny the Elder called Great Britain by its most ancient name, Albion. So did Lord Byron, Rudyard Kipling, Salman Rushdie, and Led Zeppelin, among others.
People who regarded Britain as dishonest and hypocritical added "perfidious", as in perfidious Albion.
Adam Cohen at the NYT today doesn’t use perfidy in proposing impeachment of the current
Folk hero Doroteo Arango Arambula a/k/a Francisco "Pancho" Villa (1878-1923).
On July 23, 1923, as life seeped from the holes that an assassin’s bullets made, Villa said:
It can’t end like this. Tell them I said something.
Barry Barnett
The Ninth Circuit today held a ban on class arbitrations in a wireless telephone service agreement unconscionable under California law. It also concluded that the federal Arbitration Act doesn’t preempt state unconscionability law. And it struck the entire arbitration clause in its non-severable pristineness. Shroyer v. New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., No. 06-55964 (9th
Blawgletter told y’all yesterday that the U.S. government filed an amicus brief favoring the Wall Street defendants in a big-time securities case pending in the Supreme Court — Stoneridge Inv. Partners LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., No. 06-43 (U.S.). Now we’ve had a look at the brief itself and find that it doesn’t go whole-hog
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964). Note the pipe.
We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.
Barry Barnett
An Alpine teleport. Notice the real estate?
Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit overruled a defense summary judgment on a fraud claim. The court held that, under Texas law, the statute of frauds doesn’t bar a claim for fraud if the plaintiff seeks only out-of-pocket (reliance) damages. But the court affirmed summary judgment on the breach of
