Roger Chadderdon's firm, Cataphora, won a breach-of-contract case against a bunch of lawyers who had hired the firm to provide "litigation support".
The lawyers served on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in a massive case that the Judicial Panel on Multi-district Litigation sited in New Orleans. See In re Chinese-Manufactured Drywall Products Liabiity Litig.
Way back when, a long time ago, Company X granted Company Y a broad license to some of Company's X's patents. Let's call them the "Original Patents".
Company X later assigns the Original Patents to Company Z. But Company Z thinks the Original Patents didn't go far enough in making claims to the subject matter of the
Since 1982, California law has required contingent fee agreements between a lawyer and a "plaintiff" to meet certain tests.
Ten years after the law took effect, a California court of appeals held that the law doesn't apply "outside the litigation context." Franklin v. Appell, 8 Cal. App. 4th 875, 892 (Cal. App. 1992) (involving
California law favors class actions. So much so that Golden State courts have struck down class-action bans that show up in consumer contracts whether they apply to lawsuits, Discover Bank v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, 113 P.2d 1100 (Cal. 2005), or arbitration cases, America Online v. Superior Court, 108 Cal. Rptr. 2d 699
The wacky world of litigating arbitration issues keeps getting wackier.
Witness today's Ninth Circuit ruling that, no, by golly, a party needn't include in its complaint an explanation of why it doesn't have to arbitrate.
The defendant, Fastbucks, which franchises "payday loan" stores in California and elsewhere, including its home state, Texas, urged that Golden
Well, they did it.
After months of high tension — 26 of them, in fact – the Supreme Court of California at last ruled this week on whether cities, counties, villages, water districts, wide spots in the road, and other public entities may hire private lawyers to represent them in public nuisance cases on a contingent
The Supreme Court of California ruled last week that the Golden State's antitrust statute, the Cartwright Act, allows an award of overcharge damages to people who don't buy directly from a price-fixer. Clayworth v. Pfizer, Inc., No. S166435 (Cal. July 12, 2010).
The case involved pharmacies that alleged price-fixing by drug manufacturers. The
Back in April, Blawgletter read the Court's decision in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l Corp., No. 08-1198 (U.S. Apr. 27, 2010), to mean that arbitrators "will have no choice but to deny almost all class certification requests."
The Stolt-Nielsen majority held, 5-3, that an arbitration panel exceeds its authority under the federal Arbitration Act
Does a contingent fee give lawyers too much control over public nuisance cases?
Or can public entities control the lawyers enough to prevent abuse of the governmental power they wield?
The Supreme Court of California heard argument on those questions this week (finally). Kimberley Kralowec at The UCL Practitioner gives us a blow-by-blow.
The Rhode