Herb Reed Enterprises (HRE) claimed that Larry Marshak infringed HRE's trademark rights in "The Platters", a name and mark that relate to a singing group whose hey-day spanned the second half of the 1950s.
The band split up in the 1960s. But nostalgia for "The Great Pretender", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", and "Only You"
On Nov. 4, Chief Justice John Roberts attached a "statement" to the Court's long list of orders in which it mainly denied review with respect to dozens and dozens of cases.
The statement related to something the Court hasn't addressed before — a challenge to a class action settlement that featured "cy pres" relief.
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The Ninth Circuit held today that due process allowed a 125,000 to one ratio between punitive and actual damages in a sexual harassment case. Arizona v. ASARCO LLC, No. 11-17484 (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2013).
The panel cut district court's $300,000 award to $125,000 on the ground that due process would not permit the extra $175,000.
Do federal securities laws make your head hurt?
Sometimes they cause Blawgletter's synapses to misfire.
Take today. In Nuveen Municipal High Income Opportunity Fund v. City of Alameda, No. 11-17391 (9th Cir. Sept. 19, 2013), the ruling turned on what our securities-lawyer friends call "loss causation". Which they contrast with "transaction causation".
Stay with
Rupert Murdoch's TV empire in the U.S. has lost its bid to stop you from avoiding the ads that Fox embeds in its shows — your Glees, your The Simpsonses, and your So You Think You Can Dances.
The Ninth Circuit turned back Fox's appeal of an order that denied its motion to enjoin
People who handle cases in all kinds of civil courts, whether state, federal, or both, get an odd feeling when they wander into a special kind of civil court — the U.S. bankruptcy court. The oddness comes partly from the strange ways bankruptcy law handles disputes. Often, the merits of a claim seem to take a
You don't see this sort of thing every day.
The CEO of Bridge Capital, John K. Baldwin, lives and works in the Northern Mariana Islands — "one of the two insular area Commonwealths of the United States of America, the other being Puerto Rico", per Wikipedia, Blawgletter's main source for facts whose accuracy doesn't
Got non-fat dry milk?
You'll just have to trust Blawgletter that the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets minimum prices for milk producers.
Unless you want to read the 10-page SUMMARY of the process in Carlin v. DairyAmerica, Inc., No. 10-16448, slip op. at 8731-41 (9th Cir. Aug. 7, 2012).
Go ahead. We'll wait.
We can all agree that granting people stock options that can't lose — as Apple and lots of other (often high-tech) outfits did Not Long Ago — at least feels wrong. But who knew that accounting for them in the wrong way could expose you to a suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission?
Blawgletter
You didn't ask what Blawgletter thinks about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as its fate dangles in the well of the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom. We'll tell you just the same.
The "individual mandate" part of it (and perhaps the requirement that insurers cover all comers) will vanish in a puff of