(California Court of Appeal) - In a writ proceeding to determine whether attorney work conduct privilege attaches to documents created by an attorney employee during their employment with an employer law firm, the lower court's judgment is vacated where the privilege attaches to the firm, rather than the employee.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirming the district court's denial of a California inmate's habeas corpus petition alleging the denial of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel because his trial attorney held deeply racist beliefs about African Americans in general and him in particular because he conceded he was unaware of his attorney's racism until years after the conviction was final and couldn't identify any acts or admissions by his attorney that fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that an attorney was not entitled to a new trial after a jury found him liable to a client for intentional torts. The attorney argued that the client failed to prove causation. Disagreeing, the Fourth Appellate District concluded that claims of fraudulent concealment and intentional breach of fiduciary duty brought against an attorney are subject to the substantial-factor causation standard, not the trial-within-a-trial or but-for standard employed in cases of legal malpractice based on negligence. The panel also held that the testimony of the client alone sufficed here to support her emotional distress damages.

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversing a trial court judgment granting writ of mandate and the award of attorney's fees in the case of a real estate salesperson who sued a state agency for publicizing her three misdemeanor convictions because they had no mandatory duty to remove from their website information about a licensee's convictions even if they were eventually dismissed.

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirmed that magazine publishers did not violate antitrust laws by trying to drive a wholesaler out of business. The wholesaler delivered magazines to retail stores and it alleged that when it tried to impose a surcharge on the publishers in 2009, they conspired to boycott and drive the wholesaler out of business. On appeal, the Second Circuit found that the wholesaler had presented insufficient evidence of a boycott scheme to survive summary judgment. The panel also affirmed summary judgment against the publishers' counterclaims.

(United States First Circuit) - Affirmed the dismissal of a defamation suit brought by a hedge fund manager who claimed Bloomberg News falsely reported that he was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The plaintiff brought suit against Bloomberg, as well as the reporter and editor of the story, alleging that they had defamed him and committed other common-law torts. Agreeing with the district court, the First Circuit held that the plaintiff was required to plausibly allege actual malice because he was at least a limited-purpose public figure and that he had failed to allege such facts.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that a newspaper's anti-SLAPP motion should have been granted to block a libel suit. The plaintiffs failed to make a prima-facie showing that statements regarding them in a series of articles about campaign contributions were false. Reversed in relevant part.

(United States Second Circuit) - Held that a media company was not a "consumer reporting agency" subject to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. A job applicant alleged that the company's subscription‐based online research platform erroneously showed that he had been previously convicted of theft. Affirmed summary judgment in favor of the media company.

(California Court of Appeal) - In a labor and employment action, arising after plaintiff was allegedly terminated by his employer, PG&E, for retaliating against a safety inspector who raised issues about his project, the trial court's grant of summary judgment to defendant is affirmed where regardless of whether plaintiff was an at-will employee, PG&E established good cause for terminating him.

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversing the judgment and remanding the case of a woman whose home had a distressing electric charge, particularly in the shower, as the result of a power plant next door because the trial court erred in admitting irrelevant evidence relating to stray voltage incidents involving prior owners and tenants and that the admission of that evidence was prejudicial.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed the denial of an importer's challenge to an import duty levied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The company argued that the correct duty rate on its imported light-emitting diode (LED) candles was 2 percent rather than 3.9 percent. On appeal from the U.S. Court of International Trade, the Federal Circuit agreed with the government that the LED candles fell within a classification that was subject to a 3.9 percent import duty. The panel thus affirmed summary judgment for the government.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed. Plaintiff sued defendant for infringement of several patents related to systems and methods for indexing information stored in wide access databases. The district court agreed with the defendant and held all asserted claims invalid as ineligible under 35 U.S.C. section 101.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Vacated and remanded a decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Appeals Board (PTO Board) that certain claims relating to a wireless communications system are not patentable. In vacating and remanding, the Federal Circuit reasoned that the PTO Board did not consider portions of plaintiff’s reply.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Held that a company did not violate a nondisclosure agreement by including particular information in a patent application for a 3D printing process. Affirmed summary judgment against a breach-of-contract claim brought by the other party to the nondisclosure agreement, a distributor of specialty polymers.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest is affirmed where the trial court did not abuse its discretion in relieving defendant’s attorney and appointing new counsel. Attorney’s employer, New York County Defender Services, represented the key government witness in a separate case arising from the same occurrence and refused to permit defendant’s attorney to search for and potentially call him as a witness.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for sexual conduct against a child in the first degree is affirmed where the trial court did not commit reversible error in admitting rebuttal testimony intended prove defendant’s sole witness was biased and motivated to fabricate evidence. The Court clarified that the Appellate Division may rely on the record to discern an unarticulated predicate for the trial court’s evidentiary rulings.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Sentence for robbery in the first degree based on a prior conviction for assault in the first degree is vacated and remanded for resentencing. The Court held that the revocation of probation under Penal Code section 60.01 is not the analogue of an annulment of a sentence and concluded that the original sentencing date controls for the purpose of determining the eligible look-back period in Penal Law section 70.04 for prior conviction sentencing.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for robbery in the second degree is reversed where the admission of a non-testifying codefendant's out-of-court statements to establish an element of the crime violated defendant's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation under Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968).

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for multiple counts of robbery and larceny is affirmed where the People's use of defendant's non-privileged telephone conversations, made while in custody at Rikers Island, did not violate defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the dissemination of recordings of conversations at the District Attorney's request does not violate state law.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for second-degree murder and fist degree assault is affirmed where the trial court did not err in refusing to remove three spectators, silently wearing t-shirts bearing a photograph of one of the victims, from the courtroom during summation at defense counsel's request.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for second-degree burglary and robbery is affirmed where the trial court did not err in admitting into evidence subscriber information in prepaid cell phone records as nonhearsay evidence within a business record, because the information was not introduced for the truth of the matters asserted.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a negligence action, the Appellate Division's grant of defendant's motion for summary judgment is reversed where there is a material question as to whether the escape of defendant's calf onto the road was a proximate cause of decedent's death in car accident while she was trying to assist.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Vacated and remanded. Convictions for using or carrying a firearm to commit a federal crime of violence were remanded for resentencing after previous 7th Circuit opinions and the Supreme Court's decision in US v. Davis found the term "crime of violence" to be unconstitutionally vague.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Reversed and remanded for dismissal. State child protective services agency employees were entitled to qualified immunity in a suit alleging constitutional violation in the removal of three children from their mother's custody under a temporary removal order.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. An unconstitutional conviction did not occur when an attorney confirmed he no longer disputed restitution while in chambers but repeated this withdrawal in open court.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. Injunctions against the state preventing it from implementing a plan to purge voter rolls based on third party information rather than directly contacting voters was affirmed because plaintiff organizations established standing and the decision was not an abuse of discretion.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. The grant of a defense motion for summary judgement in an Eighth Amendment claim brought by a prisoner against prison nurses he says were deliberately indifferent to his needs as a sickle cell disease sufferer was proper because he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies against one nurse and the record wouldn't support a jury finding on his claim against the other.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. The district court properly dismissed complaint by Cook County residents raising Second Amendment claims challenging a ban on assault rifles because the issue had already been addressed by the court.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. The district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of two individual defendants in a Fourteenth Amendment case arising from the self-mutilation of a man held at a medical health complex was upheld. There was insufficient evidence of their culpability.

(United States Fourth Circuit) - In an action challenging defendant Towson University's refusal to allow plaintiff to return to playing football after he suffered a near-death heat-stroke induced coma requiring a liver transplant and additional surgeries, the district court's judgment for plaintiff under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act is reversed where plaintiff was not otherwise qualified to participate in defendant's football program under defendant's reasonably applied Return-to-Play Policy.

(California Court of Appeal) - In a suit brought following the break up of plaintiff's relationship with a former boxing champion, alleging invasion of privacy (both public disclosure of private facts and false light portrayal), defamation and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, based on defendant's social media postings about the termination of plaintiff's pregnancy and its relationship to the couple's separation and his comments during a radio interview concerning the extent to which plaintiff had undergone cosmetic surgery procedures, the trial court's denial of defendant's special motion to strike those causes of action pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16 is reversed as to with respect to plaintiff's claims for defamation and false light portrayal, as well as her cause of action for public disclosure of private facts based on defendant's comments about plaintiff's cosmetic surgery. In all other respects, the judgment is affirmed.

(United States Second Circuit) - In a suit against a principal-defendant of a private high school brought by a student's parent-plainitff, alleging that plaintiff's First Amendment right of freedom of assembly and his state-law right to be free from the intentional infliction of emotional distress were violated by defendant in banning him from attending virtually all school events, on or off school property, because of his opposition to defendant's bullying and harassing efforts to compel plaintiff's daughter to remain a member of the girls varsity basketball team, the district court's judgment is: 1) affirmed in part as to the denial of defendant's motion for qualified immunity, to the extent that he barred plaintiff from entering school property to attend spectator sports contests to which the public was invited, and caused plaintiff's removal from a non-school, privately owned stadium at which Johnson was present as an invitee of the owner; and 2) reversed in part where qualified immunity should have been granted to defendant the extent that he barred plaintiff from entering school property for purposes other than attending sports contests, given the lack of an established First Amendment right of general access to school property.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirming the trial court's dismissal of a second amended complaint in a lawsuit alleging defamation and deceit related to parents' complaints about a baseball team coach because the grievance, filed pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement, failed to satisfy the claim filing requirements of the Government Claims Act.

(Supreme Court of California) - In an opinion that clarifies the scope of the anti-SLAPP statute, the California Supreme Court held that only certain causes of action here arose from protected speech. In the underlying dispute, a developer had sued the City of Carson and another developer in connection with negotiations about the possibility of building a National Football League stadium in the city.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that the Social Security Act's 25 percent cap on attorney fees applies only to fees for court representation. The lower court erroneously applied the cap to the aggregate fees awarded for representation before both the agency and the court. Justice Thomas wrote the unanimous opinion, which resolved a circuit split regarding the fees that attorneys may charge Social Security claimants for representation. The decision relied on the plain meaning of the statute.

(California Court of Appeal) - Reversed. Defendant, housing authority, terminated Plaintiff’s federally funded subsidized housing program. The trial court ordered Defendant to vacate its order. The appeals court found that there was nothing in the Defendant’s hearing of termination that indicated an abuse of discretion and reversed the trial court’s ruling.

(MD Court of Appeals) - No. 19, Sept. Term, 2019

Quick an easy loans... um... scams.

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment to the defense in a copyright case where the assignee of certain photographs tried to sue the owner for infringement for exceeding its licensed use of certain photographs taken by photographers who had a non-exclusive licensing agreement with them because the Copyright Act doesn't permit prosecution of infringement suits by assignees that have never been the legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right to the intellectual property.

(United States First Circuit) - Reversing an order granting a motion for attorney fees under the Copyright Act in a case involving a songwriting contest Sony co-sponsored that had been dismissed with prejudice because it was subject to a mandatory arbitration agreement signed when the plaintiff entered the contest because the removal to arbitration did not quality the defendants as having been the prevailing party.

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirming the dismissal of a state law accounting claim and otherwise vacating and remanding the case of a musical group called Sly Slick & Wicked who challenged the collection of royalties during the renewal period of the copyright of their song, entitled Sho' Nuff, which had been sampled by Justin Timberlake and J. Cole because their repudiation of the original terms of the copyright many years earlier did not also constitute a repudiation of the renewal terms, resulting in a time-bar to their claims.

(United States Second Circuit) - Held that a copyright ownership claim was timely filed. The statute of limitations was not triggered by the defendants' act of registering their competing claim of ownership in the Copyright Office. Denied a petition for rehearing, in a dispute over ownership of renewal term copyrights in certain musical compositions and sound records.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed that a business owner contributorily infringed copyrighted photographs by displaying them on his website. However, remanded for further proceedings on whether the infringement was willful.

(United States Supreme Court) - In a putative employment class action brought by meat processors, alleging that the donning and doffing of safety gear were integral and indispensable to their hazardous work and that employer's policy not to pay for those activities denied them overtime compensation required by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) and violated Iowa wage law, the Eight Circuit's affirmation of the District Court's judgment in worker's favor is affirmed where District Court did not err in certifying and maintaining the class because common questions, such as whether donning and doffing protective gear was compensable under the FLSA, were susceptible to classwide resolution even if not all of the workers wore the same gear.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In a class action brought by three former baristas at Starbucks, challenging defendant's practice of withholding state and federal taxes from baristas' paychecks based on cash tips received, the district court's dismissal with prejudice is reversed and the case remanded to state court where: 1) the Tax Injunction Act and the Anti-Injunction Act deprives the district court of subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiffs' claims for declaratory and injunctive relief; and 2) the federal-state comity doctrine bars the district court from awarding statutory damages on the state-tax component of the plaintiffs' claims.

(United States Third Circuit) - Affirming a summary judgment to the defendant Tyson Foods in a dispute involving their use of the word 'Parks' in reference to hotdogs where the plaintiff once held trademark on this word's use to sell hotdogs until it failed to renew the trademark in the early 2000's.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. Injunctions against the state preventing it from implementing a plan to purge voter rolls based on third party information rather than directly contacting voters was affirmed because plaintiff organizations established standing and the decision was not an abuse of discretion.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Vacated and remanded. An Americans with Disabilities Act claim should not have been dismissed at the summary judgment phase because there were issues of material fact.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. The grant of a defense motion for summary judgement in an Eighth Amendment claim brought by a prisoner against prison nurses he says were deliberately indifferent to his needs as a sickle cell disease sufferer was proper because he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies against one nurse and the record wouldn't support a jury finding on his claim against the other.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. The district court properly dismissed complaint by Cook County residents raising Second Amendment claims challenging a ban on assault rifles because the issue had already been addressed by the court.