U.S. Supreme Court, Civil Litigation, Appellate Practice
The First Monday
By Blaine H. Evanson, Taylor W. King
Justice Ginsburg’s prediction of a “momentous” term may prove to be quite an understatement.
Civil Litigation, Law Practice, Judges and Judiciary, Appellate Practice
‘Realist’ or ‘formalist’: Part 1
By Myron Moskovitz
I’ve long been a fan of Richard Posner, judge (and former chief judge) of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. He...
U.S. Supreme Court, Labor/Employment, Government, Constitutional Law
Time to overrule Abood
By Deborah J. La Fetra
The U.S. Supreme Court described laws that empower unions to coerce funds from non-union members as an “extraordinary state en...
U.S. Supreme Court, Securities, Civil Litigation, Appellate Practice
State court jurisdiction over class actions
By Anna Erickson White, Robert L. Cortez Webb
On the last day of the October 2016 term, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Cyan v. Beaver County Employees Retirem...
Law Practice, Judges and Judiciary
Judging is hard (even for the temporary kind)
By Thomas M. Hall
By putting files into court computers, vast amounts of paper files can be eliminated. But the system in L.A. County is new. Te...
Labor/Employment, Government, Corporate, Administrative/Regulatory
With 2,000 bills, some will affect employers
By Pooja S. Nair
Tax, Labor/Employment
Taxes on severance pay can be unpleasant surprise
By Robert W. Wood
Employers, employees and former employees can all experience unpleasant surprises when it comes to severance. Not everyone has...
U.S. Supreme Court, International Law, Corporate
Alien Tort Statute should preclude corporate liability
By Josh McDaniel
On Oct. 11, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in a case which asks whether corporations, as opposed to natural persons...
There is a cost to be paid for the myriad benefits society derives from the use of algorithms. An occasional “date from hell,”...
U.S. Supreme Court, Criminal, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights
Fairness dictates a chance to appeal after plea
By Jeffrey L. Bornstein, Christopher D. Hu
Class v. United States, one of two criminal cases set to be argued in the first week of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term begi...
U.S. Supreme Court, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights
Another take on Cake at the US high court
By Julie A. Werner-Simon
So here’s where we are in Masterpiece Cakeshop: The lineup of eight of the justices is pretty clear, 4-to-4.
Civil Litigation, Law Practice, Appellate Practice
Some rulings show the lighter side of the law
By Gary A. Watt
Much of our lives as litigators is lived in a stressful place somewhere between dread and desire regarding client vindication....
Civil Litigation, Law Practice, California Supreme Court
Testing extension statutes in the age of PACER
By Charles A. Bird
Are they needed after the advent of PACER and electronic service? Many would argue they are not. But if they are obsolete, the...
Health Care & Hospital Law, Corporate, Constitutional Law, Administrative/Regulatory, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Sugar-sweetened drinks & the First Amendment
By Amy P. Lally
From coast to coast, cities have responded to products raising public health concerns with laws that are intended to compel co...
Tax, Government, Corporate
A closer look at the new Republican tax framework
By Phil Jelsma
Who will benefit from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ recently proposed overhaul of the tax code? That...
Government, California Supreme Court, Administrative/Regulatory
Next steps for agencies after public-private email decision
By Derek P. Cole, Dennis M. Cota
A city manager’s personal cellphone buzzes in the early morning hours with notice of a string of urgent texts advising about t...
The Fair Punishment Project, a group affiliated with HLS, supposedly reviewed over 150 court decisions from 2010 to 2015 invol...
Law Practice, California Supreme Court, State Bar & Bar Associations, Antitrust & Trade Reg.
State Bar on antitrust: Close but no cigar
By Robert C. Fellmeth
The California Supreme Court just issued an extraordinary en banc “Administrative Order” imposing a new “State Bar Antitrust P...
U.S. Supreme Court, Securities, Corporate
Justices should recognize that silence IS golden
By Jordan Eth, Amani S. Floyd
For more than two decades, the Supreme Court has been emphasizing that the implied private right of action under Section 10(b)...
Securities, Government, Corporate, Administrative/Regulatory
SEC announces creation of new ‘Cyber Unit’
By Nicolas Morgan, Robert Silvers
Chairman Jay Clayton of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reaffirmed that “[c]ybersecurity is an area that is vi...
Law Practice, Immigration
Rapid response from solo immigration attorneys
By Hamid Yazdan Panah
The Northern California Rapid Response Network is one of a number of collaboratives in California, focused on bringing togeth...
Tax, Securities, Corporate
Tax exclusions and gains from sale of emerging company stock
By David Strong
The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015, aka the PATH Act, amended Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code to pe...
U.S. Supreme Court, Criminal, Constitutional Law
Guilty pleas and defendant rights
By David W. Fermino, Lyn R. Agre
The Supreme Court should take the opportunity in Class v. United States to resolve the question of what rights remain to chall...
U.S. Supreme Court, Civil Litigation, Constitutional Law
When is it not a constitutional taking case?
By Michael M. Berger
This month’s column will take a little detour and will analyze some misbegotten cases that lawyers sought to frame as takings ...
U.S. Supreme Court, Labor/Employment, Corporate
NLRB shouldn’t invalidate facially neutral work rules
By Mark S. Ross
The Supreme Court should abandon the “reasonably construe” test and find that the NLRA does not reach facially neutral work ru...
U.S. Supreme Court, Labor/Employment, Corporate
Justices should clarify joint employment rules
By Thomas O'Connell, Tristan R. Kirk
To say that there is lack of uniformity across the various circuit courts would be a vast understatement, as nearly every circ...
U.S. Supreme Court, Intellectual Property, Corporate, Constitutional Law
Inter partes reviews and property rights
By Kenneth M. Goldman
The Supreme Court will likely have to affirmatively decide this key public vs. private rights issue in Oil States v. Greene's ...
When high-tech cryptocurrencies meet low-tech scammers
By Justin Wales
Because the blockchain — the public ledger that keeps track of the history of each coin — is decentralized and requires so muc...
Law Practice
The collision of VR, big data and the law
By Shannon Yavorsky, Kimberly Culp
Right now, as far as I know, robots are not taxed. However, that could change, and California seems likely to be the state wit...