(California Court of Appeal) - Held that a spousal support obligation did not terminate upon an ex-spouse's remarriage because the couple had agreed in writing that the relevant provision of the California Family Code would not apply. Recommended that a particular form on which the couple had left a box unchecked, leading to this result, be revised. Reversed a postjudgment order.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that a father was not entitled to an adjustment in the child support arrears that accrued during his incarceration in federal prison. Vacated the decision below and remanded for further proceedings in this family court matter.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a dispute arising from the revocation of plaintiff's religious tax exempt status, RPTL section 420-a (1)(a), judgment of the appellate division reversing revocation is affirmed, because defendant-township failed to prove its burden that the subject property is now subject to taxation where the sole use of the property has been the operation of a summer camp with a religious curriculum.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Held that an African American-owned operator of television networks sufficiently pleaded a claim that a cable television operator refused to enter into a carriage contract based on racial bias, in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1981. Also, the section 1981 claim was not barred by the First Amendment. On interlocutory appeal, affirmed denial of a motion to dismiss.

(United States First Circuit) - Reversed the order to dismiss the plaintiff's copyright and trademark claims stemming from a songwriting contest. Plaintiff entered a songwriting competition and agreed to the terms of the contest rules including an arbitration provision. Plaintiff did not win the contest, but alleges that the song he submitted was used by defendant for a music video. The court held that defendant was not a party to the arbitration agreement and could not invoke its provisions.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Addressed a damages issue in a case where a jury found that a musical instrument retailer infringed another retailer's trademark. Affirmed the denial of the plaintiff's motion amend the judgment.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that a business engaged in nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings was not a "debt collector" under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. A homeowner claimed that the business violated certain statutory requirements in carrying out a foreclosure on behalf of a lender. Rejecting this argument, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Act was inapplicable to this nonjudicial foreclosure proceeding. Justice Breyer delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court, clarifying the statute's definition of debt collector.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that probable cause to make an arrest defeats a claim that the arrest was in retaliation for protected speech. A man arrested at a winter sports festival claimed that the reason was his speech. However, because there was probable cause to arrest him for disorderly conduct, his First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim failed as a matter of law. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion. There were several concurring and dissenting opinions.

(United States Supreme Court) - Clarified the circumstances in which a court may hold a creditor in civil contempt for attempting to collect a debt that a bankruptcy discharge order has immunized from collection. Held that there should be "no fair ground of doubt" that the order barred the creditor's conduct. Justice Breyer delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that the government's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire did not violate the Enumeration Clause or the Census Act. However, the sole stated reason for reinstating the question "seems to have been contrived," and therefore it was appropriate to remand the case back to the agency on that ground. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the Court's opinion, some portions of which were unanimous while others received the support of only four justices in various groupings.

#architektura #architekt #dom #design

(NY Court of Appeals) - No. 26

If this lede doesn't get you, I don't know what will. @davidmcswane's latest:

By now I understood that the story I was telling about Val Kilmer, which I’d thought had been about a man’s relentless faith and optimism, was really about reconciliation: the squaring of two opposing things into something we swear is true despite all evidence to the contrary. Your beauty can sentence you to misery; Val Kilmer uses a tracheostomy tube, but he can talk; his brother is dead but only to our senses. Mark Twain despised Mary Baker Eddy, until you can will him into a dream where he doesn’t. God is good, and there are no ventilators. My beautiful friend has cancer, and the treatment exists, but it’s unavailable to her right now.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that a Fifth Amendment takings claim was not ripe in a case where the plaintiffs alleged that the U.S. government had caused a compensable taking by barring repairs to forest-fire-damaged roads which provided the only means to access their patented mining and homestead claims within the Santa Fe National Forest. In finding that their regulatory taking case was not yet ripe for review, the appeals court noted that plaintiffs had not yet applied for a permit to reconstruct the forest roads.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Held that a teacher working for the U.S. Department of Defense Domestic Dependent Elementary and Secondary Schools failed to file a timely petition for review of a decision removing her from the federal service. The teacher, who argued that her procedural due process rights were violated when she was fired from her job teaching on a military base, petitioned for review of an arbitrator's decision. However, the Federal Circuit concluded that her petition for review was not timely filed and thus dismissed it.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Addressed a damages issue in a case where a jury found that a musical instrument retailer infringed another retailer's trademark. Affirmed the denial of the plaintiff's motion amend the judgment.

(UT Court of Appeals) - No. 20180488-CA

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that an attorney committed misconduct by manifesting gender bias. Reported him to the State Bar. The attorney had filed a notice of appeal that referred to a female judicial officer's ruling as succubustic, a word that refers to a demon assuming female form that has sexual intercourse with men in their sleep.

(United States Second Circuit) - Held that the doctrine of laches barred a woman from seeking to recover a painting by Pablo Picasso hanging in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting once belonged to her ancestors, German Jews who fled the Nazi regime. Affirmed a dismissal based on undue delay in bringing the lawsuit.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Affirmed. Walgreens was not responsible for third parties injured on the road by a customer of the pharmacy who was negligently given someone else's prescription. They did not owe a tort duty of care to third parties.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Reversed. The substitution of the guardians of the children of a deceased man discovered a year after the filing of a wrongful death action by his mother was proper despite the substitution occurring after the statutory limitations period. The substitution relates back to the date of the initial complaint.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed. Plaintiff was injured in a head-on traffic accident that he alleged was partially caused by a dangerous road condition. The jury found that a dangerous condition existed but it was not a reasonably foreseeable risk that this kind of incident would occur. The appeals court agreed and affirmed the judgment in favor of the Defendant.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed. Defendant, a skilled nursing facility, appealed an order denying its petition to compel arbitration for claims of negligent, elder abuse and wrongful death. The trial court found that the claims were not arbitratable because there was no arbitration agreement between Defendant and the decedent.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Affirmed an art museum's title to two oil paintings that the Nazis had stolen from the plaintiff's father-in-law during World War II. The plaintiff sued the museum to recover the two Renaissance masterpieces, but the museum insisted it had good title because the Dutch government validly conveyed the paintings after the war to the person who sold them to the museum. Concluding that the act-of-state doctrine applied here, the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the museum.

(California Court of Appeal) - In an action in which plaintiff alleges that defendants aided and abetted a breach of fiduciary duty, the trial court's judgment for plaintiff and an order denying defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict is 1) affirmed in part, where: (a) a defendant can be liable for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty without owing the plaintiff a fiduciary duty; (b) the statute of limitations for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty is three or four years depending whether the breach is fraudulent or non-fraudulent; (c) the restitutionary remedy of disgorgement is available for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty; and (d) the measure of restitution for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty is the net profit attributable to the wrong; but 2) reversed in part and remanded, where defendants are entitled to a new trial on the amount of defendants' unjust enrichment. (Opinion on Rehearing)

(United States First Circuit) - Summary judgment in favor of defendant in a class action brought by plaintiff-stockholders challenging the fairness of a corporate merger is vacated and remanded, where: 1) the district court erred in granting summary judgment in light of plaintiffs' Affidavit outlining the discovery they needed to respond to the dispositive motion; and 2) plaintiffs should have been afforded the opportunity to conduct additional discovery.

(United States Third Circuit) - In a suit brought by a shareholder of retailer-defendant, seeking to include its proposal in defendant's proxy materials for shareholder consideration, the district court's judgment in favor of plaintiff ordering the inclusion of the proposal into the proxy materials is reversed where the proposal, which goes to the heart of defendant's business, is excludable under the "ordinary business" exclusion of SEC Rule 14a-8(i)(7), 17 C.F.R. section 240.14a-8(i)(7).

(NY Supreme Court) - 2019–09206 Index No. 604223/16

(NY Supreme Court) - 529952

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. Plaintiff sued alleging a hostile work environment and retaliatory firing. The trial court granted summary judgment to the Defendant. The appeals court found that Plaintiff was discharged during a probationary period and that he lacks evidence to take the matter to a jury.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirmed the dismissal of a telecommunication company's lawsuit seeking a refund of California sales and use taxes. Held that the tax exclusion for telephone lines does not extend to pre-installation component parts that may one day be incorporated into completed telephone systems.

(United States Second Circuit) - Affirming the denial of a petition arguing that the petitioner's attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel when they conceded that charges were timely under the applicable statute of limitations before the trial where they were convicted of sexually abusing their daughter, but the court felt that counsel's decision to forego statutes of limitations arguments was not objectively unreasonable.

(United States Fourth Circuit) - Determining that the sentencing court in a criminal case did not plainly err in designating a defendant a career offender did not mean that trial counsel was ineffective by failing to object to that designation because the standards for review of the decisions do not necessarily result in equivalent outcomes, but that in the present case the failure to do so resulted in ineffective assistance and the sentence was vacated and the case remanded for resentencing.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that an attorney committed misconduct by manifesting gender bias. Reported him to the State Bar. The attorney had filed a notice of appeal that referred to a female judicial officer's ruling as succubustic, a word that refers to a demon assuming female form that has sexual intercourse with men in their sleep.

(California Court of Appeal) - Affirming the trial court's dismissal for failure to state a claim in the case of a musician whose video was taken down from YouTube, which posted a statement that the video had violated their terms of service, because using violence and profanity as examples of things that could result in the removal of a video did not amount to libel.

(United States Second Circuit) - Held that the U.S. government was justified in refusing to release certain photographs of detainees taken by U.S. Army personnel at military detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. The American Civil Liberties Union and several other organizations demanded that the photographs be released under the Freedom of Information Act. The government countered that the photographs were shielded from disclosure by a 2009 law, the Protected National Security Documents Act. Agreeing with the government, the Second Circuit reversed the district court's order granting summary judgment for the plaintiffs and remanded with directions to enter judgment for the government.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - Held that an African American-owned operator of television networks sufficiently pleaded a claim that a cable television operator refused to enter into a carriage contract based on racial bias, in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1981. Also, the section 1981 claim was not barred by the First Amendment. On interlocutory appeal, affirmed denial of a motion to dismiss.

(United States DC Circuit) - In a Freedom of Information Act case, held that the presidential communications privilege barred disclosure of five memoranda memorializing advice to President Obama about a military strike on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. Affirmed a summary judgment ruling.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an amended opinion, held that an African American-owned operator of television networks sufficiently pleaded that a cable television operator unlawfully refused to enter into a carriage contract based on racial bias, in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1981. Affirmed denial of a motion to dismiss, on interlocutory appeal.

(California Court of Appeal) - In the third chapter of Silicon Valley litigation spanning more than 14 years involving a microchip company and its successor, alleging breach of fiduciary duty, the judgment entered on plaintiff's cross-complaint against defendant is reversed where the court erred in submitting defendant's statute of limitations defense to the jury, as the cross-complaint was timely filed.