Litigation

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The New York judiciary has taken what can be seen as an extraordinarily activist position in an attempt to urge the legislature to change its position on the grounds for divorce in New York, the only state that still requires grounds for divorce. A trial judge has decided to withhold his ruling in a divorce case in the hope that the state legislature will soon pass a bill adding irreconcilable differences as no-fault grounds for divorce in New York state.

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As the May edition of <i>LJN's Product Liability Law &amp; Strategy</i> went to press, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sought to 'unravel some of the mysteries of CAFA's cryptic text' with respect to the 'mass actions' provisions &mdash; which the court characterized as an 'opaque, baroque maze of interlocking cross-references that defy easy interpretation.' <i>Lowery v. Alabama Power Co.</i>, __ F. 3d __, 2007 WL 1062769, at *1, *8 (11th Cir. Apr. 11, 2007), affirming <i>Lowery v. Honeywell Int'l Inc.</i>, 460 F. Supp. 2d 1288 (N.D. Ala. 2006). In affirming the grant of remand, the Court of Appeals (in dicta) addressed some of the issues presented in our article 'CAFA: Finding a Method to the Madness of 'Mass Actions'':

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On Feb. 20, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in <i>Philip Morris USA v. Williams</i>, ____ U.S. ____, 127 S. Ct. 1057 (2007), the latest in a series of decisions since 1991 exploring the limits that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment imposes on state jury awards of punitive damages. An Oregon jury had awarded the widow of a Marlboro smoker $821,000 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million in punitive damages on a deceit claim against Philip Morris. After a series of appeals, the Supreme Court of Oregon had upheld the punitive damages award. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case to address two specific questions: 1) whether a state-court jury in a punitive damages award may punish the defendant for harm caused to parties not before the court; and 2) whether the $79.5 million punitive damages award was 'grossly excessive' because it was not reasonably related to the actual or potential harm caused by the defendant to the plaintiff. In a 5-4 decision, the Court answered the first question 'no' and declined to address the second question until the Oregon state courts had considered the case further.

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This article identifies select law firm issues that can significantly impact cost and speed throughout the entire case lifecycle, and offers viable solutions to dealing with them.

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Ninth Circuit Hands Google A Copyright Victory in Dispute Over Nude Pictures

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One of the biggest stories in product liability in the past month has been the recall of tens of thousands of cans of food sold to consumers to feed to their companion animals. The news has attracted public attention because it is a tragedy of potentially epic proportion: Somewhere between 20 (according to the FDA) and 20,000-plus (by extrapolating statisticians) of the nation's nonhuman family members have developed serious illnesses and/or died from eating food containing something very toxic that has caused renal failure (still being debated). Furthermore, in the litigation arena, plaintiffs' attorneys ranging from sole practitioners to the large class action law firms most often in the headlines have all filed actions representing both individual clients and broad-ranging classes of thousands of individuals affected by the poisoned food. (At the time of this writing, more than 30 cases had supposedly been filed across the country.)

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Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

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Court Issues Spoliation Sanctions for 'Crashed' Hard Drive<br>Court Issues Adverse Jury Instruction Where Plaintiff Disposed of Evidence