Civil Procedure

For purposes of comparison with the amount of the judgment, pre-offer fees and costs are added to the amount of a rejected 998 settlement offer that is silent as to fees and costs since upon acceptance the offeree would have been entitled to an award of pre-offer fees and costs in addition to the amount of the settlement. Read More

For res judicata purposes, a person seeking mandate review of a city’s approval of a Walmart store expansion is in privity with an earlier petitioner for similar relief as both sought to represent the public interest. Read More

California statute extending state wage laws governing public works to cover delivery drivers of ready-mix concrete is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act and does not violate concrete companies’ equal protection rights. Read More

Defendant-employer was not vicariously liable for an after-work car accident which the defendant’s employee caused while on the phone with another employee, as the call related to personal matters, not work. Read More

Defendant wrongly removed the case under federal officer removal provision, since defendant was not acting as a government contractor in selling weapons with the plaintiff, even if the defendant acted as a government contractor in selling the same weapons to the US military. Read More

By committing an intentional tort in the state, a person purposely directs his actions toward the state, subjecting himself to personal jurisdiction there, unless the state’s exercise of jurisdiction over him does not comport with fair play and substantial justice under the seven-factor Paccar test. Read More

In determining whether the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA) preempts a state court class action alleging fraud in connection with securities transactions, a district court should not dismiss the action without first allowing the plaintiff leave to amend—as it might do so to eliminate class claims and by that or other means avoid SLUSA preemption. Read More

Plaintiff's False Claims Act complaint alleged that all the defendant health insurers submitted false claims using false diagnoses of patients' medical condition from the same vendor, and no further differentiation among the health insurers was needed to satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) since they all acted the same way. Read More

A defendant does not waive an objection to personal jurisdiction by defending on the merits after having litigated the objection to an adverse ruling in the district court. Read More

When a question of foreign law arises, the burden is on the party relying on foreign law to raise the specific legal issues governed by foreign law and to provide the district court with the information needed to determine the meaning of the foreign law; if this burden is not met, the district court may rely on other law, usually… Read More

An appeal of a federal district court’s remand order does not stay proceedings in the state court and so does not toll the 5-year deadline for commencing trial. Read More

Andrew Noble offers further thoughts on this important case. Read More

Class action settlement and judgment in a case brought under the California Labor Code had res judicata effect on a subsequent class action involving same employees and same employer based on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Read More

A forum selection clause that applies to claims that "arising out of" a contract are limited to those relating to the interpretation and performance of the contract itself, whereas a clause that applies to claims "relating to" the contract encompasses disputes that reference the agreement or have some “logical or causal connection” to the agreement; here, the clause in the… Read More

A defendant, against whom a district attorney had filed an unfair competition action, was not entitled to a transfer of the case to a “neutral” county—i.e., a county other than the DA’s county. Read More

The trial court erred in failing to award the plaintiff the value of home health care and other household services provided to plaintiff’s decedent before his death by several of his children, as well as the value of nursing services that the decedent would have rendered to his wife had he not been injured by the defendant. Read More

The act of state doctrine defeated this attempted antitrust suit against a salt production company that was 51% owned by the Mexican government.  Read More

To be subject to the doctrine of incorporation by reference and reviewable at the pleading stage, a document must be mentioned "extensively," not just once, in the complaint and must be a significant basis of the claims the complaint alleges; by the same token, the district court must be careful about the facts that it takes from documents that are… Read More

A cautionary tale for all those who draft and review settlement agreements: plaintiff’s attorney who breached confidentiality clause in settlement agreement could not be liable for breach of contract, since he signed off on the agreement only by indicating his “approval as to form and content” and therefore could not be considered a signatory or party to the contract. Read More

An agreement settling a fee dispute between a client and a law firm is enforced despite the client’s argument that the agreement lacked consideration. Read More