Courts have been known to point to Rule 34 of the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association as an agreed source for the issuance of injunctive relief. See, e.g., Delta T Corp. v. Sun-North Sys., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83655 (E.D. Ky. Nov. 15, 2006). Reading the Rule, this is understandable. Reading it, you would think that the arb ...

Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) provides: Renewing the Motion After Trial; Alternative Motion for a New Trial. If the court does not grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law made under Rule 50(a), the court is considered to have submitted the action to the jury subject to the court’s later deciding the legal questions raised by the motion. ...

From Harvey v. Grey Wolf Drilling Co., 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 19564 (5th Cir. Sept. 15, 2008): This appeal presents an issue of first impression in this circuit: whether, for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, a limited liability company ("LLC") is a citizen of the state where it is organized or is a citizen of the states of which ...

The Melvin Dummar/Howard Hughes relationship not only lives on in film. In Dummar v. Lummis, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 19513 (10th Cir. Sept. 12, 2008), Mr. Dummar maintained that almost 30 years after an unsuccessful suit for a portion of the Hughes estate based on a holographic will, he obtained information regarding misconduct related to the trial he lost in t ...

Experts and Summary Judgment. The Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the plaintiff in Major League Baseball Props., Inc. v. Salvino, Inc., 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 19349 (2d Cir. Sept. 12, 2008), in substantial part because the defendant’s economic expert did not conduct adequate empirical analysis to support opinions he offered in opposition ...

From Paralyzed Veterans of Am. v. McPherson, 2008 Sept. Dist. Sept 69542 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 8, 2008): The plaintiffs request the Court take judicial notice, pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 201(b)(2), of two documents that appeared on the [California] Secretary of State's Internet website. The first is a December 6, 2007 letter approvi ...

From Chien v. Skystar Bio Pharm. Co., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69084 (D.Conn. Sept. 11, 2008): [A] Notice of Appeal does not divest the district court of jurisdiction in all cases. If a litigant files a "plainly unauthorized notice of appeal which confers on [the Court of Appeals] the power to do nothing but dismiss the appeal," the dist ...

One of the plaintiffs in Pafumi v. Davidson, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67036 (S.D. Fla. Sept. 3, 2008), and one of his non-party cohorts were guilty of criminal conduct and SEC violations, so they commenced this securities fraud action, in the Court’s words, to “'misle[a]d the Court into believing that they were victims of fraud when, in fact, they were the p ...

Plaintiff RWB in RWB Serv., LLC v. Hartford Computer Group, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 18142 (7th Cir. Aug. 25, 2008), complained that the defendants misappropriated used cameras in which the plaintiff had security interests and then resold the cameras as new to Wal-Mart, thus stealing from the plaintiff in order to defraud Wal-Mart. The district court dismissed t ...

A distinguished trial lawyer from Chicago, Bob Cummins, penned what I consider a poetic sibling to my article, Federal Litigation: Where Did It Go Off Track? (published in the Summer 2008 issue of Litigation and posted on the Recent Articles page at http://www.josephny_live.com/articles/viewarticle.php?53). Bob’s classic sonnet follows: ...