From SEC v. Lyttle, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 17048 (7th Cir. Aug. 7, 2008): The defendants argue that because scienter is a state of mind, summary judgment can almost never be granted in favor of a plaintiff who has the burden of proving scienter, as the SEC did. For it is always possible, they say, that a reasonable jury would credit a defe ...

From Cyntegra, Inc. v. Idexx Laboratories, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97417 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 21, 2007): Defendant asserts that Plaintiffs failure to preserve business documents constituted spoliation and make sanctions appropriate. Although the documents were stored on NetNation's outsourced servers, they were deleted due to Plaintiff ...

One of the convicted defendants in U.S. v. Poulsen, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61141 (N.D. Ohio. Aug. 1, 2008), sought judicial permission to interview jurors to assess whether they were influenced by media coverage or discussed the case among themselves prior to the start of deliberations. The Court denied the motion: Courts seldom permit l ...

From White v. Graceland College Ctr. for Prof’l Dev. & Lifelong Learning, Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63088 (D. Kan. Aug. 7, 2008): The party who withholds discovery materials must provide sufficient information, usually in the form of a privilege log, to enable the other party to evaluate the applicability of the privilege or protectio ...

The trial judge in In re Apollo Group, Inc. Secs. Litig., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61995 (D. Ariz. Aug. 4, 2008), accepted the jury’s conclusion that Apollo “on six different occasions ... misrepresented the actual state of affairs surrounding the program review [at the University of Phoenix, an institution Apollo owns] by making public statements at odds wi ...

From Burton v. General Motors Corp., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62758 (S.D. Ind. Aug. 15, 2008): General Motors' instruction [on promissory estoppel] is almost identical to the instruction the court gave to the jury. The elements appear in a different order, and there are small changes to the wording of some of the elements. The only other d ...

"Aside perhaps from perjury, no act serves to threaten the integrity of the judicial process more than the spoliation of evidence. Our adversarial process is designed to tolerate human failings — erring judges can be reversed, uncooperative counsel can be shepherded, and recalcitrant witnesses compelled to testify. But, when critical documents go mi ...

Resolving a matter of first impression in the D.C. Circuit, Karsner v. Lothian, 532 F.3d 876 (D.C. Cir. 2008), adopts the “demand” approach to determining federal jurisdiction over arbitration proceedings brought pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act: Although the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) constitutes federal law, "the Supreme C ...

The plaintiff trust beneficiary alleged that his sister and her lawyer (who also represented the trust) comprised an association-in-fact RICO enterprise pillaging the trust. The Ninth Circuit held that the lawyer could not be held liable under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) because her rendering of legal services did not satisfy the operation-and-management test of Reves ...

From Marin v. Evans, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61922 (E.D. Wash. July 23, 2008) (a class action): In response to the Court's invitation to file a sur-reply to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Plaintiffs filed Declarations from both name-Plaintiffs, as well as Declarations from individuals who were not previously disclosed to Defendan ...