From Dalton v. City of Las Vegas, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 12522 (10th Cir. June 12, 2008): Simply listing the litany of offenses allegedly committed by defendants, without any specification as to which acts (1) qualify as § 1961 predicate acts and (2) also occurred within the time frame required to satisfy § 1961(5), is insufficient to st ...

A traditional factor that the Court considers in deciding a motion to change venue pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) is whether the location of witnesses and evidence and the parties' convenience strongly favors transferring the case. From Kabat v. Bayer Cropscience, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41187 (E.D. Va. May 22, 2008): “‘[I]t is doubtful that ‘i ...

After the plaintiff’s deposition revealed that her claim was meritless, defense counsel wrote a letter requesting that the action be withdrawn. Plaintiff’s counsel declined. Litigation proceeded through summary judgment, for which the plaintiff unsuccessfully advanced a new theory of liability supported by an affidavit in which the plaintiff contradicted her d ...

The plaintiff in Pinnacle Pizza Co. v. Little Caesar Enters., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44651 (D. S.D. June 5, 2008) — a Little Caesars franchise owner — did not opt out of a class action settlement in 2001 and, as a result, conferred a general release in favor the defendants. The defendants asserted that, although the claims in the class action were unrelat ...

In the MTBE mass tort litigation, In re Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether ("MTBE") Prods. Liab. Litig., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44216 (S.D.N.Y. June 4, 2008), homeowners in a small town in Orange County, New York, contended that their property values had been damaged by MTBE pollution. Their expert was prepared to testify that property values had declined 15% based ...

Fleming & Assoc’s v. Newby & Tittle, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 11764 (5th Cir. May 30, 2008) presented the following factual scenario: September 14, 2006 — District Court issues order sanctioning plaintiffs’ counsel “for changing the [plaintiffs’] expert witness report” and orders reimbursement of certain defendants’ attorneys' ...

From the Supreme Court's decision in Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indem. Co., 2008 U.S. LEXIS 4703 (U.S. June 9, 2008): 1. First Party Reliance Not Required. “[A] plaintiff asserting a RICO claim predicated on mail fraud need not show, either as an element of its claim or as a prerequisite to establishing proximate causation, ...

Rule No. 1: Know your Judge. Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(c)(1), if a party fails to disclose expert opinions or exhibits in his or her Rule 26(a)(2)(B) report, the undisclosed matter is automatically excluded at trial, unless there is "substantial justification" for the failure to disclose or the "failure is harmless." That rule of exclusion is often strictly enforced. ...

From New England Surfaces v. E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., , 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43530 (D. Me. June 3, 2008): Unlike the inherent power, the Supreme Court and the First Circuit have not instructed that § 1927 can only be used when the Rules do not cover the conduct. Thus, the failure to invoke the Rules when they are available does ...

From Brown v. Brown, 2008 Bankr. LEXIS 1503 (Bankr. D. N.H. May 19, 2008): Defense witness No. 1 testified: Q. And--and you have no documents because you--you don't retain documents. A. No. Q. You discard them. A. Yes. Q. And since the commencement of this litigation you continued to discard documents. < ...