In the context of a pro se prisoner action, which may be telling, District Judge Peter Dorsey held in Vega v. Lantz, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76640 (D. Conn. Oct. 15, 2007), held that ‛a motion for a preliminary injunction is not an appropriate stage for the court to look to precedent outside this circuit to decide a matter of first impression,“ citing an o ...

There is a debate in the case law as to when and whether emails generated in a business setting constitute business records within Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6) (see Internet & Email Evidence on the Recent Articles page). The defendants in United States v. Stein, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76201 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 15, 2007) (the KPMG tax shelter prosecution) ...

28 U.S.C. § 1338(a) creates exclusive federal jurisdiction for patent, trademark and copyright cases ("The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, copyrights and trademarks. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in patent, plant v ...

Eckstein v. Cincinnati Ins. Co., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72375 (W.D. Ky. Sept. 26, 2007) (applying Kentucky law) holds that, when an insurance coverage question is a matter of first impression, no bad faith claim for denial of coverage lies. In entering summary judgment for the carrier in this water-damage-turned-mold-damage claim, District Judge Joseph H. McK ...

The New York Court of Appeals held on October 16, 2007, that the tort of third-party negligent spoliation of evidence is not cognizable in the state. Ortega v. City of New York, 2007 NY Slip Op 7741; 2007 N.Y. LEXIS 2715 (Ct. App. Oct. 16, 2007). Because of the remedies available to litigants to deal with spoliation by parties to a lawsuit, few states have ...

Another Circuit split worthy of Supreme Court attention: Our post of October 6, 2007, reported on a recent Ninth Circuit case holding that a District Judge may not increase an appellate bond to cover potential appellate sanctions. That opinion is in accord with the general propositions that (1) it is for appellate courts, not district courts, to sanction improper ...

Twenty-five years ago, in 1982, state and federal litigation cost about the same. Plaintiffs chose federal court sometimes for expansive discovery or to get a good judge, even though state court was available and additur impermissible. Today, plaintiffs with non-federal causes of action flee federal court. What happened? Highlights: 1983< ...

Fed.R.Civ.P. 33(d) provides: Where the answer to an interrogatory may be derived or ascertained from the business records, including electronically stored information, of the party upon whom the interrogatory has been served ... and the burden of deriving ... the answer is substantially the same for the part[ies]..., it is a sufficient answer to ...

Parties are entitled, as a matter of due process, to notice of (a) the fact that sanctions are under consideration, (b) the specific conduct for which sanctions are under consideration and (c) the type of sanctions under consideration. Joseph, Sanctions: The Federal Law of Litigation Abuse § 17(D)(1) (3d ed. 2000). The plaintiffs in Foster v. Wilson, 2007 ...

You have to admire the candor of companies that make their living destroying data. They leave nothing to the imagination. As observed by District Judge Donald J. Stohr in Ameriwood Indus. v. Liberman, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74886 (E.D. Mich. July 3, 2007): ‛Window Washer is advertised as a tool to make electronic files unrecoverable. While the name sounds ...