An out-of-state attorney electronically filed a post-trial motion reflecting her local counsel’s signature by including an ‛/s/“ electronic signature for him. Her local counsel, who was on vacation at the time the filing was made, notified the Judge on his return that the filing had been made without his "knowledge, consent, authorization, or approval." Dist ...

The question in Geer v. Gilman Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 38852 (D. Conn. Feb. 12, 2007), an age discrimination action, was whether the plaintiff waived the attorney-client privilege by using the computer and email of her fiancй, and by having her fiancй assist her in ministerial maters, such as proofreading her communications to her attorney. Magistrate ...

Fed.R.Civ.P. 34(b)(i) provides that ‛a party who produces documents for inspection shall produce them as they are kept in the usual course of business or shall organize and label them to correspond with the categories in the request.“ This presents an alternative — either produce them as kept in the usual course of businessor shall organize and ...

The Hawaii Department of Public Safety and ten state officials were sued for negligence by a prisoner who was beaten by other inmates. In their answer, the defendants asserted Eleventh Amendment immunity as an affirmative defense. They subsequently filed a third-party complaint for indemnification or contribution against the inmates who had attacked the plaintiff. ...

Italian prosecutors hired an accounting expert to assist them pursue Deloitte-Italy in the Parmalat case. The expert was a ‛technical consultant“ to the prosecution under Italian law, and she prepared reports that the U.S. plaintiffs sought to introduce in the U.S. proceeding, In re Parmalat Securities Litigation, 477 F.Supp.2d 637 (S.D.N.Y. 2007), purs ...

The District Judge in Stilwell v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., 482 F.3d 1187 (9th Cir. 2007) excluded the testimony of the plaintiff’s expert, finding that the testimony was not helpful, within Fed.R.Evid. 702, because it did not address the issue of causation, only defect, in this medical device products liability action. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that ...

28 U.S.C. § 1359 provides that "[a] district court shall not have jurisdiction of a civil action in which any party, by assignment or otherwise, has been improperly or collusively made or joined to invoke the jurisdiction of the court." There is a split in the Circuits as to whether to apply a presumption of collusive invocation of jurisdiction when evaluating assi ...

The plaintiff-employer in Calyon v. Mizuho Secs. USA Inc. , 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36961 (S.D.N.Y. May 18, 2007), sued several former employees for allegedly transmitting confidential business information to their new employer. The ex-employees agreed to preserve mirror images of the hard drives of their personal computers, PDAs, etc., and produced informatio ...

On May 21, 2007, the Supreme Court changed the law of notice pleading. It held in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 2007 U.S. LEXIS 5901 (U.S. May 21, 2007) that plaintiffs must allege facts sufficient to show an entitlement to relief. While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual al ...

The pro se plaintiff in Wilkinson v. Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34287 (E.D. Wis. May 9, 2007) commenced this action with a ‛massive, nearly incomprehensible initial filing of roughly 200 pages“ in which his ‛central allegation … appear[ed] to be that numerous defendants have illegally attempted to collect a debt from ...