A three-part test is generally used to determine whether a party has waived the attorney-client privilege by placing privileged communications ‛at issue.“ An implied waiver occurs when (1) the party asserts the privilege as a result of some affirmative act, such as filing suit; (2) through this affirmative act, the asserting party puts the privileged informa ...

A follow up to the January 9, 2007 post (Protective Orders — 2000 Amendment to Rule 5(d)) and a recent publication on this subject (January 2007 Practical Litigator article): Professor Rick Marcus of Hastings College of Law — the Reporter to the Discovery Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — has written an interesti ...

In Inline Connection Crop. v. AOL Time Warner Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4761 (D.Del. Jan. 23, 2007), a patent infringement case, the Magistrate Judge rejected a Daubert challenge to defense expert testimony concerning damages and royalty calculations. Some of the testimony was based on conversations between the expert and employees of other corporations in the fi ...

Yesterday, the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed with prejudice the securities fraud class action captioned In re United American Healthcare Corp. Secs. Litig., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6362 (Jan. 30, 2007). First, it reasoned that there was no duty to disclose the undisclosed information. Second, it held that, even if the group pleading doctrine survived enactme ...

The Summary Judgment Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure held a mini-conference in New York yesterday (Monday, 1/29/07). No conclusions were reached, and the Subcommittee’s deliberations remain tentative. But a number of interesting proposals for amending Rule 56 discussed. The most significant issu ...

On January 24, 2007, the Second Circuit instructed the prevailing defendants/appellants in the IPO Securities Litigation (In re Initial Public Offering Sec. Litig., 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 29859 (2d Cir. Dec. 5, 2006)) to respond to the petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc filed by the plaintiffs/appellees. Since petitions for rehearing are often denied withou ...

As amended effective December 1, 2006, Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(f) requires that, at the initial discovery conference, the parties discuss ‛any issues relating to disclosure or discovery of electronically stored information, including the form or forms in which it should be produced.“ Williams vs. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5477 (D. Kan. Jan. 23, ...

As previously noted, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is holding a mini-conference in New York today (Monday, 1/29/07) to consider possible amendments to summary judgment practice under Rule 56. A summary of the discussion will appear in a posting tomorrow (Tuesday, 1/30/07). ...

One of the plaintiffs’ experts in B.H. v. Gold Fields Mining Corp., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4612 (N.D. Okla. Jan. 22, 2007), testified at his deposition to a theory not set forth in his Rule 26(a)(2)(B) report. The District Court concluded that the new theory was not trivial but constituted ‛a significant extension of [the] generic opinion“ set forth in the exp ...

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides, in 28 U.S.C. § 1609, that "the property in the United States of a foreign state shall be immune from attachment[,] arrest and execution except as provided in section[] 1610...." Section 1610 in turn provides: "The property in the United States of a foreign state ... used for a commercial activity in the United St ...