The 9th Circuit on Friday upheld a $2.6 million arbitration award against a former Toyota in-house lawyer who gained notoriety by claiming that the car company hid evidence in hundreds of rollover cases. The California lawyer-turned-whistleblower, Dimitrios Biller, had argued that Toyota's deception in product liability litigation justified his disclosure of confidential information obtained during his tenure at the company.
WASHINGTON - Sometimes the Supreme Court simply decides cases, and sometimes it seems to have something bigger in mind. In the past two weeks it has been in scold mode, and its target has been the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In five straight cases, the court has rejected the work of the San Francisco-based court without a single affirmative vote from a justice. The nation's largest court, stretching from Montana to Hawaii, the 9th has jurisdiction over nearly 20 percent of the nation's citizens. Not surprisingly, it routinely supplies the largest portion of the cases the court reviews each term.
Allowing two officers to summarize at trial the statements made by a witness to a murder when the witness was unavailable for trial violated the defendant's constitutional right to confrontation, the has ruled. The defendant was convicted of murder. He appealed, arguing that at trial, two officers testified regarding statements made by a potential witness to the murder who did not testify at trial.
The en banc 9th Circuit heard oral arguments yesterday on the question of when an employee can be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for accessing information on a company computer. The circuits are split on this issue.
Telecommunications companies are immune from claims challenging the legality of their participation in a federal surveillance program implemented following the 9/11 terror attacks, the 9th Circuit has ruled in affirming a dismissal. The decision addressed 33 actions filed against the nation's telecommunications companies in 2006 after the public disclosure of a National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program. The program was authorized by presidential order following 9/11. Under the program, the NSA enlisted the cooperation of telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon to tap into a significant portion of the companies' telephone and e-mail traffic.
A retaliation lawsuit brought under [section]1981 is subject to a four-year statute of limitations, not the state personal injury time- bar, the 9th Circuit has held in reversing a dismissal. The plaintiff, an African-American employee of Lucent Technologies, alleged the company denied him disability payments in retaliation for filing a previous suit against them, in violation of [section]1981, which prohibits race discrimination in contracts.
A defendant in an intellectual property dispute permanently waived his attorney-client privilege with respect to documents that he voluntarily disclosed to the federal government in a criminal investigation, the 9th Circuit has ruled in upholding a discovery order. The plaintiff in the case, D.C. Comics, has been in a long- running dispute over royalties with the heirs of the creators of the Superman character. The defendant is a Hollywood producer and lawyer. D.C. Comics sued the defendant for interfering with its contractual relationships with the heirs. During discovery, D.C. Comics sought disclosure of certain documents pertaining to communications between the defendant and the heirs.
Police violated the Fourth Amendment when they used the discovery of an outstanding arrest warrant for a passenger to justify the search of a motor vehicle, the 9th Circuit has ruled in reversing a drug conviction. A police officer conducted a traffic stop based on a suspicion that the defendant was driving a stolen vehicle. After confirming the defendant's ownership of the car, the officer questioned a young female who was a passenger in the vehicle. The passenger claimed she was 19, but the officer suspected that she might be an underage prostitute.
The 9th Circuit has ordered a do over in the settlement of a class action over Bluetooth headsets that yielded $850,000 for class counsel and only $112,000 to benefit those who allegedly suffered hearing loss as a result of using the device. We agree that the disparity between the value of the class recovery and class counsel's compensation raises at least an inference of unfairness, and that the current record does not adequately dispel the possibility that class counsel bargained away a benefit to the class in exchange for their own interests," the court said in an opinion issued Friday.
The Bush-era Justice Department lawyer who crafted the legal arguments for enhanced interrogation cannot be sued by a convicted terrorist who claimed he was tortured while in federal custody, the 9th Circuit decided yesterday. [A]lthough we hold that the unconstitutionality of torturing an American citizen was beyond debate in 2001-03, it was not clearly established at that time that the treatment [Jose] Padilla alleges he was subjected to amounted to torture," wrote Circuit Judge Raymond C. Fisher in Padilla v. Yoo.
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