January 27, 2012

Ford wins reversal on $56 million patent case

An #appeals court has given #Ford a huge #patent victory.

On Thursday, the quiet-but-important U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a trial judge whose rulings had resulted in a $56 million patent infringement hit to the Ford Motor Co.. The trial judge, Illinois-based James B. Zagel, had determined in 2009 that Ford had willfully infringed on the "puddle lamp" patent of inventor Jacob Krippelz, Sr.  A jury had awarded the Krippelz team $23 million, and the judge had added $33 million for enhanced damages and prejudgment interest.

The appellate court, in its 17-page ruling, declared that Zagel had "erred in holding that the patent-in-suit could be found novel over the prior art."

January 26, 2012

Judge hints at endless tobacco litigation

A weary #judge hints that #tobacco #litigation will go on until the sun cools and the last lawyer drops, in a brief opinion issued Thursday.

Or so it might appear, from this little parenthetical in the three-page opinion issued by Judge Gladys Kessler in the case United States v. Phillip Morris:

"It is perfectly clear from Defendants’ Response that the litigation challenging the Regulations promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration, Required Warnings For Cigarette Packaging & Advertisements... will not end (if ever) for an extremely long period of time."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Technorati Tags: gladys kessler, phillip morris, tobacco litigation

Inside the minds of Chandra Levy jurors

#Jurors in the Chandra Levy #murder trial had to answer a lot more questions than usual, because of the pre-trial notoriety resulting from Levy's relationship with former congressman Gary Condit. A McClatchy article today tells the basic story; here are some additional details about some of the 12 jurors and four alternates.

A 72-year-old male education researcher said that tattoos are "sometimes an art form."

A 58-year-old female journalist reported that she had a second cousin who is an FBI agent in Las Vegas. She said she didn't know much about gangs.

A 55-year-old female receptionist said she believed immigrants should arrive legally but she also understood "they flee difficult circumstances."

A 46-year-old male journalist said his opinion of gang members was "not great."

A 29-year-old male research associate said he had no problem with gang tattoos since "it's gang culture."

A 51-year-old engineering assistant said "it's their right to tattoo themselves."

A 37-year-old female billing assistant identified MS-13 as "a notorious gang that has dissembled body parts of victims."

A 62-year-old female interior designer said of the gang members that they are "going down the wrong road."

A 51-year-old female Federal Trade Commission lawyer said she has no tattoos herself but "I know people who do have them."

A 59-year-old female claims supervisor said of gangs that "(I) don't make them part of my lifestyle."

January 23, 2012

Porn producers seek court help

Porn producers going after #copyright abuse in #court faced a setback Monday, and some sneaky Internet porn-watchers may be breathing a sigh of relief.

The producers or copyright holders of such movies as "Supergirl XXX: An Extreme Comixxx Parody" and "XXX Avengers," as well as others with more emphatically descriptive titles, know the Internet Protocol addresses of the alleged illegal downloaders. Now, they want subpoenas to compel the Internet Service Providers to provide the names of the people associated with those IP addresses.

In four related cases Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola seemed to step back from an earlier discovery ruling issued last year. Facciola stated that "has had an opportunity to reconsider the issue and has now concluded that such early, wide-ranging discovery is...not warranted." Now, Facciola says, he wants the companies to show why the D.C.-based court actually has jurisdiction over the computers involved.

January 20, 2012

Chandra Levy juror info outted

#WaPost wins, as a D.C. #appeals #court has ordered release of juror questionnaires in the high-profile, now-concluded trial of Chandra Levy's killer.

In a 20-page decision issued this week, elavorated upon in this fresh-from-the-oven McClatchy article, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge went too far when he blocked release of the 11-page, 55-question forms filled out by the Levy jurors.

"The values underlying the First Amendment right of access _ for example, the public trial as a check on the fair functioning of the criminal justice system _ are served even after the verdict is in," Associate Judge Kathryn A. Oberly wrote.

The trial ended in November 2010 with the conviction of Ingmar Guandique, now serving a 60-year prisoni sentence. The Washington Post led the way on the fight to open up the juror questionnaires, first with the paper's dogged courthouse reporters Keith Alexander and Henri Cauvin agitating to obtain the forms and then with lawyers weighing in. Attorney Bruce D. Brown successfully argued the case last fall before the appellate court.

Separately, attorney Bruce Gottleib filed an amicus brief on behalf of 16 media organizations including the Associated Press, Atlantic Media, Inc., Dow Jones and Company, Inc., Gannett Co., Hearst Corporation,  National Public Radio,  The New York Times Company and The New Yorker.

Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher will now have to specifically identify what parts, if any, will be redacted before the questionnaires are released.

January 17, 2012

Army CID veteran honored for anti-rape efforts

A veteran #Army CID investgator is being honored for his efforts to combat sexual assault in the military.

Russell Strand, a retired CID  special agent and currently chief of the Family Advocacy Law Enforcement Training Division at the U.S Army Military Police School, has been selected to win the 2012 Visionary Award by the End Violence Against Women International Board of Directors.

A previous winner of the award was Vice President Joe Biden.

Strand has been training investigators in a new technique interviewing technique called Forensic Experiential Trauma Interviews. Strand also developed and implemented the DoD Special Victims Unit (SVU) course.

Criminal justice reporting honored

McClatchy's coverage of #military #justice won honorable mention in this year's John Jay College/H.F. Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting contest.

Wait, that's called burying the lede.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Gina Barton and Mother Jones magazine won the top prizes in the contest, sponsored by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Barton won for her series entitled "Both Sides of the Law," a close look at rule-breakers on the Milwaukee Police Department. Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones won the single-story category, for a story on FBI spying on Muslim-American communities; Aaronson conducted his reporting with Lowell Bergman's Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California at Berkeley.

Two honorable mentions will also be presented, on Feb. 6. Kelly Virella of City LImits Investigates took an honorable mention for a look at intimate relationships between inmates and corrections officers. The other honorable mention, for a series, goes to McClatchy for "Military Injustice," a year-long series led by reporters Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle that investigated every facet of the military justice system. The McClatchy series revealed bungling at the military's chief crime lab, lengthy appellate delays, congressional missteps and more.

January 13, 2012

Scotus set to spank 9th Circuit again

#Scotus appears poised to thump the 9th Circuit #Court of Appeals again.

And the California attorney general's office, laying it on thick, is really playing up the 9th Circuit's serial perfidy.

On Friday, the Supreme Court granted California's petition in Cavazos v. Williams. Williams is a female inmate serving life in prison without parole for her part in a 1993 murder. Williams, 20 at the time, was the driver of the get-away car during a liquor store robbery in which one of her accomplices shot the store owner.

The 9th Circuit overturned Williams' conviction, ruling the trial judge improperly removed a juror who was resisting conviction. But the real issue now is whether the 9th Circuit was too, you know, activist in allowing Williams to pursue her appeals despite losing at the state level.

So check out how the California attorney general's office puts in rhetorical bold face, in its petition, the fact that Hey, Supreme Court, that darn liberal 9th Circuit needs to be put in its place again!Said the state:

This Court, of course, has in the recent past twice reversed the Ninth Circuit...for similar judicial disregard of state-court fact findings. Here it once again strayed far beyond the bounds of appropriate federal habeas review of state-court fact finding.

and

Having repeatedly misapplied AEDPA’s highly deferential standard of review, the Ninth Circuit here has circumvented it altogether.

and

As demonstrated by this Court’s many grants of certiorari to review and reverse Ninth Circuit judgments flawed by “judicial disregard” of the deferential § 2254 standard, the Ninth Circuit’s errors here warrant this Court’s attention too.

All of which, of course, is catnip to the likes of Justice Antonin Scalia, who as recently as Monday sighed about the "Ninth Circuit’s latest unsupportable §2254 judgment."

January 05, 2012

Rahm Emanuel gets lawsuit tossed

#Rahm Emanuel, former #WH chief of staff, has prevailed in #court. #***!

In an 18-page decision issued Jan. 4, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell dismissed a long-shot but non-trivial lawsuit filed against Emanuel for his alleged actions as President Barack Obama's first White House chief of staff.

A former White House worker accused Emanuel, now Chicago mayor, of employment discrimination, retaliation and assorted other problems. In (very) brief, the former worker, a 36-year veteran of government service, had initially filed an equal opportunity complaint concerning her treatment as an African-American. She reached a settlement with the White House to leave. Emanuel's office then defamed her, she said, by reporting that the early retirement was involuntary.

Judge Howell dismissed the complaint because of jurisdictional grounds, sovereign immunity and other reasons.

December 29, 2011

D.C. must pay $1.1 million in gun-case attorneys fees

Losing a landmark #Scotus case on #gun rights will now cost Washington, D.C. $1.1 million in attorneys fees.

In a 65-page decision Thursday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan awarded fees to six attorneys who represented lead plaintiff Dick Heller and others in the 2008 Second Amendment case that struck down D.C.'s stringent handgun ban.

Big winner: attorney Alan Gura, who was awarded $662,424 of the total. This amounts to a rate of $420 an hour, for 1,577.2 billable hours.

As often happens, the judge opted for a total somewhere in between competing proposals. The plaintiffs' attorneys had asked for $3.1 million, while D.C. had proposed several lower numbers, including a low of $657,252.

Complicating the court's calculations was the fact that the gun-rights attorneys, some from non-profit, self-styled public interest organizations, did not have the standard hourly rate common in commercial practice.