United States Supreme Court (4 summaries)
Comcast Corp. v. Behrend
Before a court may certify a class, a party must demonstrate damages on a classwide basis to satisfy the predominance requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.
Area(s) of Law:- Civil Procedure
Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The Copyright Act's "first sale" doctrine permits resale of foreign works legally manufactured and legitimately acquired abroad and imported to the United States without requiring the copyright holder's permission.
Area(s) of Law:- Copyright
Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds
Securities fraud plaintiffs who seek to certify a class action need not actually prove material misrepresentation to meet the predominance requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) at the class certification stage, but need only show the predominance of a common question of material misrepresentation invoked by the fraud-on-the-market rebuttable presumption.
Area(s) of Law:- Civil Procedure
Radlax Gateway Hotel, LLC v. Amalgamated Bank
A debtor may not obtain confirmation of a Chapter 11 cramdown plan to sell an encumbered asset clear of liens under §1129(b)(2)(A) and prohibit creditors to credit-bid.
Area(s) of Law:- Bankruptcy Law
United States Supreme Court Certiorari Granted (5 summaries)
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl
(1) Whether a voluntary adoption initiated by a non-Indian parent under state law may be blocked by the Indian Child Welfare Act when the Indian parent did not have prior custody; and (2) whether ICWA’s definition of "parent" includes a biological father without legal status as a parent under state law.
Area(s) of Law:- Indian Law
Peugh v. United States
Whether a court violates the Constitution's ex post facto clause by retroactively applying current sentencing guidelines to past crimes when the result is a harsher sentence.
Area(s) of Law:- Sentencing
Maracich v. Spears
Whether lawyers may use personal information protected by the Driver's Privacy Protection Act to investigate and solicit potential clients for a class action litigation or whether such use falls outside the permissible scope of the litigation exception.
Area(s) of Law:- Professional Responsibility
Comcast Corp. v. Behrend
Whether district courts may certify class actions without first resolving whether the class has introduced admissible evidence—including expert testimony—to establish the case is susceptible to an award of damages on a class-wide basis in satisfaction of the predominance requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 23.
Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Whether the Copyright Act's "first sale doctrine" freely permits resale of foreign works legally purchased overseas and imported into the United States as the Third Circuit has held, or if such works can only be resold after the copyright holder explicitly approves the sale as the Second Circuit has held, or if they can only be resold after the copyright holder approves an earlier sale as the Ninth Circuit has held.
Area(s) of Law:- Copyright
9th Circuit Court of Appeals (14 summaries)
Blake v. Baker
A habeas petitioner's post-conviction ineffective assistance of counsel claim constitutes good cause for failure to exhaust a claim if it is reasonably supported by sufficient evidence; the district court abuses its discretion by denying a motion to stay and hold in abeyance a mixed petition if: (1) petitioner shows good cause for failure to exhaust, (2) the unexhausted claims are potentially meritorious, and (3) there is no indication that petitioner engaged in intentionally dilatory litigation tactics.
Area(s) of Law:- Habeas Corpus
Frudden v. Pilling
A public elementary school's uniform policy that requires displaying the school's written leadership motto and provides a content based exemption for nationally recognized youth organizations unconstitutionally compels a student's speech and is subject to strict scrutiny review.
Area(s) of Law:- Constitutional Law
Alliance v. City of Idaho Falls
Idaho state law does not expressly or impliedly grant a municipal corporation power to exercise extraterritorial eminent domain power to acquire easements on residential property outside city boundaries for the non-essential purpose of accomplishing construction of electric transmission lines and provide power at the lowest possible cost.
Area(s) of Law:- Property Law
Nguyen v. Curry
A pro se habeas petitioner's amended claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 alleging ineffective assistance of appellate counsel for failure to raise a double jeopardy claim on direct appeal may be excused from procedural default under Martinez v. Ryan and may relate back to the timely filed original claim if there is a common core of facts supporting those grounds for relief stated therein.
Area(s) of Law:- Habeas Corpus
Vasques v. Rackacuckas
The Procedural Due Process Clause requires some constitutionally adequate process to determine gang membership when state officials enforce a broad public nuisance abatement injunction under state law against individuals that significantly interferes with their protected liberty interests. Comity doctrine does not prohibit the district court's grant of equitable relief for non-party plaintiffs to a state-court proceeding from challenging enforcement procedures of such an injunction. However, plaintiffs are barred from bringing a state constitutional due process claim in district court against a state official effectuating a state law in his official capacity, because he is not a "local" official for purposes of § 1983.
Area(s) of Law:- Civil Rights § 1983
Pac. Shores Properties v. City of Newport Beach
A facially neutral and overdiscriminate city ordinance violates state and federal housing discrimination laws when it has the purposeful and practical discriminatory effect that harms a targeted protected class by prohibiting the establishment of new and existing group homes for recovering substance abusers from obtaining living arrangements in most residential zones.
Area(s) of Law:- Municipal Law
Sossa v. Diaz
A pro se habeas petitioner is entitled to equitable tolling if he reasonably relied on a magistrate judge's order extending his filing deadline beyond AEDPA's statutory time limitation; and when a pro se habeas petitioner sufficiently alleges that precluded access to legal resources due to extraordinary circumstances beyond his control prevented timely filing and permits equitable tolling, the district court is obligated to review new evidence and rule on the merits.
Area(s) of Law:- Habeas Corpus
Dahlia v. Rodriguez
Whether a police officer's speech is within the scope of his official duties is not a broadly defined matter of law but needs to be determined by a practical inquiry for purposes of First Amendment retaliation analysis; and placing an officer on administrative leave for reporting police misconduct and abuse constitutes an adverse employment action likely to deter him from engaging in protected speech and is therefore protected.
Area(s) of Law:- Civil Rights § 1983
Cordoba v. Holder
The Board of Immigration Appeals must consider whether landownership qualifies as a "particular social group" for a member to be eligible for asylum and withholding under the Immigration and Nationality Act in light of in light of Henriquez-Rivas v. Holder, and also must consider whether a public official is aware of torturous activity, rather than whether he has actual knowledge of a specific incident, when reviewing a Convention Against Torture claim for relief.
Area(s) of Law:- Immigration
Krechman v. County of Riverside
A district court judge improperly weighs evidence and misapplies the standard of Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a) when he uses personal experience rather than testimony viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff to conclude that defendants did not use excessive force and were not a substantial factor in a death.
Area(s) of Law:- Civil Rights § 1983
Ahearn v. Int'l Longshore & Warehouse Union
Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act is not a charging party's sole remedy to collect damages from a union's unlawful labor activities.
Area(s) of Law:- Labor Law
United States v. Gonzalez Vazquez
To order government compliance with a plea agreement, the record must support evidence that either an agreement occurred or defendant detrimentally relied on a promise made during plea-bargaining, and a defendant's prior conviction cannot be counted as a criminal history point under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c)(1)(A) where the prior conviction is dissimilar to the federal conviction and did not amount to probation.
Area(s) of Law:- Sentencing
Cahto Tribe v. Dutschke
A Tribe’s governing documents must provide for an appeal of its disenrollment action to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) in order for the BIA to review the Tribe’s action under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Area(s) of Law:- Tribal Law
Assoc. Gen. Contractors v. Cal. Dep’t of Transp.
An affirmative action program which gives bidding preference in construction to specifically identified minorities based on a strong evidentiary showing of discrimination is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause so long as it is narrowly tailored to benefit the limited groups identified to have actually suffered pervasive and ongoing discrimination.
Area(s) of Law:- Constitutional Law