Blawg

There’s been a very interesting development in Priceline.com v City of Anaheim, where the California Court of Appeal approved the City of Anaheim’s use of contingent fee counsel to pursue online travel companies for the City’s transient occupancy tax.  Read More »

David Axelrad of Horvitz & Levy LLP today filed with the California Supreme Court a Request to Depublish the Priceline decision.  Read More »

Ted Lieu, who’s angling for the job of California Attorney General, thinks plaintiffs’ lawyers should take over the role of the elected representatives and the appointed public servants who oversee the complex enforcement of statutory and regulatory rules affecting California consumers.  Read More »

In a major disappointment for the plaintiffs’ bar, the 5th circuit court of appeals has granted a re hearing en banc in Comer v. Murphy Oil, et al.

The entire complement of the court’s judges granted rehearing to review an earlier decision by a three-judge panel that reversed the dismissal of Comer, a major climate change lawsuit arising from Hurricane Katrina. The court has not set a date for oral arguments.  Read More »

The focus of this site is, of course, on nuisance law, including discussions about how an amorphous reading of its elements can lead to difficult procedural and substantive issues.  Read More »

This “guidance” document impacts all businesses subject to SEC jurisdiction. It is sweeping, expansive and, unfortunately, fails to set realistic limits on the scope of its requirements. As a result, all regulated entities, and their officers and directors are placed in difficult circumstances. They now have a heavy burden of compliance and disclosure, and they face a risk of SEC enforcement, as well as civil and criminal liability if the disclosures prove inadequate or misleading.  Read More »

In a seminal article published last year, Texas climate change lawyer Richard Faulk prophesied that the Securities and Exchange Commission would enable a wave of securities litigation based on climate change disclosure mandates. See http://works.bepress.com/richard_faulk/26/.  Read More »

Scott Smith’s current article on NuisanceLaw.com highlights the problem with governments retaining private trial lawyers on a contingency fee basis to pursue lawsuits. Private lawyers motivated solely by profit are not able to make decisions about a case that threatens their return on investment.   Read More »

It should come as no surprise that the next application of nuisance law would be climate change litigation.  Read More »

The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) has just published its annual list of “Judicial Hellholes” and, no surprise, California is on the “Watch” list. This is no surprise because the California judiciary has abdicated its gatekeeper responsibility.

There are likely any number of reasons for this “recognition” of the California judicial system, but let’s look at one major reason-- public nuisance litigation.

Public nuisance, as misapplied by the plaintiffs’ bar, would neuter the long-standing law of product liability. Plaintiffs, unable to identify which manufacturer’s product caused the alleged harm, try to cast a wide net of public nuisance to snare any company that manufactured, distributed, promoted or sold the product, regardless of how many decades ago and regardless of whether it was defective, claiming these entities substantially contributed to creating and maintaining a public nuisance. In at least one instance, a California Court of Appeals agreed with this mottled thinking and has allowed a public nuisance claim to proceed against companies some of which last manufactured lead pigment 50+ years ago. Surprisingly, the California Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.  Read More »