Litigation

News From The Cal Biz Lit Sports Department

By Bruce Nye

            Over here in the CBL Sports Department, baseball division, we are still basking in the glow of the San Francisco Giants? first World Series victory ever, and the franchise?s first win since 1956, back in their right coast days.  Now we just need the Golden Bears of California to go to a Rose Bowl (last visit ? 1959, and the next one sure won't be 2011) and life will be complete. 

            Meanwhile, some odds and ends:

            Odd/end number one:  A while back, CBL posted a story about a big nasty punitive damage verdict in the conservative central valley jurisdiction of Sacramento, observing that this was "California's conservative state capitol, where the jurors know the value of a dollar. . . ."  

                 At the rate things are going, we?re going to have to stop writing things like that.  Comes word now of a Sacramento Federal Court verdict in a union dispute involving California?s powerful California Correctional Peace Officer?s Association, which got tagged for a $10 million punitive award in the case of Brian Dawe, et al.  v. Corrections USA, et al., Eastern District No. Civ. S-07-1790 LLK.  A copy of the verdict is here.  The compensatory award, BTB, was $2.8 million, so the ratio is problematic.

            Odd/end number two:  Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal?s Law Blog reports on corporate concerns about the whistleblowing provisions of the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Bill.  The bill has bounty hunter provisions that give whistleblowers who take evidence of Securities Fraud to the SEC between 10% and 30% of any penalties over $1 million.  According to the WSJ,

. . . plaintiffs lawyers eager to handle complaints on behalf of whistleblowers are getting the word out, issuing press releases and publishing articles about the new law and in some instances, running ads soliciting work.

            CBL is reminded of the considerable (and understandable) consternation California companies expressed in 2003, when the legislature passed and the governor signed legislation that created a bounty hunter right for employees to report Labor Code violations and keep a share of the proceeds.   To date, the sky has not fallen.  Other bounty-hunter provisions (see Proposition 65) create much more havoc for businesses.

            Odd/end number three:  Happy Birthday to Drug & Device Law Blog, which just celebrated its fourth birthday.  Founded by Jim Becks of Dechert LLP (?Bexis?) and Mark Herrmann (formerly of Jones Day and since retired from the blog), this blog for pharmaceutical and medical device defense lawyers has everything a big-firm law blog ought to have, and practically none of them do:  regular and current postings, detailed analysis, and a good dose of ?tude.  Best of all, it never looks as though the posts got processed through a big firm committee before they were published.  If you want to see what good blogging can look like, check out this post by Steve McConnell on the problem of documents produced in confidence, or this one on the U.S. Supremes? grant of cert in two important personal jurisdiction cases:  Brown v. Meter, 681 S.E.2d 382  (N.C. App. 2009), appeal denied, 695 S.E.2d 756 (N.C. 2010), and Nicastro v. McIntyre Machinery America, Ltd., 987 A.2d 575 (N.J. 2010).

            Bexis observes that of all the law blogs started up by practicing lawyers at about the same time as Drug & Device Law, only little ol? CalBizLit (Est. December 8, 2006) is still posting.  CBL appreciates the recognition, but thinks it only fair to mention that, on the other side of the ?v,? Kimberly Kralowec?s venerable UCL Practitioner has been going even longer.  So anyway, congratulations to all of us.

Full post as published by CalBizLit on November 02, 2010 (boomark / email).