Alternative Dispute Resolution
Welcome to mediation, let's get started
By James P. Gray
Good morning, my name is Jim Gray and I am your mediator to try to help you resolve your dispute. I'd like to share some thoug...
The state Supreme Court recently provided a useful analytic framework to determine whether non-legal malpractice cases brought...
Health Care & Hospital Law, Civil Rights
Reproductive liberty extends to 'social surrogacy'
By Judith Daar
A recent human interest story featured Dylan Lauren, daughter of Ralph Lauren, who spoke of her decision to hire another woman...
Labor/Employment, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Arbitration agreements must be fair to employees
By Gene F. Williams
A Court of Appeal recently held that an agreement to arbitrate that an employee was required to sign on her first day of work ...
Recently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a package of proposed procedural revisions affecting post-grant procee...
Labor/Employment
Has PAGA really saved the wage and hour mass action?
By Gene F. Williams
California employees increasingly are turning to the Private Attorneys General Act for mass wage and hour actions, but should ...
U.S. Supreme Court, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Circuit reversals portend new term
By Lawrence Waddington
As summer yields to autumn, and a U.S. Supreme Court 2015-2016 emerges in October, lawyers and judges can expect another round...
Law Practice, Judges and Judiciary, Criminal
Review a court's duty to instruct a jury
By Henry J. Hall
Learn the basics of a court's duty to instruct a jury in a criminal case in this month's MCLE column. ...
Civil Litigation, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Plan will force us to desert mediation
By A. Marco Turk
The California Law Revision Commission wants to amend state law to pierce the veil of mediation confidentiality in cases where...
In a recent case, the state high court fell in line with most of the rest of the country when it comes to the enforceability o...
The sooner the courts can help themselves to a clearer "self-help" doctrine under Brady, the better off prosecutors and...
Judges and Judiciary, Civil Litigation
To the dictionary ... and beyond!
By Michael J. Raphael
Is there a way for a judge to "look up" the ordinary meaning of a word in a statute other than by using a dictionary? The acad...
Does California, for all its pride in our supposedly progressive legal history, have much to boast about? By Dan Lawton ...
Insurance, California Supreme Court
Despite what you've read, this was good for insureds
By Kirk A. Pasich
Last week, the state high court issued a long-awaited decision involving independent counsel in insurance litigation - and com...
Constitutional Law, Administrative/Regulatory
Go Fourth! Cell location data needs a warrant
By Mary Ellen Callahan, Jarrell A. Cook
Judge Lucy Koh recently issued a ruling finding the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant prior to collecting cell data. A week ...
U.S. Supreme Court, Constitutional Law
Majority shuns Scalia's approach
By Erwin Chemerinsky
This last term, the U.S. Supreme Court decisively rejected Justice Antonin Scalia's restrictive approach to interpreting the C...
Judges and Judiciary
Court legal services program appears to violate ADA
By Thomas F. Coleman
Adults with developmental disabilities are receiving deficient legal services in limited conservatorship proceedings. By Thoma...
Is the price we pay for the privilege of free speech that we have no control whatsoever over our Internet presence? ...
Asserting tax merely based on the law license wasn't allowed in one recent case, but it may not be a stretch to consider the a...
Civil Litigation, Constitutional Law, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Data holders must prepare for lawsuit wave after ruling
By Erik S. Syverson, Scott M. Lesowitz
A federal Court of Appeals recently said victims of data breaches need not allege that their money or their identity were stol...
Two recent decisions embrace the "pro-insurer" trend in connection with "what is an accident." ...
Securities, Corporate, Constitutional Law, Administrative/Regulatory
Is SEC's home court advantage legal?
By Thomas A. Zaccaro, Nicolas Morgan
Recent federal court challenges to SEC administrative proceedings have had mixed results. ...
This week, the state high court said that an insurance company can sue independent counsel directly for reimbursement of "unre...
Civil Litigation, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Relax, it was part of mediation
By A. Marco Turk
Last week, the California Law Revision Commission voted to draft a recommendation removing our current confidentiality protec...
Weighing the pros and cons of multidistrict litigation
By Brian S. Kabateck, Lina B. Melidonian
There is no doubt that the MDL promotes efficiency. It allows hundreds of related cases to proceed smoothly by avoiding duplic...
Litigation & Arbitration, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Walk through the evolution of arbitration jurisprudence
By Lawrence Waddington
Enacted in 1926 when federal courts could develop federal common law, Congress assumed the Federal Arbitration Act's scope of ...
Civil Litigation
Death of the death knell doctrine?
By James C. Martin, Anne M. Grignon
A recent ruling added a significant limitation on the doctrine in class cases. ...
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Every litigated case needs optimists
By Jan Frankel Schau
When the pessimist and optimist meet at mediation, the parties and their lawyers may bring a host of biases to the negotiation...
Or so observer Neil Sedaka tunefully commented, but sometimes it's better than allowing a failed attorney-client relationship ...
U.S. Supreme Court, Labor/Employment, California Supreme Court
Once more unto the FAA... again
By Steven B. Katz
It is beyond rational debate that California's Assembly Bill 465 is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. ...