In an order yesterday, Judge Pauley rejected the joint request of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Sprint to move forward on court approval of a $50 million settlement of the regulator’s investigation into the telecom company.  The parties had submitted a proposed one-sentence joint motion for approval of a final judgment and settlement, and

In an opinion issued today, Judge Pauley lamented the “troubling trend toward prolixity in pleading [that] is infecting court dockets in this district and elsewhere.”  Pointing to the 175-paragraph complaint, “larded with more than 1,400 pages of exhibits” and the 303-page, 1,263-paragraph counterclaim in a “relatively straightforward” case, Judge Pauley admonished both sides for their failure to adhere to Rule 8’s exhortation that a pleading contain a “short and plain statement of the claim.”
Continue Reading Judge Pauley Bemoans Needlessly Long and Complicated Pleadings

In a decision issued yesterday, Judge Furman dismissed a lawsuit alleging that director James Cameron infringed the copyrights of artist William Roger Dean in Cameron’s blockbuster movie Avatar.  The artist, whose work has graced the covers of many major rock albums, claimed that many of the movie’s fantastical settings are copied from 14 works he produced between 1972 and 2007.
Continue Reading Judge Furman: James Cameron’s Avatar Movie Does Not Infringe Copyright of Noted Rock Album Cover Artist

In an order today, Judge Berman ruled that insurance company USF&G was not obligated to reimburse Ashley Reed Inc. for a $30 million judgment against it for selling counterfeit Fendi bags.  The USF&G policy insured against “Advertising Injury,” which Judge Berman ruled was separate from the company’s actual counterfeiting of the bags.

Defendants have

In a brief order today, Judge Scheindlin denied a request by French conglomerate Vivendi to file, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Halliburton II case, a new Rule 50(b) motion three years after its initial post-trial motion was denied. As Judge Scheindlin explained:

In the Supreme Court’s own words, it granted certiorari in Halliburton II to address two issues: (1) “to resolve a conflict among the Circuits over whether securities fraud defendants may attempt to rebut the Basic [Inc. v. Levinson] presumption at the class certification stage with evidence of a lack of price impact”; and (2) “to reconsider the presumption of reliance for securities fraud claims that [the Supreme Court] adopted in Basic. The Court said yes to the first question and no to the second.

Vivendi had argued that Halliburton II created new law under Rule 10b-5, requiring a plaintiff to prove that a misleading statement had an impact on the price of a security. But, Judge Scheindlin ruled, that has always been the rule, and was the rule when Vivendi’s prior Rule 50(b) motion had been denied. Halliburton II merely requires that “[d]efendants must be afforded an opportunity before class certification to defeat the [Basic]presumption through evidence that an alleged misrepresentation did no actually affect the market price of the stock.”
Continue Reading Judge Scheindlin: Supreme Court’s Halliburton Decision Did Not Change Plaintiff’s Burden of Proving “Price Impact” in Securities Fraud Case

In an opinion issued on Friday, Judge Scheindlin denied the summary judgment motion of MLB, the NHL, Comcast and DirectTV on antitrust claims rising out of the territorial distribution of television rights the sports leagues have arranged with regional sports networks.  Under the current system, fans are able only to watch a team’s games if it is available from their specific regional network, or if they are willing to pay for the right to watch every team’s games league-wide. Judge Scheindlin, after recounting the nearly century-long history of the “so-called ‘baseball exemption’” to the antitrust laws, formulated by the Supreme Court in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1922 and revisited several times by the Court and Congress, ruled that the exemption does not apply to territorial broadcasting restrictions.
Continue Reading Judge Scheindlin: MLB, NHL Television Deals Not Exempt from Antitrust Laws

In a motion filed yesterday, former Olympic skater Oksana Baiul moved Judge Forrest to recuse herself from Baiul’s case against numerous sports agents and television studios, alleging a lack of impartiality due to Judge Forrest’s past representation of certain parties and affiliated entities during her time as a partner at Cravath.  This is Baiul’s

In an opinion issued today, Judge Ramos dismissed securities fraud and related claims brought against Deloitte & Touche for its part in allegedly fraudulent financial statements and other SEC filings by ChinaCast Education, a Chinese company that traded on the NASDAQ from 2006 to 2012.  Deloitte was ChinaCast’s auditor, and the plaintiffs were investors in the company, including current management, who claimed to have uncovered misdeeds by ChinaCast’s prior management. Judge Ramos described the plaintiffs’ claims:

At bottom, Plaintiffs contend that, had the Deloitte Defendants performed any audit at all, they would have discovered the rampant fraud at ChinaCast much earlier. The FAC describes a number of failures to comply with PCAOB and GAAP standards, as well as “red flags” that should have placed the Deloitte Defendants on notice of the fraud. Consequently, Plaintiffs assert that DTTC’s statements for the years 2007 through 2010, that it conducted its audits in accordance with PCAOB standards and that ChinaCast’s audited financial statements were GAAP compliant, and for the years 2008 and 2009, that the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting were effective, were materially false.

Continue Reading Judge Ramos: Securities Fraud Suit Against Deloitte Dismissed, but Plaintiffs May Replead