Judge Torres

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In an Order yesterday, Judge Torres took issue with the “relentless” filings of counsel for Sean Carter (known professionally as Jay-Z) in a case accusing Mr. Carter and Sean Combs of abusing the plaintiff, a minor at the time of the alleged incident.

Mr. Carter was added to the case in an amendment on December 9, and his lawyer filed letters on December 9, December 10, and December 13, followed by an emergency motion on December 18, all of which argued that the case was meritless and attacked counsel for the plaintiff (who, for his part, responded with a letter on December 20).

Judge Torres was not amused by the “litany” of filings by Mr. Carter’s counsel and suggested that they were a disservice to Mr. Carter:Continue Reading Judge Torres Refuses to “Fast-Track” Abuse Case In Response to “Relentless” Filings from Jay-Z’s Counsel

In an opinion Wednesday, Judge Torres held unconstitutional a New York City law mandating that online food delivery platforms like Door Dash share customer data (e.g., name, address, email, phone) directly with the restaurants from which customers order their food. The aim of the law was to allow the restaurants to tilt the balance of marketing power away from the online platforms and back to the restaurants.

Judge Torres first concluded that the law implicated speech (not conduct) under the First Amendment: “The Customer Data Law directly regulates what Plaintiffs can (indeed, must) ‘say’ to the restaurants that use their services. In other words, regulation of speech is the object—not an incidental byproduct—of the law.”

She next concluded that the law failed “intermediate” scrutiny because there was only a thin connection between the government interests at stake and the speech burden used to address the interest. The City argued that the law addressed “exploitative” practices like the platforms using data about one restaurant’s customers to pitch to those customers competitor restaurants or restaurants that pay higher fees. But Judge Torres found that the law did little to actually remedy those issues and reflected instead, a “mere preference for one industry over another”:Continue Reading Judge Torres: City Law Compelling Food Delivery Platforms to Share Customer Data With Restaurants Is Unconstitutional Compelled Speech

At least four SDNY lawsuits have been filed against Columbia University relating to the recent campus protests, including a class action complaint filed April 29, accusing the University of breaching its contractual obligation to provide a safe learning environment, insofar as Columbia chose to respond to the protests by making classwork partially remote for the remainder of the school year:

Columbia has in no uncertain terms announced that the university is not safe for its Jewish students. But rather than clear the encampment, the administration decided to take the extraordinary step of shifting to a “hybrid” model of education for the remainder of the academic year, where students that don’t feel safe enough to attend class in person can view the class online. This absurd shift makes no attempt to solve the safety problem on campus, and at the same time, creates two very different educational experiences for Jewish and non-Jewish students. The vast majority of the student population, including these extreme demonstrators, get to attend classes in person, take tests in person, communicate with professors in person, and otherwise take advantage of the campus.

The Jewish students, on the other hand, get a second-class education where they are relegated to their homes to attend classes virtually, stripped of the opportunity to interact meaningfully with other students and faculty and sit for examinations with their peers. This policy shift is a clear admission that the campus is not simply experiencing a protest movement, which has happened to universities across the country for decades, but instead, has become a place that is too dangerous for Columbia’s Jewish students to receive the education they were promised.

The class action is before Judge Torres, who has scheduled a hearing on the plaintiff’s TRO application for tomorrow.

The other cases are:Continue Reading Columbia University Faces Wave of Litigation Over Campus Protests

In an opinion yesterday, the Second Circuit affirmed Judge Torres’s decision (covered here), to reinstate the Democratic Primary on June 23.

The Board of Elections argued that the cancellation was necessary to limit the spread of COVID-19, but the Second Circuit concluded that this “justification is overstated for at least two reasons”:
Continue Reading Second Circuit Upholds Reinstatement of Democratic Primary

Yesterday, Judge Torres issued a preliminary injunction ordering the New York State Board of Elections to reinstate the Democratic presidential primary that it had decided last week to cancel. Former candidate Andrew Yang and a number of his pledged delegates sued to halt the move.

As Judge Torres found, because a primary “actually results in the election of delegates to the Convention,” the cancellation would not only deprive the other presidential candidates of the opportunity to earn votes for the nomination, but would deprive their pledged delegates of the opportunity to influence the party platform and vote on issues of party governance.  Although Judge Torres agreed that “[p]rotecting the public from the spread of COVID-19 is an important state interest,” she was “not convinced that canceling the primary would meaningfully advance that interest,” particularly because there were less drastic alternatives:Continue Reading Judge Torres Orders Reinstatement of New York Democratic Primary

On Monday, the New York State Board of Elections voted to cancel New York’s democratic presidential primary, which it had originally postponed from April due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  In a complaint filed Tuesday, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and a group of candidates running to become pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention sued the Board of Elections to block the move.

Plaintiffs argue that the cancellation would disenfranchise millions of voters, suppress turnout in down-ballot races to the detriment of challengers, deny Yang the opportunity to accumulate delegates and influence at the convention, and establish a precedent that President Trump could use to cancel the November 2020 election.  Plaintiffs allege violations of the right to vote and of procedural due process and are seeking emergency relief.

Plaintiffs argue that the primary can safely proceed if voters are simply allowed to vote by mail, and that it is “cancelling democracy” to simply shut down the primary:
Continue Reading Andrew Yang Sues New York State Board of Elections for Canceling Democratic Primary

In an opinion dated Monday, Judge Torres ruled, after a bench trial, that a shipping company was not liable for the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy to 211 shipping containers that were sitting in the New York Container Terminal and that were filled with Lord & Taylor sweaters and cardigans.  The controlling question was whether the storm was an “Act of God,” which, at least legally speaking, turns on whether the scope of the storm was foreseeable enough for the defendant to have prevented the damage. Judge Torres answered the question “no,” because accurate predictions about the size of the storm surge did not materialize until it was too late:
Continue Reading Judge Torres: Hurricane Sandy Was Unforeseeable “Act of God”