This case was a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 69, which expanded mandatory DNA testing to include people arrested for but not convicted of felonies and certain former felons no longer under supervision. Plaintiffs argued that these provisions violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments by subjecting individuals who had not been convicted or were no longer under criminal justice supervision to compulsory DNA sampling. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing and that their claims were not ripe for adjudication. The court reasoned that Proposition 69 is not retroactive, so the named plaintiffs faced no realistic threat of DNA testing, there was no history of enforcement against similarly situated persons, and no specific warnings or threats of testing had been issued.
This case involves a class action lawsuit filed in California state court by consumers against manufacturers of head lice remedies, alleging the products are ineffective due to lice resistance, with claims under California law seeking damages, injunction, and fees. Defendants removed the case to federal court asserting diversity jurisdiction, but plaintiffs moved to remand. The court remanded the case to state court, finding that defendants failed to establish complete diversity of citizenship among all parties and that the amount in controversy did not exceed $75,000 per plaintiff, as individual damages were minimal, claims could not be aggregated, and arguments regarding injunctive relief costs, punitive damages, and attorneys' fees were insufficient. The court also granted plaintiffs' request for attorneys' fees and costs incurred due to the removal.
In Danh v. Demore, two lawful permanent residents who had been convicted of fraudulently obtaining AFDC benefits challenged their mandatory detention without bond under Immigration and Nationality Act § 236(c) while facing removal proceedings. The petitioners sought a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that the statute violated their substantive due process right to freedom from arbitrary detention and their procedural due process right to an individualized hearing on flight risk and dangerousness. The district court granted the application, vacated its prior dismissal order, and directed the immigration judge to hold a bond hearing within two business days, concluding that § 236(c) impermissibly required detention without any opportunity to assess the individuals' circumstances. The court reasoned that the mandatory detention provision was not narrowly tailored to legitimate government interests and deprived detainees of a meaningful opportunity to be heard.
This case involves four authors who sued UnCover, a document retrieval service owned by CARL and Dialog corporations, for allegedly infringing their copyrights by copying and delivering their individual articles from periodicals without the authors' permission or payment, though UnCover had paid publishers. The plaintiffs sought partial summary adjudication to construe section 201(c) of the Copyright Act, which grants publishers a limited privilege to reproduce contributions in collective works. The court granted the motion, holding that section 201(c) permits reproduction only as part of the original collective work, any revision of it, or later collective works in the same series, and does not authorize separate copying of individual articles. The court reasoned that the statute's plain language limits the publishers' privilege in this way, leaving reproduction rights with the authors, and rejected arguments for a broader reading based on efficiency or publisher contributions.
This case involved a federal habeas corpus petition filed by Anthony challenging his state criminal conviction. After an initial mixed petition was dismissed, Anthony filed a petition with one exhausted claim, obtained a stay to exhaust five additional claims in state court, and then moved to amend the stayed petition to add those claims. The court denied the motion to amend, holding that adding the claims would constitute an abuse of the writ under Rule 9(b) and precedents like McCleskey v. Zant. The reasoning was that Anthony lacked cause for his delay in exhausting and presenting the claims earlier, as no external impediment or new evidence was shown, and he failed to demonstrate a fundamental miscarriage of justice through factual innocence. The court lifted the stay and reinstated proceedings on the single remaining claim.
This case involves a dispute over the proper construction of three patents related to the design and manufacture of EEPROM computer memory chips used in devices like programmable car radios. Plaintiff Atmel Corp. sued defendant Information Storage Devices, Inc. for patent infringement in 1995, prompting a Markman hearing on claim construction along with related motions. The court construed the claims of the '750, '776, and '811 patents based primarily on intrinsic evidence from the claims, specifications, and prosecution history, applying ordinary meanings unless otherwise indicated and special rules for means-plus-function claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 6. It denied the parties' cross-motions to strike declarations and set a briefing schedule for the remaining issues on defendant's motion for summary judgment of indefiniteness.