This case involved two men who were denied a marriage license in Orange County, California, challenging the state's man-woman marriage statutes and sections 2 and 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act on grounds including equal protection, due process, privacy, and full faith and credit under the U.S. Constitution. The court abstained under the Pullman doctrine from deciding the constitutionality of the California statutes pending completion of related state court proceedings, reasoning that the case touched on sensitive social policy, a state ruling could moot or reshape the federal issues, and state law was uncertain. It upheld section 3 of DOMA as constitutional, concluding that the opposite-sex limitation on federal marriage benefits was a rational classification that did not implicate a fundamental right to marry the person of one's choice.
In Doran v. Del Taco, Inc., a paraplegic plaintiff who uses a wheelchair sued a restaurant under the Americans with Disabilities Act and related California statutes, alleging that architectural barriers prevented full and equal access. The parties settled the underlying claims for injunctive relief and damages, leaving only the plaintiff's motion for nearly $40,000 in attorneys' fees to be decided by the court. The court denied the fee request in its entirety. It held that, as an exercise of discretion under 42 U.S.C. § 12205, recovery of attorneys' fees requires the plaintiff to have first provided the defendant with an unambiguous pre-litigation warning notice that specifically identified the claimed violations and afforded a reasonable opportunity to cure them. The court found the letter sent in this case insufficiently specific and therefore concluded that the lawsuit had not been shown to be necessary.
This case involves a copyright infringement dispute where plaintiff Milton H. Greene Archives, Inc. alleged that defendant BPI Communications, Inc. infringed copyrights in seven photographs of Marilyn Monroe by including them in the book Blonde Heat without permission. Defendant moved for summary judgment on grounds of waiver via a prior settlement release and lack of infringement, while plaintiff cross-moved on infringement and affirmative defenses. The court denied defendant's waiver motion due to conflicting extrinsic evidence on the parties' intent regarding whether the release extended to Photofest's customers, creating a triable issue. It granted defendant's infringement motion because the photographs had been distributed to the public without copyright notice, constituting general publication that invalidated the copyrights and placed the works in the public domain, while denying plaintiff's infringement motion as moot on other issues. The motions on affirmative defenses were rendered moot by the infringement ruling.
This case concerned whether a California school district must provide parents of special education students with copies of their children's copyrighted test protocols under California Education Code section 56504, or whether federal copyright law prevents such disclosure. The court ruled that providing the copies constitutes fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 and that federal copyright law does not preempt the state statute. The district had standing to seek declaratory relief because it faced a real threat of liability from copyright owners if it complied with the state's compliance order. The core reasoning focused on the fair use factors, including the nonprofit educational purpose for parents preparing for IEP meetings, the limited nature of the copying, and the lack of market harm to the test publishers when appropriate safeguards like confidentiality agreements are used.
The case involves a former employee suing his employer, a seller of heating and cooling equipment, under the federal False Claims Act and equivalent California and Nevada statutes. The plaintiff alleged that the company had a policy of selling items to government employees for personal use while billing government entities, and he brought claims for false claims violations, conspiracy, and employment retaliation after his termination. Defendants moved to dismiss the state-law claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under 31 U.S.C. § 3732(b), arguing that no single transaction involved both federal and state payments. The court denied the motion, holding that the statutory “same transaction or occurrence” requirement is satisfied by an alleged system or scheme of false claims. The decision relied on analogies to broad judicial interpretations of similar phrasing in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 13, 15, and 20, which treat company policies or continuous courses of conduct as a single transaction.
The case involved a federal habeas corpus petition filed by Jaime Pano after his state court convictions for kidnapping, carjacking, second-degree robbery, and making terrorist threats, all with firearm enhancements, resulting in a 20-year prison sentence. Pano claimed that federal and state due process required trial courts to provide defendants notice and a meaningful opportunity to object before applying waiver to claims of sentencing error. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation, denied the petition, and dismissed the action. The court reasoned that under AEDPA standards, the state court's rejection of the claim was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, as Pano had received an adequate opportunity to object during the sentencing hearing.