Early last year I promised to keep on eye out for five then-upcoming high-profile trials. They were: Apple v. Dept of Justice; Nevada v. Telles, Illinois v. Crimo; Trump's hush-money case; RealPage (the property management software concern). Today I will catch up on each of them. 1. There has been no APPLE trial yet. US District Court Judge Julien Xavier Neals has a motion to dismiss under advisement and some news is expected soon on whether the trial will proceed and on what schedule. 2. The TELLES case has been resolved. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in August, and he was sentenced in October to 28 years in prison. 3. Robert CRIMO, suspect in the Highland Park 4th-of-July-parade shootings, backed out of a plea deal this summer. Near year's end, the Judge denied a motion to exclude much of him interrogation video. A trial is expected shortly. 4. Donald TRUMP's hush money case? That one went to trial (you may have heard). ...
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We proceed to some cases in which the court's concern is the interpretation of statutes. Copyright and Fair Use 18-956 Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. (04/05/2021) (supremecourt.gov) In intellectual property, this session will be remembered for its decision in the procedurally complicated Google v. Oracle. Even that name is resonant: it suggests a legal battle of corporate giants of King Kong versus Godzilla proportions. I wrote about this case in this blog in October, and I refer those readers who might want background to that discussion . It was obvious by the time the case was argued last fall that there were two ways Google could win: either it could convince the judges that application programming interfaces (APIs) were not copyrightable, OR it could persuade them that this use of the Java API (now owned by Oracle) is a fair use even if the copyright exists. At argument, Stephen Breyer made a fascinating observation. He compared the Java API...
As noted yesterday, today we'll discuss Wisconsin Central v. US, the SAS Institute case, and Chavez-Meza v. US. These deal, respectively, with the definition of "compensation" for tax purposes, patent law administrative challenges, and the use of the sentencing guidelines. Coming off of the dispute we discussed yesterday, which placed employees and management in stark opposition, Wisconsin Central may seem refreshing and even wholesome: a private company and its employees working together to oppose a government encroachment on their dealings (successfully, it turns out.) Actually, various subsidiaries of the Canadian National Railway Company sued the United States for a $13 million tax refund. Their attorneys argued on the basis of the language in the Railroad Retirement Tax Act, which says that the compensation to be taxed includes "any form of money remuneration paid to an individual for services rendered as an employee." The US has been tax...
Continuing my line of posts creating an arbitrary list of THE landmark case for each year. This time, we'll work our way from the moment of the lip syncing of Milli Vanilli to that of the sexual orality of Monica Lewinsky. I've posted one of them as the image for this entry. 1990, Cruzan v.Missouri -- States may require "clear and convincing evidence" of patient's end-of-life wishes (living wills). 1991, Harmelin v. Michigan -- life sentence without possibility of parole for possession of cocaine held not to be cruel and unusual punishment. 1992, Casey v. Planned Parenthood -- re-affirmation of right to an abortion as part of privacy right. 1993, Daubert v. Merrill Dow -- creation of the Daubert standard for the testimony of expert witnesses. 1994, Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet -- Satmar Hasidic Jews can't get their own public school district. 1995, Adarand Construction v. Pena -- affirmative action as race-based set asides....