Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 182: Listen and Learn -- Policy Exclusions (Evidence)
Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 281: Listen and Learn -- Character Evidence
Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 121: Listen and Learn -- Character Evidence
Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 259: Listen and Learn -- Relevance in Evidence
I remember listening to Justice Frank Cleckley of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, my professor for Evidence, open his first lecture with a discussion of Federal Rule of Evidence 103. As a young law student, I was...more
Arizona employer cannot exclude settlement communications from former employee’s retaliation complaint - In Flores v. Rafi Law Group PLLC, the plaintiff accused her law firm employer of retaliating against her by (i)...more
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the exclusion of a drug patent in a medical malpractice case, finding that the highly technical language of the patent would more likely confuse a lay jury than be...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a grant of summary judgment made prior to discovery, holding that the district court abused its discretion in finding a draft contract agreement admissible under Federal...more
Provisur Technologies, Inc. v. Weber, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2021-1942, -1975 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 27, 2022) - In this week’s Case of the Week, the Federal Circuit reviewed an IPR decision and addressed the Patent Trial and Appeal...more
What began as a trademark infringement dispute concerning electronic cigarettes has evolved into a never-ending series of discovery issues, and lessons about the limits of Federal Rule of Evidence 502 and privilege waivers...more
Class action disability discrimination cases can be particularly difficult. While there is little question of whether a particular individual is in a protected group in a typical case involving race, gender or age, the...more
Accordingly, we hold that the voluntary disclosure of a privileged attorney-client communication constitutes a waiver of the privilege as to all other communications concerning the same subject matter when the trial court...more
[co-author: Jamie Dohopolski] Last year, the continued global COVID-19 pandemic forced American courts to largely continue the procedures set in place in 2020. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was no...more
Directly addressing the application and operation of the Federal Rules of Evidence in proceedings before the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (Board), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed-in-part and...more
Late last week, the Law Court unequivocally adopted the integrated business records exception to the hearsay rule under Rule 803(6) of the Maine Rules of Evidence in The Bank of New York Mellon v. Shone. It held...more
Expert witness testimony is a frequent (almost ubiquitous) feature of patent litigation, if only because questions of the state of the art or the understanding of one having ordinary skill in the art are almost always at...more
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a district court’s ruling to allow in evidence a mortgage loan account history printout that included entries from two prior loan servicers as a business record exception to...more
In 2016, a California jury decided that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” did not infringe on Randy Wolfe’s “Taurus”. However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed that decision and has now called for a do-over,...more
In the Ninth Circuit, defendants typically have two tools available to ask a court to consider in connection with a motion to dismiss information outside the four corners of a complaint. First, a defendant may file a request...more
In recent years the buzz in organizational criminal liability has come from so-called “individual liability” for acts of corporate wrongdoing—the idea that managers and employees are not immune from individual prosecution for...more
Is Maryland drifting toward Daubert? The Court of Special Appeals of Maryland seemed to confirm (or re-confirm) this as recently as in Sissoko v. State. ...more
Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Chris Lazarini provided insight on a case in which a former broker sought to overturn a jury verdict finding him guilty of securities fraud, obstruction of justice and wire fraud by arguing, among...more
On July 11, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction of a case in which it is expected to finally decide, conclusively, whether Florida courts are to apply the Frye or Daubert standard to determine admissibility...more
On July 20, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in In re OptumInsight denied OptumInsight’s petition for writ of mandamus on privilege waiver. The court held that the District Court for the...more
In a rare move, the Second Circuit (Jacobs, Pooler, Hall) overturned Armani Cummings’s convictions for murder, conspiracy, and multiple drugs and firearms offenses. The Court reversed based on violation of the hearsay...more
Finding that Texas state courts lacked authority to recognize common-law discovery privileges, the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fifth District refused to recognize the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s recently...more
While browsing back issues of the indispensable Allen’s Trademark Digest, the blurb for the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board’s decision in the appeal In re Micros Systems, Inc. caught my eye. It was a rarely-seen reversal of an...more
FEDERAL CIRCUIT CASES - Federal Circuit Remands Case For New Damages Trial in Design Patent Case - On Tuesday, September 29, 2015, the Federal Circuit remanded a case for a new damages trial in a design patent...more