Category Archives: Supreme Court

Supreme Court – The latest news about Supreme Court from the Lawstarz Blog – Latest news and coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Blog, Business Law, Legal News, Supreme Court

Deadmau5 Sues Vape Company for Trademark Infringement

MARCH 31, 2016 6:56pm PT by Ashley Cullins

The deadmodz vape brand is confusing deadmau5 fans who think the electronic music star is behind the electronic cigarette line, according to the lawsuit.

Electronic dance music master Joel Zimmerman says West Coast Vape Supply is intentionally infringing on his deadmau5 trademark, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday in California.The deadmodz electronic cigarette line is trying to capitalize on Zimmerman’s fame, and according to the lawsuit the products “overlap with, are closely related to deadmau5’s goods and services and/or represent a natural zone of expansion for deadmau5, and such goods are or would be marketed and sold to the same types of consumers through the same channels of trade.”

Zimmerman is suing for trademark infringement and false association, and is seeking statutory and punitive damages and a permanent injunction to ban West Coast Vape from using deadmodz.

His attorney Irene Lee sent a statement to The Hollywood Reporter saying they’re suing to protect the artist’s trademark and his fans.

“Our client faces unscrupulous people trying to take advantage goodwill associated with his intellectual property and his fame,” Lee writes. “We are grateful for our fans and believe it’s our obligation to make sure our fans are not duped into buying things that deadmau5 did not authorize.”

The lawsuit claims deadmau5 is not only a trademark, but a brand Zimmerman has been building for more than a decade. It also explains the origins of his onstage persona.

In 2002 Zimmerman took his computer apart and found a dead mouse inside. When he posted the story online, people started referring to him as “dead mouse guy.” He embraced the new nickname and tried to change is screen name to “deadmouse” but found the Internet Relay Chat channel he was using limited usernames to eight characters. Using leet spelling, he became deadmau5.

Not only is the name “deadmodz” similar to “deadmau5,” Lee argues, but also the vape company copied the bubble font Zimmerman uses in his logo.

Lee shared this photo, which is an exhibit to the suit:
Screen Shot 2016-04-02 at 2.06.57 AM

In an effort to avoid the litigation, Zimmerman’s transactional attorney Dina LaPolt sent several letters to Alham Benyameen, the principal of West Coast Vape.

After an initial cease and desist letter, sent on Feb. 5, Benyameen substantially changed his website and logo design.

In response LaPolt made it clear that wasn’t good enough and tried again to settle out of court in a Feb. 19 letter.

“Please understand that your attempted changes do not negate that fact that you have violated and continue to violate our client’s rights, and thus are liable for, among other things, trademark and copyright infringement and attendant damages,” LaPolt writes. “In fact, your changes only highlight your acknowledgement and concession of wrongdoing, which admittedly is willful, knowing and intentional.”

When they didn’t respond, Lee prepared the suit.

“Instead of conceding their wrongdoing and agreeing to comply with our requests, they refused to acknowledge deadmau5’s intellectual property rights and their wrongdoing, necessitating this legal action,” she writes in her statement to THR. “We intend to vigorously protect deadmau5’s rights.”

West Coast Vape did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sourced From – http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/deadmau5-sues-vape-company-trademark-879815

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Legal News, Personal Injury, Supreme Court

ConAgra must pay $108.9 million in lawsuit over fatal 2009 blast; verdict likely a Nebraska record

The Slim Jim plant in Garner, North Carolina, after the explosion on June 9, 2009. Four people died as a result of the explosion, which was caused by a natural gas leak during water heater installation.

POSTED: FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2016 1:50 PM | UPDATED: 12:13 AM, SUN MAR 27, 2016.

By Russell Hubbard / World-Herald staff writer

ConAgra Foods, the Fortune 500 company that is moving its headquarters from Omaha to Chicago, has been found liable for $108.9 million in a civil lawsuit that looks to be the largest of its kind in Nebraska history.

The case is related to damages and injuries stemming from a fatal explosion at a Slim Jim plant in North Carolina in 2009. ConAgra told The World-Herald that it plans to appeal.

The company was found Friday to be “negligent” in the explosion and the resulting injuries by a civil lawsuit jury in Douglas County District Court.

Nebraska courts don’t keep formal records of the jury verdicts leading to the largest monetary damages. Recent large ones have included the $43.8 million verdict last year in Douglas County Court in a dispute between rival software firms. The Fraser Stryker law firm of Omaha said at the time that it believed the total to be the largest in state history.

Lawyers in the courtroom moments after the ConAgra verdict said they thought it was the largest, but none wished to say so formally.

The ConAgra lawsuit had its genesis in payments made to the injured after the 2009 explosion, which happened during a water heater installation at the giant food-processing plant in Garner, North Carolina. Four people died, and many were injured. California-based Jacobs Engineering, which had a contract to perform services at the plant, in later years paid about $108 million to settle lawsuits that said it was at fault.

Later, Jacobs decided to sue ConAgra to recoup the money, saying it had no role in the explosion. The Douglas County jury agreed Friday, finding Jacobs not negligent.

“We are grateful for the court’s and the jury’s time and dedication to this case, and that our client Jacobs Engineering was vindicated after seven years,” said Gil Keteltas, Jacobs’ lead trial lawyer with the Baker Hostetler firm of Washington, D.C.

While sizable, the $108.9 million is a fraction of ConAgra’s $16 billion in revenue last year from sales of products such as Slim Jims, Chef Boyardee pasta and Alexia frozen side dishes.

The jury award comes amid rough sledding in Omaha for ConAgra. The company said last year that it plans to move the headquarters, in Omaha since the 1920s, to Chicago sometime this year. The company also eliminated 1,500 U.S. jobs and has embarked on a plan to save $300 million annually via a cost-cutting plan.

ConAgra spokesman Dan Hare said Friday that, “While we respect the jury’s decision, we have several strong grounds for appeal, which we plan to pursue.”

Assisting in securing the verdict were Baker Hostetler’s Bob Abrams, and Ed Tricker and others with the Lincoln firm Woods & Aitken.

“It was a Herculean task,” Douglas County District Judge Gary Randall said from the bench, describing of the work of the 12-person jury, whom he thanked for sitting through weeks of detailed and sometimes tedious arguments about the fine points of contract law.

The dispute emerged after the explosion, caused by a natural gas leak during water heater installation. The jury found that it was 70 percent ConAgra’s fault and 30 percent the fault of another contractor that will not have to pay any of the $108.9 million because the jury found that ConAgra controlled the actions of that contractor.

Jacobs was another contractor on the Slim Jim site, performing a variety of services for ConAgra. Because of that, it became the target of lawsuits by the injured, lawsuits that Jacobs wound up settling for about $108 million. Companies sometimes pay settlements to avoid the expense of defending lawsuits in court, whether they engaged in disputed conduct or not.

In the Douglas County case, Jacobs, a engineering firm with about $12 billion in annual revenue, said it deserved its money back. Jacobs said it had no role in the explosion.

After the explosion, ConAgra shut the Slim Jim plant and donated the land to the North Carolina town, along with $3 million for a community center.

Contact the writer: 402-444-3197, russell.hubbard@owh.com

Complete coverage: ConAgra moving headquarters to Chicago

Correction: ConAgra is liable for $108 million in damages sought by Jacobs Engineering; an earlier version of this story misstated the amount for which the jury found ConAgra liable.

Sourced From – http://www.omaha.com/money/conagra-liable-for-million-after-fatal-explosion-likely-the-largest/article_81f336ce-f2ba-11e5-840e-f3bca4f3f045.html

Blog, Business Law, Criminal, Legal News, Supreme Court

What today’s Supreme Court decision means for the future of legal weed

By Christopher Ingraham March 21 at 1:50 PM

The Supreme Court’s decision today to toss out a lawsuit that could have brought Colorado’s legal marijuana boom to a screeching halt hasn’t deterred opponents of the national legalization effort.

Already, the plaintiffs and their supporters are looking to regroup. “The Court’s decision does not bar additional challenges to Colorado’s scheme in federal district court,” said Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson in a statement.

Oklahoma and Nebraska asked the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to Colorado’s marijuana legalization framework, saying that the state’s legalization regime was causing marijuana to flow across the borders into their own states, creating law enforcement headaches.

But by a 6-2 majority, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, without comment.

[Supreme Court turns down case that challenges Colorado marijuana law]

In a statement, Peterson’s office said it would work with Oklahoma and other states “to determine the best next steps toward vindicating the rule of law.”

Other opponents are remaining optimistic, as well. “It’s obviously a disappointment,” said Kevin Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana in an email. “But we think legalization will be defeated on its own policy merits,” he added.

They’re facing an increasingly steep uphill battle.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that since marijuana is illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), it can’t be regulated at the state level. But numerous legal experts have pointed out that assumption is incorrect.

“Congress has no power to compel states to prohibit the cultivation, possession and transfer of marijuana,” according to Randy Barnett, an attorney who litigated a Supreme Court case exploring the limits of the CSA. “In the absence of such state prohibition, all such activities are completely legal under state law, notwithstanding that they are illegal under federal law,” he wrote last year.

In short, Congress can say that marijuana is illegal at the federal level. But if a state doesn’t want to enforce that prohibition itself, it doesn’t have to do so. And if it wants to go one step further and set up a market to regulate the trade in the drug, it’s free to do that as well.

“This is the result that most of us were expecting,” legal professor Sam Kamin, who was part of the task force implementing Colorado’s marijuana laws, said in an email. “This never seemed like the right case to test the power of the states to tax and regulate marijuana (everyone seems to agree that they have the right to legalize marijuana).”

The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief last December urging the Supreme Court to throw the lawsuit out. “With the federal government uninterested in bringing such a suit at the moment, this seems to take things out of the courts and into the political process for the near term,” Kamen said.

Legalization advocates say that while the decision likely won’t have any big practical effects in the near-term, it does send a signal to other states mulling their own marijuana policy in the coming years. “The Supreme Court’s rejection of this misguided effort to undo cautious and effective state-level regulation of marijuana is excellent news for the many other states looking to adopt similar reforms in 2016 and beyond,” said Tamar Todd, director of the office of legal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement.

Observers on both sides of the issue point out that the court’s majority did not issue any explanation of their dismissal, which is standard practice in cases like this. The justices may have objected to the lawsuit on its merits, or they may have simply felt that it wasn’t proper for them to take up the case at this time, preferring instead to let the state-level legalization experiments play out.

“Of course, everything may change with a new administration in 2017,” law professor Sam Kamin said in an email. “But with marijuana on the ballot in another big handful of states this fall, the genie may be out of the bottle by the time the next president is sworn into office.”

—–

Full Article Sourced From – https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/21/what-todays-supreme-court-decision-means-for-the-future-of-legal-weed/

Blog, Business Law, Criminal, Legal News, Military Laws, Supreme Court

Legal Briefs Flood in to Support Apple

By JOSEPH PLAMBECK MARCH 4, 2016

Sourced From – http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/technology/legal-briefs-flood-in-to-support-apple.html?_r=0

The arguments differed, but the main message was the same: We side with Apple.

Dozens of companies and individuals have now filed briefs in support of Apple’s position in its legal battle with the F.B.I. over privacy. The official support, at this point, did not come as a particular surprise. But the variety of legal arguments was interesting nonetheless.

As Nick Wingfield reported, Apple’s supporters challenged “every legal facet of the government’s case, like its free speech implications, the importance of encryption and concerns about government overreach.”

The government will not take these arguments lightly. Expect many of them to be addressed when Apple and the Justice Department file briefs, and when the federal court holds a hearing on the matter in California on March 22.

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Drug Companies, Legal News, Personal Injury, Supreme Court

Monsanto Given Legal Shield in a Chemical Safety Bill

By ERIC LIPTON 

WASHINGTON — Facing hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits, the giant biotechnology companyMonsanto last year received a legislative gift from the House of Representatives, a one-paragraph addition to a sweeping chemical safety bill that could help shield it from legal liability for a toxic chemical only it made.

Monsanto insists it did not ask for the addition. House aides deny it is a gift at all. But the provision would benefitthe only manufacturer in the United States of now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls, chemicals known as PCBs, a mainstay of Monsanto sales for decades. The PCB provision is one of several sticking points that negotiators must finesse before Congress can pass a law to revamp the way thousands of chemicals are regulated in the United States.

“Call me a dreamer, but I wish for a Congress that would help cities with their homeless crises instead of protecting multinational corporations that poison our environment,” said Pete Holmes, the city attorney for Seattle, one of six cities suing Monsanto to help cover the costs of reducing PCB discharge from their sewers.

The House and the Senate last year both passed versions of legislation to replace the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, a law that theEnvironmental Protection Agency acknowledged had become so unworkable that as many as 1,000 hazardous chemicals still on sale today needed to be evaluated to see if they should be banned or restricted.

Democrats and Republicans—along with the chemical industry and even some environmentalists—agree that the pending legislation would be a major improvement over existing law.But from legal liability shields to state-based regulatory authority, the House and Senate versions have major differences to resolve. The remaining disputes revolve around the basics of pre-emption: Who gets to sue? Andwho gets to regulate the chemical industry?

A Monsanto spokeswoman said the company had received no special treatment from the House or the Senate.

“Monsanto does not consider either version of the bill, with respect to the effect on preemption, to be a ‘gift,’ ” the spokeswoman, Charla Lord, said.

Already, attorneys general and top environmental regulators from 15 states have written to leaders in Congress demanding changes.

“Our future work depends on striking the right balance to strengthen the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s abilities and funding, without limiting state powers in creating and enforcing needed protections,” said aletter, obtained by The New York Times, sent by the top environmental regulators in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia.

Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 9.57.25 PM

Some of the most vociferous objections relate to the so-called Monsanto Clause. The provision does not mention the company by name, but between the early 1930s and 1977, Monsanto manufactured almost all of the 1.25 billion pounds of PCBs sold in the United States.

The chemicals were initially admired for their ability to prevent fires and explosions in electrical transformers and other equipment. But as the use of PCBs skyrocketed nationwide in products as varied as paints, pesticides and even carbonless copy paper, evidence mounted that they were contaminating the environment and potentially causing health problemsincluding cancer and immune-system complications. The E.P.A. banned their production in 1979.

PCB litigation has surged in the last year as cities and school systems struggle to comply with directives from federal and state regulators to reduce PCB levels in sewer discharge and in caulk once used to construct schools. Separately, a group of individuals who received diagnoses of a form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma sued Monsanto last year, claiming the company should pay damages.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a June reportaccompanying its version of the legislation, asserted that neither existing toxic chemical law nor any revisions pending in Congress should be seen as a way to “pre-empt, displace or supplant” the right to sue for damages in lawsuits like the ones filed against Monsanto.

The House also voted to preserve the right to sue if individuals or local governments believe they have been harmed by a chemical, regardless of future federal regulations of the substance. But a critical paragraph added to the House bill in late May made sure past regulatory requirements by the E.P.A. would continue to disqualify legal claims, and it specifically referred to the section of the 1976 toxic chemical law governing PCBs, giving Monsanto clearer authority in the future to ask judges to dismiss lawsuits filed against it.

Congressional aides involved in the drafting said the language was inserted at the request of Republican staff members at the House Energy and Commerce Committee. One Republican committee aide disputed any suggestion that this was a gift to Monsanto, but he said he was not allowed to discuss the issue on the record.

And Ms. Lord, the Monsanto spokeswoman, said the company did not ask for the change.

Read Full  Article – http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/business/monsanto-could-benefit-from-a-chemical-safety-bill.html?_r=0