Weekly Brief: Patent Jury Awards, Law Firm Hiring, Scalia's Hat
After receiving a jury verdict awarding $452 million in damages against a rival company for misappropriation of trade secrets, the prevailing party, Insulet Corp., may have to choose between portions of the damages award or...more
Released yearly in December, the American Tort Reform (ATR) Foundation publishes its annual “Judicial Hellhole” rankings for the upcoming year. The Hellholes represent the worst of the worst jurisdictions to defend tort...more
As we previously reported, a Los Angeles jury awarded one of the largest verdicts in history in a sexual assault case in June 2024, doling out a massive $900 million verdict in favor of a plaintiff in a suit against...more
In today’s legal landscape, the defense industry faces the unprecedented challenge of Nuclear Verdicts®. They pose a financial threat to businesses and individuals alike. It is vital for defense attorneys to embrace a...more
What is a Nuclear Verdict®? We have all heard news of juries awarding incomprehensible piles of money in lawsuits where the injuries and the verdict just don’t seem to add up. These cases may leave you scratching your head...more
Philadelphia is famously known for Rocky, soft pretzels, and infamously, for snowballing Santa Claus , but it is now becoming notable for Nuclear Verdicts®. In 2023, the five highest jury verdicts in Pennsylvania were...more
On May 20, 2024, US District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald rejected a popular over-the-counter eyedrop seller’s bid for a new trial and granted a pricing injunction impacting two large wholesale membership clubs following...more
On April 18, 2024, a jury in Seattle, Washington, determined that a not-for-profit hospital system employer would be required to pay nearly $100 million for time clock rounding and meal period violations, raising concerns for...more
The risk of a large verdict has always been a major factor in any litigation. In recent years, the potential for a punitive damages instruction reaching a jury and a consequent verdict has grown as well. US juries have not...more
“Social inflation” is a phrase that crops up these days when people are talking about civil damage awards. As an explanation for a wave in so-called “nuclear verdicts,” social inflation refers to the phenomena of typical...more
Data compiled by the American Transportation Research Institute shows that lawsuits targeting the trucking industry have increased at an exponential pace, seen in both the volume of cases and the size of verdict awards. When...more
On September 19, 2022, a Cook County (Illinois) jury awarded $363 million to 70-year-old plaintiff Susan Kamuda in the first of many lawsuits against industrial sterilization company Sterigenics. These lawsuits accuse the...more
A jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California last month found that an international beer conglomerate’s marketing of one of its drinks infringed on the trademark of a smaller, independent...more
Throughout California and the United States, there is a rising trend of Nuclear Verdicts™, defined as jury verdicts in excess of $10 million or that are wildly disproportionate to the injuries in the case. A new Senate Bill...more
SAN DIEGO (March 14, 2022) – The inaugural Nuclear Verdicts Defense Institute will take place June 23-26, 2022, in San Diego, led by an esteemed faculty of legal defense experts, including top trial attorneys, a specialist in...more
After a Florida law firm and one of its attorneys (defendants) were hit with a $5 million jury verdict in a case arising out of an underlying medical malpractice action, they—along with the firm's insurer—appealed. Because...more
Reynaud v. Technicolor Creative Servs. USA, Inc., 46 Cal. App. 5th 1007 (2020) - Plaintiffs Michael and Fiona Reynaud (both British citizens) sued Michael’s former employer, Technicolor, for negligence based upon its...more
In Pinter-Brown v. Regents of the University of California, the California Court of Appeal’s Second Appellate District recently reversed a blockbuster $13 million judgment that was entered against UCLA in favor of one of its...more
The long-running legal saga between Enterprise Products Partners (“Enterprise”) and Energy Transfer Partners (“ETP”) may finally be nearing its end after the Texas Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision last Friday,...more
In a procedurally complicated case involving allegations of both utility and design patent infringement, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that a district court’s piecemeal approach to a design patent...more
Addressing a trademark owner’s Rule 59(e) motion to amend the jury’s damage award, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the trademark owner was not entitled to an increased damages award after discovering...more
In a decision unsurprising to anyone familiar with what California juries have been up to lately, fast-food titan Jack in the Box was ordered to pay $15.4 million (including a staggering $10 million in punitive damages) last...more
For the second time this calendar year, a Los Angeles jury ordered an employer to pay $11 million to an employee who claimed to have been sexually harassed. And, once again, the amount of punitive damages ($8 million) dwarfed...more
Just another day in paradise in Los Angeles… Unless you happen to be an employer. Continuing the recent spate of multi-million dollar verdicts, an LA jury awarded a former police officer $7 million on her sex discrimination...more
Earlier this month, a federal jury in North Carolina hit Walmart with a $95.5 million verdict for its willful infringement of Variety Stores, Inc.’s “BACKYARD” trademarks. The jury awarded $45.5 million as a reasonable...more