A proposed amendment to Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which governs the admissibility of expert testimony in federal court, could clarify the evidentiary burden on proponents of expert testimony and a court’s role regarding its admissibility. Motions under Rule 702, frequently called Daubert motions after the Supreme Court’s opinion Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., are used to limit or otherwise exclude an expert’s testimony to a jury. These motions are often critical to a case’s success, especially in fields that rely heavily on experts such as antitrust, product liability, toxic torts, and environmental litigation. An amendment to Rule 702 currently under consideration looks to clarify the proper evidentiary standard for such motions.
Supreme Court Excuses Inadvertent Legal Errors in Copyright Applications
The United States Supreme Court, in Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., a recent 6-3 decision, found that innocent legal errors in copyright applications do not preclude copyright holders from taking advantage of the safe harbor provision of the Copyright Act, which protects registrants from having their copyrights invalidated due to inadvertent errors. The Court’s ruling therefore made clear that such errors in copyright applications—including both mistakes of law and mistakes of fact—will rarely be the basis for invalidation.
Ninth Circuit Splits From the Second, Third and Fourth Circuits in “Brain Twister” Arbitration Case
Arbitration provisions are common features of commercial agreements. Arbitration is often touted as a cost-effective alternative to litigation that provides contract parties the freedom to decide everything from what law the arbitrator should apply, to what issues the arbitrator should resolve. The parties can even delegate to the arbitrator the issue of what should and should not be arbitrated (also known as arbitrability issues) by incorporating a delegation clause in their arbitration agreement.
Federal Judge Finds Copyright Issues “Embedded” in Social Media Re-Posts
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York recently denied a motion to dismiss in a copyright dispute involving the unlicensed “embedding” of a social media video. In doing so, the court explicitly and definitively rejected the Ninth Circuit’s “server rule,” under which the Ninth Circuit held that re-posting of online content does not constitute a separate act of infringement where the infringing copy is stored only on third party servers. Instead, Judge Rakoff held that by re-posting the copyrighted content online, defendants had implicated plaintiffs’ exclusive display right – regardless of whether they created and stored a copy on their own servers. The opinion states that to hold otherwise would be to “make[] the display right merely a subset of the reproduction right.” Nicklen v. Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., et al.
Ninth Circuit “Scraps” Old Construction of CFAA in Closely Watched LinkedIn Data Scraping Case
This past month, professional networking site LinkedIn Corp., was given more time to file a petition for certiorari challenging a Ninth Circuit finding that hiQ Labs Inc. (“hiQ”), a workforce data analytics startup, did not violate federal hacking laws by “scraping” LinkedIn member profiles without LinkedIn’s permission.
Data scraping, or web scraping, is a method where a computer program extracts data from websites. The data that is extracted is often considered to be human-readable information. The question of who owns data that is scraped from public websites is now at the doorstep of one of the largest technology social media companies in the United States.
A District Court’s Discretion to Sanction Is Broad, “But For” a Causal Limitation
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified in Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Haeger that even a district court’s exercise of broad discretion to impose a civil sanction for a litigant’s bad faith conduct has to be limited by a causal link.
The parties in Goodyear had reached a settlement of the underlying product liability case after several years of contentious discovery. After the settlement, however, plaintiffs, the Haegers, learned (and Goodyear, the defendant, conceded) that Goodyear had withheld certain information that the Haegers had requested early and often during the discovery stage. Accordingly, the Haegers asked the District Court to impose sanctions on Goodyear for discovery fraud. Because the parties had already settled, the only sanction available was to award the Haegers attorney’s fees and costs expended in the litigation.
Courts Split on Definition of a “Return” for Tax Discharge
On October 11, 2016, Martin Smith petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to review a decision by the Ninth Circuit. After Smith failed to file a timely tax return, the IRS assessed a deficiency against him. Smith filed a belated Form 1040, and the IRS determined he owed an additional $60,000 in taxes. By this time, Smith was unemployed and insolvent, and ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The opportunity for Smith to discharge his tax debt rests exclusively on the interpretation of two terms in the relevant statute.
The Supreme Court’s Spokeo Decision and its Potential Impact on Privacy and Data Security Class Actions
On May 16, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, ruling that a plaintiff must sufficiently allege an injury that is both concrete and particularized in order to have Article III standing, and further that a “bare procedural violation” of a plaintiff’s statutory right may not be sufficiently “concrete” under this analysis. This ruling has the potential to affect class actions generally, but may prove especially influential in privacy and data security class actions.