Recently in Contract Law Category

In 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began a formal investigation into claims that 2010 Toyota Prius vehicles were experiencing momentary loss of braking capability. A few days later, Toyota announced a voluntary recall of the affected Prii and 2010 Lexus HS 250h vehicles to repair a software glitch that was the alleged culprit. According to the Plaintiffs, Toyota knew about the issues as early as June 2009 but did nothing.

The vehicles were purchased pursuant to written agreements with independent dealerships. Each agreement included a broad arbitration clause that allowed either party to choose arbitration, and allowed the arbitrator to decide the scope of the arbitration. The agreements also waived the right to participate in class action litigation.

Bratz and Barbies may be friends in the toy box, but they're bitter enemies in the courtroom.

This week, the Bratz were back in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals again, in an appeal challenging the damages from the retrial of the last round of litigation over the dolls. Got that?

If not, we'll recap the pertinent details.

Bruce Matthews played football in the National Football League (NFL) for 19 years, first for the Houston Oilers and later for its successor team, the Tennessee Titans (Titans). He retired in 2002. In 2008, Matthews filed for workers’ compensation benefits in California.

Matthews claimed pain and disability resulting from injuries incurred while he was employed by the NFL at “various” locations over years of “playing and practicing professional football.” He didn’t allege that he sustained any particular injury in California.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made it harder for plaintiffs to enforce contracts against countries claiming sovereign immunity this week.

In a 2-1 panel decision, the court concluded that Iraq is not liable for the end of two oil-for-food contracts dating from the Saddam Hussein regime, and that the current Iraqi government is insulated from liability under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) because the case did not involve "legally significant" U.S. commercial activity, reports Reuters.

Did Southern California movers attempt to privatize Operation Fast and Furious by shipping a client’s guns, which were supposed to be in storage, to his new home in the Middle East?

Gary Smallwood contracted with Allied Van Lines, Inc. and SIRVA, Inc. (collectively, AVL) to move some of his household goods from southern California to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and to move the remainder of the goods — including a box full of firearms and ammunition — to storage.

Instead, AVL shipped his weapons to the UAE. When UAE officials discovered Smallwood’s weapons, they arrested him, imprisoned him for 11 days and tricked him into pleading guilty to smuggling firearms.

It looks like the "Winklevi" got the memo; party's over folks.

Finally, the two brothers are calling an end to the Facebook lawsuit and taking the hint that the Supreme Court is unlikely to review their Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case, which was rendered in San Francisco earlier this year.

At least that's what they said in a filing at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week, reports Reuters.

With credit card identity theft becoming a growing issue of concern, Congress introduced FACTA in 2003. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) imposes some strict rules upon merchants who provide transaction receipts to their consumers. In a recent case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Expedia Inc was cited for failing to abide by these exacting rules.

Several of the rules under FACTA are essentially to prevent credit card identity theft. One of the many rules under FACTA calls for is the truncation of printed receipts. As such, printed receipts are not allowed to contain the last five digits of the consumer's credit card number, nor are they allowed to contain the credit card expiration date.

A Federal copyright claim won't always preempt a state-law claim for implied contract, particularly when submitting a pilot or series pitch to a studio. In simpler terms: A party can sue a television network if a network rejects his idea, only to use it on its own years later.

A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Larry Montz, a parapsychologist, and Daena Smoller, a publicist, who claimed that NBC stole their idea. They demanded payment based on an idea that they submitted to NBC, which became the basis of NBC's series, "Ghost Hunters."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered some unfavorable news to the Winklevoss twins on earlier this week -- namely, that it would not be reviewing the Facebook settlement reached in 2008.

"At some point, litigation must come to an end," wrote Chief Judge Alex Kozinski in his opinion, "that point has now been reached." Judge Kozinski spared little sympathy for the Winklevoss twins in his opinion. He scolded them for wanting to back out of the settlement, claiming that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss knew exactly what they were getting themselves into when they agreed to the settlement, back in 2008, during the course of their court ordered mediation process.

Action Regarding Damage to Interstate Carriage

In Mason & Dixon Intermodal, Inc. v. Lapmaster Int'l LLC, No. 09-17833, a diversity action regarding damage to goods in interstate carriage, the district court's order granting approval of the parties' good-faith settlement under California law is affirmed where 1) to the extent that the additional burden of a generally applicable state law did not appreciably affect a shipper's grounds for or measure of recovery against a carrier, it could not affect a carrier's calculus in setting rates, and therefore could not conflict with the Carmack Act's purpose; and 2) because plaintiff and third-party defendant were joint tortfeasors under California law, the district court did not err in applying Cal. Civ. Proc. Code section 877 and 877.6 to bar plaintiff from asserting claims for indemnity and contribution against third-party defendant after the district court granted the motion to dismiss the claims pursuant to a good faith settlement.