52 results for 'judge:"Fallon"'.
J. Fallon denies summary judgment to the insurer of a tree removal company’s truck on its request to dismiss a hurricane debris worker’s negligent injury suit, arising from the lowering of a steel stabilization leg that crushed his right foot. As a matter of law, the truck constitutes mobile equipment under the insurer’s policy.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: November 9, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv4570, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Insurance, Damages, Negligence
J. Fallon declines to dismiss patent infringement claims concerning the Conair BaBylissPRO LO-PROFX hair clipper and trademark infringement claims concerning Conair FX 825 and 603G Wedge clippers because a side-by-side comparison demonstrates the clipper designs were sufficiently similar, and the fair use defense concerning the term "Wedge" requires a fact intensive analysis.
Court: USDC Delaware, Judge: Fallon, Filed On: November 6, 2023, Case #: 1:23cv114, NOS: Patent - Property Rights, Categories: Civil Procedure, Patent, Trademark
J. Fallon grants a request by the Orleans Parish sheriff and her director of employment, dismissing a hostile workplace claim by a human resources staffer who was fired after she was absent for several weeks due to emergency surgery and hospitalization required to protect herself and her newborn child. The manager’s actions, though dubious, did not rise to the level of “objectively offensive harassment.” Without more, the fired staffer’s claims cannot survive. The litigant’s claims against the sheriff remain.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: October 18, 2023, Case #: 2:23cv2981, NOS: Employment - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Evidence, Employment Discrimination
J. Fallon denies summary judgment to both Dollar General and a shopper suing the chain store on a premises liability claim. The woman fell on her knees at the entrance of the store after getting her shoe caught on a large, ripped mat. The circumstances of the case make the question of premises liability “factually fraught.” There are only two witnesses, the alleged victim and a store employee, which indicates that credibility determinations will play a role in evaluating both fault and comparative fault. A reasonable jury could foreseeably find for either or both litigants comparatively. Therefore, both requests for summary judgment are denied.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: October 18, 2023, Case #: 2:23cv822, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Evidence, Jury, Premises Liability
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J. Fallon allows plaintiff to continue negligence claims brought against an appliance store after two employees dropped a box on the head of a shopper, now deceased, who had to undergo treatment for blunt head trauma and other injuries at the same time that he was undergoing chemotherapy for stomach cancer. Interrogatory responses passed both prongs of the residual exception test, and the store's failure to preserve video surveillance entitles plaintiff to an adverse inference finding.
Court: USDC Delaware, Judge: Fallon, Filed On: October 11, 2023, Case #: 1:22cv76, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Evidence, Negligence
J. Fallon allows plaintiffs to continue several civil rights claims contending Chinese-Americans had been stopped for transporting alcohol across state lines without a license because the allegations sufficiently state claims of false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution under Delaware law.
Court: USDC Delaware, Judge: Fallon, Filed On: September 28, 2023, Case #: 1:22cv1065, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Licensing, Malicious Prosecution
J. Fallon denies requests by a vessel owner and a seaman to dismiss each other’s experts from trial of his personal injury claims, arising from an accident during which his hand was caught in mechanical capstan winch. All of the experts offered by both sides are sufficiently qualified through their training and experience to offer expert testimonies. Their opinions were formed using reliable methods.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: September 27, 2023, Case #: 2:21cv2253, NOS: Marine - Contract, Categories: Fraud, Maritime, Experts
J. Fallon dismisses patent infringement claims concerning a method of monitoring the effectiveness of bulk emails that target specific recipients because the patent fails to demonstrate a solution to the stated problem and thus lacks an inventive concept.
Court: USDC Delaware, Judge: Fallon , Filed On: September 22, 2023, Case #: 1:23cv365, NOS: Patent - Property Rights, Categories: Patent
J. Fallon denies summary judgment to a river transportation company on its argument that Hurricane Ida was an Act of God and, therefore, it should not be found liable for negligently monitoring and securing its fleet of barges because no amount of precaution would have prevented a series of damaging, storm-related “breakaways.” Deciding the Act of God defense’s applicability raises questions surrounding the conditions decision makers faced, which conditions were known by whom and when, whether decision makers acted reasonably given these circumstances, and more. In short, there are too many questions of material fact to warrant summary judgment.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: September 20, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv504, NOS: Other Personal Property Damage - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Maritime, Damages, Negligence
J. Fallon declines to enter a temporary restraining order freezing all crypto-assets and other currency owned by a crypto-mining services company accused of operating a Ponzi scheme. Crypto-mining customers established likely success on the merits but failed to demonstrate irreparable harm because disputed asset transfers are traceable to the wallet balances at issue.
Court: USDC Delaware, Judge: Fallon, Filed On: August 25, 2023, Case #: 1:22cv1164, NOS: Securities/Commodities/Exchange - Other Suits, Categories: Injunction
J. Fallon grants a request by a Southeast Louisiana shipyard and against a Florida company that hired it to build a 78-foot fishing vessel at a cost of $410,000. A contested separation agreement between the litigants is in fact a valid, final contract, contrary to arguments by the Florida vessel owner. The agreement contains a forum selection clause that designates a state court in coastal Louisiana as the exclusive jurisdiction of any claims between the two businesses.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: August 14, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv170, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Maritime, Jurisdiction, Contract
J. Fallon grants requests by oil and gas corporations and pipeline companies, dismissing claims by 30 lease holders of oyster beds alleging that they introduced “brine,” “produced water” and other pollutants in coastal waters off southeast Louisiana resulting in “significant oyster mortality.” The litigants have “not produced any specific allegations as to any event or action” by any of the energy companies that could result in their being held responsible for damage to the oyster beds. The ruling adapts a magistrate judge’s report that concluded the leaseholders’ pollution claims rely on “plain speculation” that an upward spike in damaging salinity must have been caused by energy activities “without specifying anything more.”
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 28, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv1345, NOS: Other Personal Property Damage - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Energy, Environment, Discovery
J. Fallon denies a request by a New Orleans city watchdog agency for attorney fees and costs totaling $161,447 for prevailing against a fired criminal investigator’s Title VII discrimination claims. Unlike the cases cited by the city, this is not a case where the employee sought to bring claims which were clearly duplicative of those already dismissed in another proceeding. The investigator brought her claims non-frivolously, and in good faith; she simply she could not prevail on those claims. Awarding attorney fees in a case like hers would only serve to chill potentially wronged litigants from attempting to bring their claims and vindicate their rights.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 15, 2023, Case #: 2:21cv1992, NOS: Employment - Civil Rights, Categories: Government, Employment Discrimination, Whistleblowers
J. Fallon grants Ernst & Young's motion to disqualify lead counsel for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), which is suing the accounting firm for professional negligence in connection with the fraud-related collapse of a New Orleans bank that cost the FDIC’s insurance fund nearly $1 billion. Although FDIC lawyers did not act in bad faith when they received volumes of the firm's confidential information from a government-created watchdog investigating the firm's audits of the failed bank, it is impossible for its lawyers to “un-see or forget thousands of pages” of documents that were in its possession for more than 3 years. To ensure that FDIC’s suit continues free of impropriety, disqualification of FDIC counsel from the case is appropriate.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 15, 2023, Case #: 2:20cv1259, NOS: Other Personal Property Damage - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Fraud, Accounting Malpractice, Banking / Lending
J. grants a request to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds a lawsuit against the Georgia-based nephew of a Louisiana resident seeking the return of $7 million he provided his sister’s son relative to an investment agreement. The evidence indicates that the nephew did not “purposefully direct” any activities towards the jurisdiction in the New Orleans area. Therefore, it would be unfair to subject him to a suit in the Louisiana district. Dismissal is appropriate.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 13, 2023, Case #: 2:23cv849, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Jurisdiction
J. Fallon denies a request by an attorney for a new trial, after a jury awarded her estranged husband $7,500 for economic loss, $1,500 for mental anguish and $10,000 in punitive damages, related to her unauthorized use of his electronic financial accounts. The lawyer objected to the deterrence-oriented penalty, noting that an order denying her ex-husband’s request for attorney fees remarked on his “lack of clean hands” in the matter. The jury “reasonably concluded” that her former spouse was entitled to punitive damages. The trial court may not reverse the jury’s verdict “merely because it would have concluded otherwise.”
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 1, 2023, Case #: 2:21cv542, NOS: Other Fraud - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Jury, Damages, Attorney Fees
J. Fallon denies summary judgment to Walmart, ruling that evidence of a fallen fruit cup has helped a shopper meet his high burden of proof for a slip-and-fall lawsuit brought under Louisiana’s Merchant Liability Act. Walmart argued that the shopper failed to prove that its employee, who was stacking shelves earlier in the day, knocked down the fruit cup found near the accident scene. At the current stage of the case, the shopper “does not need to prove” that the store created the condition which caused his fall. The factual dispute over how the fruit cup and the spilled liquid came to be on the aisle floor is sufficient to carry the shopper’s claims to trial.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: May 31, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv3482, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Civil Procedure, Evidence, Business Practices