287 results for 'court:"USDC Northern District of California"'.
J. Illston allows medical malpractice and civil rights claims to continue against Contra Costa county officials in a dispute stemming from a young child who died in foster care from septicemia, a completely treatable illness with antibiotics, after he was left alone at night while appearing unwell and vomiting. Some claims against a handful of the individuals are tossed with leave to amend for being too broad, but the bulk of the wrongful death claims against Contra Costa proceed on the grounds that they can still be held liable for the negligent care of their foster care employees.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Illston, Filed On: December 21, 2023, Case #: 3:21cv370, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Wrongful Death
J. Chen finds in partial favor of the news representative on his FOIA complaint alleging that the Department of Justice did not fully comply with his records request for documents relating to firearms recovered south of the border by the ATF. The DOJ argues that he fails to prove that he is a news representative, but he has written an op-ed about the subject, has been quoted in other articles, and even made a documentary film, all of which more than qualify him as a news representative. The matter is remanded and stayed, however, to give the ATF a chance to answer some questions over its database access.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Chen, Filed On: December 19, 2023, Case #: 3:22cv7663, NOS: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) - Other Suits, Categories: Public Record
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J. Corley allows some unjust enrichment claims to proceed against GreenSky, a loan broker, from borrowers who say the company hides certain lending and merchant fees. While claims that the broker's fee practices violated the California Financial Code are tossed for lack of standing, it is plausible they violated the Credit Services Act of 1984 and the borrowers have made a reasonable claim for damages.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Corley, Filed On: December 15, 2023, Case #: 3:20cv1693, NOS: Other Fraud - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Fraud, Banking / Lending
J. Freeman grants in part class certification in a privacy dispute with Google in which consumers say they were recorded without permission by Google Assistant devices. While certification on some of the privacy claims is denied due to a lack of "defined harms" on the record, certification is approved on the contract claims for consumers who purchased certain Google-made devices, such as the Google Home and Google Nest Hub.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Freeman, Filed On: December 11, 2023, Case #: 5:19cv4286, NOS: Other Fraud - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Privacy, Class Action, Contract
J. Breyer allows class claims to proceed against Elon Musk from former owners of Twitter stock who say Musk tried to drive down Twitter's stock prices in order to get a cheaper acquisition price for himself. The claims may continue based on tweets that Musk made in May of 2022 that claimed his acquisition deal was on hold pending new details on alleged spam Twitter accounts, which he said made up roughly 20% of Twitter's users. These statements were false and made with "deliberate recklessness," causing Twitter stock prices to fall nearly 7%.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Breyer, Filed On: December 11, 2023, Case #: 3:22cv5937, NOS: Securities/Commodities/Exchange - Other Suits, Categories: Securities, Class Action
J. Chesney dismisses class claims against Monsanto Co. from consumers who say they bought a "concentrated form of Roundup" that lacked clear expiration labels, resulting in consumers being led to believe that the product could be used indefinitely. The consumers claim that the products begin to develop unlawful levels of NNGs, a carcinogen, after being stored at length, but all of their claims fail for not bringing forward hard evidence that NNGs could develop beyond the EPA's hard limit of 1 part per million in pesticide products.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Chesney , Filed On: December 4, 2023, Case #: 3:22cv4260, NOS: Other Fraud - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Fraud, Product Liability, Class Action
J. Hixson denies a request to toss employment discrimination claims from a former asylum officer at the San Francisco Asylum office who says he was given poor performance ratings and passed by for promotions due to his race. While the record needs to be fleshed out further to give more context for the discrimination claim, the asylum officer has provided enough evidence at this stage that there was no valid, work-related reason for his bad reviews or for not getting the promotions.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Hixson, Filed On: November 22, 2023, Case #: 3:21cv7419, NOS: Employment - Civil Rights, Categories: Employment Discrimination
J. Ryu dismisses all civil rights claims against Alameda from the owner of a private marina that says the city passed a series of unlawful ordinances related to its business, namely in the form of rent and eviction limitations on houseboats due to Covid-19. The city's move to put limitations on evictions stemming from the pandemic was, as several other courts have found for different cities and states, based on the needs of the community and not an infringement on the marina owner's landlord rights. The owner's claim that the ordinances "economically hobbled" it is unsupported and unconvincing.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Ryu, Filed On: November 20, 2023, Case #: 4:22cv6509, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Landlord Tenant, Covid-19
J. Illston declines to dismiss claims from a resident who says that a sugar processing facility in town releases such foul, noxious odors that he can't enjoy his home or his neighborhood. The man is attempting to pursue the case as a class action, and while the record is too sparse at the moment to determine if certification is in order, the resident has plausibly alleged that the sugar facility forces him to keep his windows closed, stay out of his yard and refrain from inviting company over.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Illston, Filed On: November 15, 2023, Case #: 3:23cv3192, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Property, Tort
J. Gonzalez Rogers declines in part to dismiss a class action attempting to hold Meta, TikTok and other social media companies liable for the harmful effects of their apps on young users. The parents’ design defect product liability claims are not barred under Section of the Communications Decency Act because they do not implicate publishing or monitoring of third-party content. Also, Section 230 does not grant immunity from a negligence per se claim, and claims of failure to warn and negligence plausibly assert that the social media companies are liable for conduct other than the publishing of third-party content.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Gonzalez Rogers, Filed On: November 14, 2023, Case #: 4:22md3047, NOS: Personal Injury - Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Product Liability, Class Action
J. Chen allows some class claims to continue against Disney from consumers who say the company tracked and collected their keystrokes, mouse clicks and page viewing data from the ESPN website without their permission. While they have standing to pursue some of their statutory privacy claims, their proposed nationwide class is reduced to a California and Pennsylvania class and the court requests that the class bring forward more information on exactly what kind of personal information was intercepted.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Chen, Filed On: November 8, 2023, Case #: 3:23cv2500, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Privacy, Class Action
J. Chen allows a handful of civil rights claims to proceed against Sausalito officials from a man, proceeding pro se, who says he was wrongfully arrested and cited for obstructing police during a protest over the closure of a homeless camp. A few narrow excessive force and First Amendment claims survive, though they are largely based on a later incident where the individual claims to have been attacked by a detective while his truck was being towed.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Chen, Filed On: November 8, 2023, Case #: 3:23cv1360, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Police Misconduct
J. Corley finds in favor of Qualcomm in its multi-district antitrust litigation where consumers allege the company was using their position in the chip manufacturing and patent licensing markets to curtail competition and increase prices. After a series of appeals, the only surviving claims centered around the company's contractual dealings with manufactures like Samsung and Apple, but those claims only raise "plausible theories" on how the company could benefit from anti-competitive conduct. They do not provide any hard evidence that the alleged conduct actually took place.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Corley, Filed On: November 7, 2023, Case #: 3:17md2773, NOS: Antitrust - Other Suits, Categories: Antitrust
J. Ryu declines to dismiss claims alleging that the City of San Mateo has a practice of turning over control of seized vehicles to private tow companies without due process. The claims come from a leasing company that says it is entitled to possession of a Volkswagen after an individual could not keep up with her payments, but that the city told a towing company to store it and not release it without city approval. The city's defense that it was entitled to the seizure of the car under its community caretaking functions relies on facts not related to the complaint against it, and the complaint itself meets the bar of raising valid due process concerns at this stage.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Ryu, Filed On: November 7, 2023, Case #: 4:23cv2884, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Municipal Law, Due Process
J. Freeman denies in part a motion to dismiss wrongful death claims against Santa Clara officials stemming from the suicide of an inmate at the Santa Clara County Jail. While some failure to train and other civil rights claims are tossed, it's plausible that jail policies, such as one that allowed decedent to be kept in a cell with "obvious hanging points," contributed to the death.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Freeman, Filed On: October 31, 2023, Case #: 5:22cv4321, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Wrongful Death
J. Hamilton finds in favor of Santa Cruz County after a church sued it with religious discrimination claims when the county opened up a welfare fraud investigation that resulted in several leaders of the organization being charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. The church says it was unfairly treated due to its religious practices, but there is nothing on the record that implies county officials were doing anything beyond enforcing a facially-neutral law in a completely non-discriminatory fashion. The charges leveled against the church leadership were also well supported by evidence found in their home during a legal search.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Hamilton, Filed On: October 31, 2023, Case #: 4:19cv2729, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Municipal Law
J. Corley allows the bulk of claims to continue against the maker and some distributors of EzriCare eyedrops that left a man blinded in one eye. The claims properly allege that the maker had a duty to test the drops to make sure they were safe, but failed to do so. Claims against Amazon also proceed on the idea that, as a seller, it "cosigned" on the eyedrop products.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Corley, Filed On: October 30, 2023, Case #: 3:23cv1632, NOS: Personal Injury - Health Care/Pharmaceutical Personal Injury/Product Liability - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Health Care, Product Liability
J. Orrick dismisses the bulk of class copyright claims against the makers of the AI software Stable Diffusion from a class of artists who say the company trained the AI on their works without permission. The artists' claims are "defective in numerous respects" and too conclusionary to survive, offering up no concrete facts on how their works were used to create AI-generated fakes. A single direct infringement claim by one of the artists is allowed to proceed, while the rest are dismissed with leave to amend.
Court: USDC Northern District of California, Judge: Orrick, Filed On: October 30, 2023, Case #: 3:23cv201, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Copyright, Class Action