On December 12, 2024, President Biden granted clemency to The Norton Law Firm’s long-time client, Michael Binday. In 2014, Mr. Binday was sentenced to 144 months’ imprisonment following a conviction for mail and wire fraud based on the United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit’s now-invalidated “right-to-control” theory of fraud. For nearly a decade following […]
Read MoreA litigation boutique based in Oakland, California, representing plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil litigation.
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Corporate Counsel recently quoted The Norton Law Firm litigator Jo Levy in the article “In-House Lawyers Weigh In on How AI Will Revolutionize Dispute Resolution.” Jo, who previously served as a general counsel of Asia Pacific at Intel, weighed in on the use of artificial intelligence in dispute resolution and the pace of its adoption in […]
Read MoreDuring its 2024-25 term, the United States Supreme Court will decide in Kousisis v. United States whether breaches of contract can satisfy the “property” element of the mail and wire fraud statutes. The Supreme Court should—and as attorneys David W. Shapiro and Gil Walton anticipate will—say they cannot. In “Justices Should Squash Bid To Criminalize Contract Breaches,” an expert analysis/opinion piece […]
Read MoreOctober 22, 2024 (Oakland, CA) – The Norton Law Firm is pleased to announce its office move to Oakland’s historic Rotunda Building. “We sought a larger space for our team, which is now 18 lawyers and five professional staff,” said Fred Norton, founder of The Norton Law Firm. “We moved into our new offices […]
Read MoreThe Ninth Circuit’s requirement that internet-based business be “expressly aimed” at a state to confer specific personal jurisdiction could be called into question or clarified when the court rehears Briskin v. Shopify, Inc. in September.
Read MoreIn Cook v. University of Southern California Cal. App. 5th 312, 340 (2024), reh’g denied (June 13, 2024) the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, held that the arbitration clause in an employment agreement between an employee, Pamela Cook, and an employer, the University of Southern California, was unconscionable. This decision could have an important impact on future attempts to compel arbitration based on arbitration clauses in pre-existing agreements.
Read MoreIn Hernandez v. Sohnen Enterprises Inc., 102 Cal. App. 5th 222 (2024), reh’g denied (June 3, 2024), review filed (June 28, 2024) the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate Division, made several important findings regarding arbitration agreements. The court held that unless the parties’ arbitration agreement expressly selected California’s arbitration provisions, the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) preempts California Civil Procedure section 1281.97 (part of the California Arbitration Act (“CAA”)). The Court also found that a superior court order allowing a party to withdraw from arbitration per section 1281.97 is immediately appealable as it is the functional equivalent of an order denying arbitration.
Read MoreIn Smith v. Spizzirri, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously held that, when a district court grants a motion to compel arbitration, Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act requires district courts to stay the lawsuit pending arbitration. While at first blush this question may appear highly technical, it resolves a deep circuit split among the federal courts of appeals and will have widespread impact on arbitration practice.
Read MoreThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently vacated a district court order approving a $5.2 million class action settlement between a plaintiff and Tinder, Inc., the mobile dating app. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that because the plaintiff was subject to binding arbitration, while thousands of other class members were not, she was not an adequate representative of the putative settlement class.
Read MoreThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that plaintiffs who purchased products through defendants’ sporting goods websites were put on notice of arbitration provisions because the plaintiffs were presented with a conspicuous hyperlink to defendants’ terms of use containing those provisions.
Read MoreThe California Supreme Court decided Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., No. S274671, 2023 WL 4553702 (Cal. July 17, 2023), in which it unanimously held that, when an employee is required to arbitrate his or her individual Labor Code claims against an employer, the employee still has standing to pursue a representative action on behalf of other employees under California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), Cal. Lab. Code §§ 2698 et seq.
Read MoreIn late June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, No. 22-105, 599 U.S. __ (2023), holding that an automatic stay applies when a defendant appeals a district court’s denial of its motion to compel arbitration—a significant development in arbitration law and federal appellate procedure.
Read MoreThe Supreme Court dealt a blow to False Claims Act defendants in a decision that will give greater leverage to both the Department of Justice and private plaintiffs (relators), eliminating a key defense strategy for disposing of cases before discovery begins.
Read MoreSince 2015, soon after Michael Binday’s conviction was affirmed on appeal by the Second Circuit, we began what has become an eight-year effort to overturn an overbroad and constitutionally vague construction of the federal fraud statutes that labelled a complaining witness’ desire for information (called its “right to control its property”) as property itself. We […]
Read MoreThe California Court of Appeal’s recent opinion in Chen v. BMW of North America, offers important lessons for litigants ….
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