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Summary Of Logan V. Abe, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 31 (Jun. 4, 2015), Michael S. Valiente

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

A party incurs an expense even if a third party pays the expense on the party’s behalf, as long as the party would otherwise be legally obligated to pay the expense. Thus, costs and reasonable attorney fees that a third party paid on behalf of a litigant can be recovered under NRS 17.115(4) and NRCP 68(f)(2). In addition, a party can recover expert witness fees even if the expert did not testify at trial and was not deposed.

Advancing National Intellectual Property Policies In A Transnational Context, Marketa Trimble

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The increasing frequency with which activities involving intellectual property (“IP”) cross national borders now warrants a clear definition of the territorial reach of national IP laws so that parties engaging in the activities can operate with sufficient notice of the laws applicable to their activities. Legislators, however, have not devoted adequate attention to the territorial delineation of IP law; in fact, legislators rarely draft IP statutes with any consideration of cross-border scenarios, and with few exceptions IP laws are designed with only single-country scenarios in mind. Delineating the reach of national IP laws is actually a complex matter because the …

All Together Now: Using Principles Of Group Dynamics To Train Better Jurors, Sara Gordon

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We ask juries to make important decisions that have a profound impact on people’s lives. We leave these decisions in the hands of groups of laypeople because we hope that the diverse range of experiences and knowledge in the group will lead to more thoughtful and informed decisionmaking. Studies suggest that diverse groups of jurors have different perspectives on evidence, engage in more thorough debate, and more closely evaluate facts. At the same time, there are a variety of problems associated with group decisionmaking, from the loss of individual motivation in group settings, to the vulnerability of groups to various …

Disarming Employees: How American Employers Are Using Mandatory Arbitration To Deprive Workers Of Legal Protection, Jean R. Sternlight

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Employers’ imposition of mandatory arbitration constricts employees’ access to justice. The twenty percent of the American workforce covered by mandatory arbitration clauses file just 2,000 arbitration claims annually, a minuscule number even compared to the small number of employees who litigate claims individually or as part of a class action. Exploring how mandatory arbitration prevents employees from enforcing their rights the Article shows employees covered by mandatory arbitration clauses (1) win far less frequently and far less money than employees who litigate; (2) have a harder time obtaining legal representation; (3) are often precluded from participating in class, collective or …

What Jurors Want To Know: Motivating Juror Cognition To Increase Legal Knowledge & Improve Decisionmaking, Sara Gordon

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What do jurors want to know? Jury research tells us that jurors want to understand the information they hear in a trial so they can reach the correct decision. But like all people, jurors who are asked to analyze information in a trial—even jurors who consciously want to reach a fair and accurate verdict—are unconsciously influenced by their internal goals and motivations. Some of these motives are specific to individual jurors; for instance, a potential juror with a financial interest in a case would be excluded from the jury pool. But other motivations, like the motive to understand the law …

The Fourth Era Of American Civil Procedure, Thomas O. Main, Stephen N. Subrin

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Every contemporary American lawyer who has engaged in litigation is familiar with the now fifty-four-volume treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure. Both of that treatise’s named authors, Charles Alan Wright and Arthur Miller, have mourned the death of a Federal Rules regime that they spent much of their professional lives explaining and often celebrating. Wright shared a sense of gloom about federal procedure that he compared to the setting before World War I. Miller has also published a series of articles that chronicled his grief.

We agree that something has fundamentally changed. In fact, we believe that we are in …

Gat, Solvay, And The Centralization Of Patent Litigation In Europe, Marketa Trimble

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No abstract provided.

When Foreigners Infringe Patents: An Empirical Look At The Involvement Of Foreign Defendants In Patent Litigation In The U.S., Marketa Trimble

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This paper presents results from a multiple-year project concerned with the involvement of foreign (non-U.S.) entities in U.S. patent litigation. A comparison of data from 2004 and 2009 that cover 5,407 patent cases filed in U.S. federal district courts in those two years evidences an increase in the number of cases involving foreign defendants, and thus an increasing potential for cross-border enforcement problems. With this basic finding the research supports the proposition advanced by a number of intellectual property scholars in the U.S. and abroad that rules need to be established to facilitate a smooth process for recognition and enforcement …

Fixing The Mandatory Arbitration Problem: We Need The Arbitration Fairness Act Of 2009, Jean R. Sternlight

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No abstract provided.

Dispute Resolution And The Quest For Justice, Jean R. Sternlight

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During and since the 1976 Pound conference, the rise of nonlitigation approaches has sparked an intense debate as to whether negotiation, mediation, and arbitration are consistent with justice or rule of law, and whether litigation itself is sufficiently accessible to support a quest for justice. This article offers observations on questions related to this debate, including whether procedure matters, the limits of procedural reform, whether some processes are more just than others, and how procedural reforms enhance justice.

A Democratic Theory Of Amicus Advocacy, Ruben J. Garcia

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Amicus curiae ("friend of the court”) participation in litigation has flourished in recent years as many groups and individuals seek to influence the outcome of litigation. Amicus filers are not parties and judges have wide discretion to reject amicus briefs if they believe that the amicus participation does not add anything to the briefs already filed by the parties. In three recent cases, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner has rejected amicus filings and promised to closely scrutinize applications to file amicus briefs in the future. Judge Posner's influence has led an increasing number of judges, primarily at …

The Relationship Between Defense Counsel, Policyholders, And Insurers: Nevada Rides Yellow Cab Toward "Two-Client" Model Of Tripartite Relationship. Are Cumis Counsel And Malpractice Claims By Insurers Next?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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It happens constantly in civil litigation. An insurance company hires a lawyer to defend its policyholder from a third party’s claim of injury. But just who is the lawyer’s “client?” Is it the policyholder who is the named defendant in the case and is “represented” in court proceedings? Or is it the insurer who, in most cases, selected the attorney, pays the attorney, supervises the litigation, and has (by the terms of the liability insurance policy) the right to settle the case, even over the objections of the policyholder? Ordinarily, the liability insurer has both the duty to defend a …

Lawyer Professional Responsibility In Litigation, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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A perennially-vexing litigation issue concerns the limits of permissible attorney argument. More than a few lawyers have been tripped up by the occasional fuzziness of the line between aggressive advocacy and improper appeals to passion or prejudice. See Craig Lee Montz, Why Lawyers Continue to Cross the Line in Closing Argument: An Examination of Federal and State Cases, 28 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 67 (2001-2002)(problem of violations results from lack of uniformity and clarity of ground rules as well as errors of counsel). In Cohen v. Lioce, 149 P.3d 916 (Nev. 2006) the Nevada Supreme Court both provided significant guidance …

Foreward: Competing And Complementary Rule Systems: Civil Procedure And Adr, Jean R. Sternlight

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This is a foreword to articles submitted as part of the Association of American Law School’s Symposium during at the January 2004 AALS’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia entitled "Competing or Complementary Rule Systems? Adjudication, Arbitration and the Procedural World of the Future." The session brought together panelists whose expertises ranged across the academy. The legal academics were joined by the federal district judge now chairing the committee charged by the Judicial Conference of the United States to draft federal civil procedural rules. The stimulating session reflected on the relationship between litigation and non-litigation approaches to dispute resolution. Participants explored …

Separate And Not Equal: Integrating Civil Procedure And Adr In Legal Academia, Jean R. Sternlight

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Traditionally, academics specializing in ADR and civil procedure have not tended to deal with each other's issues. The typical civil procedure course focuses on litigation, and at best throws in a few classes on mediation and negotiation. Similarly, the typical ADR course devotes little or no attention to litigation, law, courts, or administrative institutions. Thus, the two disciplines are taught quite separately. Further, this separation is not equal. While students are required to learn about litigation, and are also offered many additional litigation electives, the ADR curriculum is almost always purely elective, and the classes are much smaller. Yet, the …

What Is Affirmative Action?, John Valery White

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There is no rigorous definition of affirmative action. This Article argues that this remarkable circumstance has distorted and undercut American antidiscrimination law.

Though affirmative action is vigorously and widely debated, it has not been defined in the rigorous manner legal commentators would normally demand. Rather, commentators have deferred to policymakers' descriptions of affirmative action programs and employed those “definitions” to set the terms of policy debates over the propriety of affirmative action. Typically, commentators take for granted that affirmative action is “discriminatory” and seek to justify its use in certain contexts. This approach is also prominent in the United States …

Disparate Impact Theory In Employment Discrimination: What’S Griggs Still Good For? What Not?, Elaine W. Shoben

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Is disparate impact a dead theory of employment discrimination? Definitely not. The theory itself has a more stable legal status than it did when the Supreme Court embraced it in its 1971 opinion Griggs v. Duke Power Co. But is it thriving in litigation? It appears to be neither thriving nor dead. It has become a relatively less vital tool, compared with theories of intentional discrimination. Despite the heroic effort of Congress to keep the theory from destruction by the Supreme Court through its express codification in 1991, disparate impact litigation is not making a major impact in this …

Symposium Introduction: Perspectives On Dispute Resolution In The Twenty-First Century, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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No abstract provided.

The Activist Insecurity And The Demise Of Civil Rights, John Valery White

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Civil rights law is today moribund. An impressive edifice, built upon the ruins of Jim Crow, with the blood and sweat of the civil rights movement, and intended to both dismantle that system and ensure the civil liberties that Jim Crow illustrated were all too easily lost, civil rights law was to be the lasting monument of the civil rights struggle. Fortified by this legacy, civil rights law retains a symbolic value, implying that there are formidable forces working to protect citizens from abusive state action, to ensure a broad anti-discrimination ethic, and to fix the wrongs of Jim Crow. …

Foreward: Is Civil Rights Law Dead?, John Valery White

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This forward to The Louisiana Law Review’s Spring 2003 Symposium on civil rights presents a hypothetical that highlights the perils of civil rights litigation.

The Inevitability Of The Eclectic: Liberating Adr From Ideology, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The problem with viewing facilitation as the only legitimate form of mediation, of course, is that it borders on tautology: mediation is nonevaluative, therefore any evaluation in mediation must be impermissible. Although this view remains strongly held in many quarters, it appears to be in retreat, both within the mediation community and in the legal community at large. Courts and commentators have shown increasing favor toward some evaluative or advising component of mediation. More important, the eclectic style appears to be what takes place in the metaphorical trenches of mediation practice (although sound empirical data is necessarily hard to obtain …

Protecting Franchisees From Abusive Arbitration Clauses, Jean R. Sternlight

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This article sets out a number of legal arguments that franchisees can potentially use to defeat arbitration clauses that seek to accomplish ends that would not be permissible in litigation. Drawing from decisions protecting consumers and employees from unfair arbitration clauses, as well as from opinions in the franchise context, this article analyzes arguments that can be based on the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, state statutes, and common law. By way of this analysis, it suggests that some courts are misapplying arbitration precedents and preemption arguments to support decisions that allow franchisors to effectively exempt themselves from legislation and even …

Is Binding Arbitration A Form Of Adr?: An Argument That The Term "Adr" Has Begun To Outlive Its Usefulness, Jean R. Sternlight

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Professor Frank Sander has, for many years, been one of the most prescient commentators on the alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") movement. His 1976 Pound Conference speech has been identified by many as marking the birth of the modern ADR phenomena. That speech, which compared some of the pros and cons of litigation and an array of other dispute resolution processes, has been summarized as proposing the concept of the "multi-door courthouse." In contrast, Professor Sander's more recent and very interesting review of the present and future of ADR makes little attempt to distinguish between mediation and binding arbitration, the two …

A Mixed Bag For Chicken Little: Analyzing Year 2000 Claims And Insurance Coverage, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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A visitor from another planet reading the popular and insurance trade press would probably conclude that the world stands on the abyss of a business, tort, and insurance crisis of unprecedented proportion. Media coverage of an impending Year 2000 “crisis” has reached a fevered pitch, with predictions of both a gigantic volume of Year 2000 claims and a correspondingly large amount of insurance coverage litigation. Many predict that the Year 2000 problem (also known as the “Y2K” or “Millennium Bug” problem) will create coverage controversies and costs dwarfing major insurance battles of the late twentieth century such as those concerning …

Reason And Pollution: Construing The "Absolute" Pollution Exclusion In Context And In Light Of Its Purpose And Party Expectations, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Responding to the flurry of environmental coverage litigation over the application of the “sudden and accidental” pollution exclusion, the insurance industry during the mid-1980s largely adopted new standard pollution exclusion language for commercial general liability (CGL) policies. Since the mid-1980s, the standard form CGL has included the so-called absolute pollution exclusion, which provides that the insurance does not apply to bodily injury or property damage “arising out of the actual, alleged or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release, or escape of pollutants.” A “pollutant” is defined as “any solid, liquid, gaseous or thermal irritant or contaminant, including smoke, vapor, soot, …

Symposium, The Florida Tobacco Litigation -- Fact, Law, Policy, And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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This is the transcript of the Florida tobacco litigation symposium, discussing the s$11.3 billion settlement concerning tobacco in the state of Florida. Jeffrey W. Stempel served as co-chair and moderator of the symposium.

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

On Parol: The Construction And Interpretation Of Written Agreements And The Role Of Extrinsic Evidence In Contract Litigation, Keith A. Rowley

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As a general rule, extrinsic evidence, whether written or oral, is not admissible to prove either the intent of the parties to a contract or the meaning of contractual terms when the parties have executed an unambiguous, fully-integrated (i.e., final and all-inclusive) written agreement. The trial court may consider various types of extrinsic evidence, however, in determining whether a particular agreement is fully integrated or ambiguous, and even in choosing among rival interpretations of an agreement where ambiguity is not present. If the trial court determines that an agreement is not fully integrated, then the trier of fact may consider …

Reflections Of Judicial Adr And The Multi-Door Courthouse At Twenty: Fait Accompli, Failed Overture, Or Fledgling Adulthood, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Like any trend, ADR has its skeptics and even some opponents. Considerable debate exists regarding the degree to which the increasing ADRization of traditionally judicial activity amounts to triumph or tragedy, a point well-illustrated by the past Schwartz Lectures. In the 1993 Schwartz Lecture, Professor Laura Nader described the ADR movement as a byproduct of society's attempt to suppress or conceal uncomfortable conflicts. In the 1994 Lecture, Professor Judith Resnik essentially concluded that the modern ADR movement has brought a regrettable de facto closing of the court house (or at least raised barriers to entry) and replaced reflective decision-making about …

Cultural Literacy And The Adversary System: The Enduring Problems Of Distrust, Misunderstanding And Narrow Perspective, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The meandering road to discovery reform illustrates, among other things, the ineffectiveness of an atomized profession that lacks either sufficient understanding of the adversary system or the resources and forcefulness to address the practical impact of adversarialism. In some ways, lawyers reforming litigation can be characterized as poorer investigators than the sixsome who examined the elephant. The elephant sleuths were guilty of isolation and ignorance. Lawyers and policy makers not only exhibit a lack of information and empathy, but also often show an unwarranted distrust of or contempt for the elements of the profession with which they disagree. Unfortunately, however, …