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  • 10/03/2017 7:37 PM | Deleted user

    ABA Journal News

    October 3, 2017

    By Debra Cassens Weiss

     

     

    State Bar of California

     

     

     

     

    The State Bar of California has spun off its 16 voluntary sections into a nonprofit entity, making the state bar strictly a disciplinary and regulatory agency that is mandatory for state lawyers.

     

    The changes are authorized in a bill signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday, report Courthouse News Service, the Metropolitan News-Enterprise and a state bar press release.

     

    The sections began to consider a split from the state bar last year, partly because of new restrictions that included a ban on spending on alcohol at events and on contracting with resort-style venues, Courthouse News Service reported in May. Sections had argued the restrictions would hurt membership.

     

    The bill maintains annual state bar dues of $315 for practicing attorneys with active status, which comes to $430 with additional fees. The cost of a voluntary section membership is about $95 a year, according to Courthouse News Service.

     

    The bill signed by Brown also transitions the state bar’s board of trustees to a group appointed entirely by the California Supreme Court, the legislature and the governor. Lawyers will no longer elect some trustees. The board will consist of seven lawyers and six nonlawyers.

     

    The board reforms follow a February 2015 Supreme Court decision that found a North Carolina dental regulatory board made up mostly of dentists didn’t have state-action antitrust immunity in its efforts to block nondentists from providing teeth-whitening services. The court said there is no immunity unless the challenged restraint of trade is clearly articulated state policy and it is actively supervised by the state.

     

     

     http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/california_bar_spins_off_its_sections_amid_concerns_over_liquor_sales_resor

     

     

     

  • 10/03/2017 7:35 PM | Deleted user

    SFGate.com

    October 2. 2017

    By Bob Egelko

     

    Immigrants who are being held while seeking the right to remain in the United States, and who would pose no threat if released, are entitled to have bail set in an amount that considers how much they can afford to pay and whether they can be safely monitored without bail, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

     

    The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge’s order that applied only to immigration courts in California’s Central District, which covers seven counties, including Los Angeles, and includes nearly half the state’s population. But a lawyer for immigrants in the case said Monday’s ruling set standards for the entire circuit, which includes California and eight other Western states.

     

    “Hundreds of detainees are being locked up every day in detention centers across the Ninth Circuit merely because they lack resources to pay a bond,” said Michael Kaufman, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney. “It’s our expectation that the government will follow the law that the Ninth Circuit laid down.”

     

    Government lawyers, under President Barack Obama and the Trump administration, argued that bail-setting in immigration cases was a discretionary decision not covered by the constitutional standards for criminal cases, and that taking detainees’ finances into account would be time-consuming and expensive.

     

    The administration could seek a rehearing from the full appeals court or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, the lower-court order requiring bail hearings, which had been suspended during the government’s appeal, will take effect.

     

    On Tuesday, the nation’s high court will hear arguments in the Justice Department’s appeal of another Ninth Circuit ruling, which entitled immigrants in government custody to a hearing every six months over whether they were eligible for release on bond.

     

    The latest ruling came in a class-action suit by immigrants who entered the United States without authorization, or overstayed their visas, and are being held while they seek political asylum or legal status based on considerations such as hardship to U.S. family members.

     

    In each of their cases, government hearing officers or immigration courts have found that they would pose no risk of violence or of fleeing if released, but set their bail without considering what they or their families could afford.

     

    One plaintiff, a gay man who said he fled Honduras to escape persecution, was held for more than four years before a community organization raised $3,000 to pay his bond, the appeals court said. Lawyers reported the case of another detainee who had to miss the funeral of her mother, who had been murdered, because she could not pay a $9,000 bond.

     

    Under the Constitution, “no person may be imprisoned merely on account of his poverty,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt said in the ruling. He said the government has no reason to detain “individuals who have been determined not to be a danger to the community and whose appearance at future immigration proceedings can be reasonably ensured by a lesser bond or alternative conditions.”

     

    The court ordered the government to take financial conditions into account in future cases and for immigrants who are now in custody. One member of the three-judge panel, Ferdinand Fernandez, said in a partial dissent that the ruling should apply only to future cases.

     

     

     http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Court-eases-bail-rules-for-detained-immigrants-12247857.php

  • 10/03/2017 7:33 PM | Deleted user

    Reuters

    October 3, 2017

    By Andrew Chung

     

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supreme Court justices clashed on Tuesday over whether courts should curb the long-standing U.S. political practice of drawing electoral maps to entrench one party in power, with conservative Anthony Kennedy likely to cast the deciding vote.

     

    The nine justices heard an hour of arguments in the major voting rights case out of Wisconsin involving the practice known as partisan gerrymandering. Their ruling, due by June, could have an impact on U.S. elections for decades by setting standards for when electoral districts are laid out with such extreme partisan aims that they deprive voters of their constitutional rights.

     

    Kennedy, who sometimes sides with the court’s liberal justices in big rulings, did not definitively tip his hand on how he would rule but posed tough questions to Wisconsin’s lawyers that signaled his aversion to electoral districts drawn to give one party a lopsided advantage in elections.

     

    Liberal justices voiced sympathy for the Democratic voters who challenged the Republican-drawn legislative map in Wisconsin as a violation of their constitutional rights. Conservative justices expressed doubt about whether courts should intervene in such highly political disputes, and questioned the challengers’ legal standing to bring the case. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority.

     

    Gerrymandering, a practice that began two centuries ago, involves manipulating boundaries of legislative districts to benefit one party and diminish another.  

     

    Democratic and Republican critics argue that gerrymandering is becoming more extreme because it now can be guided by precise voter data and mapmaking technology, distorting the democratic process by letting politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around.

     

    Legislative districts in the 50 U.S. states, redrawn every decade after the national census to reflect population changes, represent the individual components of representative democracy.

     

    Kennedy pressed Erin Murphy, a lawyer for Wisconsin’s state Senate, on whether it would be unconstitutional for a state law to contain explicit provisions favoring one party over another. Murphy conceded it would be.

     

    A federal three-judge panel ruled 2-1 last November that Wisconsin’s redistricting plan violated the Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of expression and association and 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters. Wisconsin appealed that ruling to the high court.

     

    In a 2004 ruling in another case, Kennedy parted with his conservative colleagues to suggest that if partisan gerrymandering went too far, violating the Constitution, courts may have to step in if a “workable standard” for deciding when to do that could be found.

     

    “Gerrymandering is distasteful,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito said.

     

    But Alito voiced doubt over whether the metrics used to measure gerrymandering, drawn from social science and endorsed by the lower court, were manageable. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts called those metrics “sociological gobbledygook.”

     

    Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch said a court-approved formula for identifying unconstitutional gerrymandering would be hard to achieve, comparing various standards proposed to spices on a steak dinner. “What’s this court supposed to do? A pinch of this, a pinch of that?” he asked.

     

    He voiced doubt that the Constitution authorizes courts to step in at all.

     

    ‘TIME TO TERMINATE’

     

    The challengers received some muscular support. “It is time to terminate gerrymandering,” Republican former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the star of the “Terminator” movies, told a rally outside the courthouse. 

     

    Redistricting typically is done by the party controlling a state’s legislature. Gerrymandering is usually accomplished by concentrating voters who tend to favor a particular party in a small number of districts to reduce their statewide voting power - called packing - while scattering others in districts in numbers too small to be a majority - called cracking.

     

    The Supreme Court for decades has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps on the grounds of racial discrimination but never those drawn simply for partisan advantage.

     

    Roberts raised concerns about the high court approving or rejecting future state electoral maps, suggesting the public could start viewing the court as a political body.

     

    “That is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country,” Roberts added.

     

    Some liberal justices wondered what would happen to voters if partisan gerrymandering made election results preordained.

     

    “What incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked. “What becomes of the precious right to vote?”

     

    Wisconsin’s electoral map, drawn after the 2010 U.S. census, enabled Republicans to win a sizable majority of Wisconsin legislative seats despite losing the popular vote statewide to the Democrats. The party’s majority has since expanded.

     

    The plaintiffs’ attorney, Paul Smith, urged the justices to act. “If you let this go,” he said, “in 2020 you’re going to have a festival of copycat gerrymandering, the likes of which this country has never seen.”

     

    “You are the only institution in the United States ... that can solve this problem,” Smith added.

     

     

    Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham

     

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/justice-kennedy-on-hot-seat-in-major-voting-rights-case-idUSKCN1C81P2?il=0

  • 10/02/2017 5:44 AM | Deleted user

    Bloomberg Law

    September 29, 2017

    By Elizabeth Dexheimer, Bloomberg News

     

    A coalition of corporate lobbying groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to overturn a rule that makes it easier for aggrieved customers to file lawsuits against financial firms.

     

    The litigation, filed Friday in a federal court in Dallas, challenges the CFPB’s controversial effort to curb forced arbitration. The plaintiffs include the chamber, the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, the American Financial Services Association and groups representing Texas businesses.

     

    The groups filed the lawsuit as the fight over the CFPB’s regulation comes to a head on Capitol Hill. While the agency argued that it gives consumers more power to hold firms accountable, some Republicans say the rule will mostly benefit trial lawyers and could result in Americans paying higher interest rates on credit cards and other financial products. GOP lawmakers are trying to overturn the regulation through legislation, though they have a limited time to do so and it’s not clear they have enough votes in the Senate.

     

    The CFPB rule, approved in July, targets arbitration clauses that are often buried in the fine print of contracts that consumers sign when they get new credit cards or open up checking accounts. The clauses prevent customers from banding together to file class-action lawsuits, instead requiring them to settle disputes through arbitration. The CFPB regulation requires companies to remove mandatory arbitration clauses from contracts by March.

     

    Unconstitutional Structure

     

    The lawsuit filed by the chamber and other groups argues that CFPB actions aren’t valid because its structure, as created through the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, is unconstitutional. They also challenged the research the CFPB used to write the arbitration rule, saying it’s flawed and that the regulator ignored evidence that shows its regulation will harm consumers.

     

    CFPB spokesman David Mayorga declined to comment on the lawsuit.

    Banks and other financial firms have routinely argued that arbitration actually benefits consumers by making it faster and cheaper for the public to resolve complaints than litigation.

     

    Earlier this week, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika, said the CFPB rule could boost credit-card interest rates by more than 25 percent, citing a report that relied on CFPB data. Noreika had previously threatened to try to hold up the rule.

     

    No Accountability

     

    Democrats and consumer-advocacy groups have been making an urgent push this week to stop Republicans from killing the CFPB’s rule, using major scandals at Equifax Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. to make their case. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that repealing the regulation is tantamount to giving Equifax and Wells Fargo a “get-out-of-jail free card” after the companies harmed consumers. Executives from both corporations are slated to appear before Congress next week.

     

    The House passed its bill reversing the CFPB rule in July and they can only afford to lose two Republicans in the Senate for any legislation to pass. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not scheduled a vote.

     

    The GOP’s effort has been complicated by the massive data breach at Equifax. When consumers signed up for Equifax’s free credit monitoring earlier this month, they were required to sign a contract that would restrict their ability to sue the company.

     

    Equifax later amended its policy following backlash from customers and Democratic lawmakers.

     

     

    https://biglawbusiness.com/finance-industry-said-to-plan-lawsuit-to-overturn-cfpb-rule/

     

     

     

  • 10/01/2017 7:11 PM | Deleted user

    Washington Post

    October 1, 2017

    By Robert Barnes

     

     
    The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

     

     

    The Supreme Court begins its new term Monday with a fortified conservative majority and a docket filled with some of the moment’s most contentious issues: voting rights, religious liberty, protection from discrimination and privacy in an increasingly monitored society.

     

    The court was shorthanded for more than a year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016 and responded by largely avoiding controversial topics and compromising to reach narrow, consensus decisions.

     

    Now, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch not only filling Scalia’s seat but also matching his conservative ideological role on the court, the court is back to its full nine members and has a docket that will test harmony.

     

    “We’ve heard the last term described as the calm before the storm,” said Ian Heath Gershengorn, who was acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “I think we may get to see the storm in this next sitting.”

     

    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Georgetown University law students recently: “There is only one prediction that is entirely safe about the upcoming term, and that is: It will be momentous.”

     

    A trio of cases that will probably be heard before the end of the year form the nucleus. At issue:

     

    ● Whether the court for the first time will find that a state’s electoral districts were gerrymandered with such a partisan skew that they violate the Constitution.

     

    ● Whether prosecutors must seek a judge’s permission before securing cellphone tower records that contain months of details about a person’s whereabouts.

     

    ● Whether a wedding vendor whose religious beliefs do not condone same-sex marriage must comply with a state law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.

     

    David Cole, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, was referring to those three cases when he said, “At the broadest level, the court has cases that will shape the future of democracy, privacy and equality.”

     

    But beyond examiningthe rulings, those who study the Supreme Court will be evaluating how the nine justices — Gorsuch joined the court in April at the end of its oral arguments — conduct themselves in their first full term together. With every new justice, the late Justice Byron R. White liked to say, it’s a new court.

     

    “I’m going to be watching early on to see how the court reintroduces itself back to the country in the midst of the current political spitballing otherwise enveloping Washington,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford law professor who frequently argues cases before the Supreme Court. “Will the court present itself as the grown-ups in the room, or will it, in a sense, join the ideological battle?”

     

    He added: “No governmental institution has a more profound interest in preserving its own legitimacy and the overall concept of separation of powers.”

     

    Perhapsbecause Americans are comparing the court with the combustible President Trump and the gridlocked Congress — both with approval ratings underwater — a recent poll shows the public’s trust in the federal judicial branch increasing to 68 percent.

     

    For the first time in nearly a decade, more Americans (30 percent) think the Supreme Court is too conservative than think it is too liberal (23 percent), according to Gallup. The pollsters say Americans’ perceptions of the ideological leaning of the court are probably influenced by the president’s political party and the justices he appoints.

     

    Justice Anthony M. Kennedy remains the court’s pivotal justice; last term, he was in the majority 97 percent of the time, more than any other justice. He is likely to be the deciding vote in the partisan gerrymandering case and the case of the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple, as well as in a host of other disputes.

     

    Kennedy most often sides with the court’s conservatives, and it is almost always true that liberal victories are possible only with his help.

     

    There will be two compelling questions about him this term.

     

    One is whether it will be his last term. There were (mostly unsubstantiated) rumors that Kennedy, 81 and the court’s longest-serving member, considered retiring last term. If this is it, it could affect how hard interest groups push to get issues on the court’s docket now.

     

    “I think there are a lot of people who are trying to get cases to the court because they think this is a court that is more favorable to their positions than would be there if they let the issues percolate longer,” said Pamela S. Karlan, co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

     

    One example: whether federal anti-discrimination protections cover sexual orientation, an issue on which lower courts are divided. Kennedy has written all of the court’s major gay rights decisions.

     

    There is also the question of whether Gorsuch might have an effect on Kennedy, for whom he clerked in 1993-1994. It’s the first time a clerk has joined a former boss on the court.

     

    “Perhaps the most interesting and impactful question going into this term is whether Justice Gorsuch will succeed as others haven’t in holding his former boss in a firm conservative majority or whether a strong, new conservative voice on the court in a Justice Gorsuch might actually push Justice Kennedy to the left,” said Gregory G. Garre, solicitor general under President George W. Bush.

     

    For his part, Gorsuch in a recent law school appearance denied any special insight. “As far as reading his mind — I don’t purport to read any of my colleagues’ minds,” he said. “I read their opinions.”

     

    Based on the scant evidence from last year’s term, Gorsuch seemed more ideologically aligned with justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court’s most conservative members. “The budding bromance” between Gorsuch and Thomas bears watching, said Washington lawyer Helgi C. Walker, a former Thomas clerk.

     

    The third major player this term will be Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “He may have the most difficult job,” Garre said. “After a year-and-a-half period in which the justices seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to achieve some form of consensus, the environment is ripe for internal friction if the court falls back into a more conventional 5-4 lineup in the biggest cases.”

     

    Also looming: Trump. The court has put aside for now a scheduled oral argument on the president’s executive order banning travel from six mostly Muslim countries, since a new order was put in place last month.

     

    But a confrontation between Trump and the court feels inevitable to Stanford’s Fisher.

     

    “Perhaps at first only in a tweet but perhaps also ultimately in some kind of refusal to abide by a court decision,” he said. “Such a moment would bring a dramatic constitutional showdown of the sort not seen at the federal level for almost 200 years, or even at the state level since desegregation battles of the mid-20th century.”

     

    The court will accept cases through January to fill out the term’s docket. These are some of the most important ones that have been accepted:

     

    Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

     

    Baker Jack C. Phillips in 2012 refused to create a wedding cake for a reception that Charlie Craig and David Mullins had planned to celebrate their wedding in Massachusetts. Phillips told the couple that his religious beliefs did not allow him to participate in a celebration of same-sex marriage.

     

    The civil rights commission and a Colorado court found that Phillips had violated a state law requiring businesses serving the public not to discriminate based on, among other things, sexual orientation.

     

    The Trump administration is backing his claim that his cakes are an artistic expression and that forcing him to comply would violate his right to free speech. The state, however, says that the cake is not his speech and that an observer would see only that Phillips is complying with the law.

       

    Gill v. Whitford

     

    Did the Republicans in control of Wisconsin’s legislature and governor’s office draw election redistricting maps so skewed in the party’s favor that they violate the Constitution?

     

    While the Supreme Court regularly makes states redraw maps that are found to be racially gerrymandered, the justices have never agreed on a standard that would disallow extreme partisan gerrymandering.

     

    The last time the court considered partisan gerrymandering, four justices said the task of adjudicating the practice was impossible. The challengers to Wisconsin’s plan believe they’ve found a standard that could work.

     

    It will probably be up to Kennedy as to whether they are right. A ruling against partisan gerrymandering could have enormous consequences for how the nation conducts elections.

     

    Carpenter v. United States 

     

    In perhaps the court’s most important case involving technology and privacy, the justices will consider whether prosecutors need a warrant to gain access to cellphone tower records that can trace a person’s movements.

     

    Timothy Carpenter was convicted of nine armed robberies around Detroit in part because prosecutors used the records to show that he was in the vicinity of the crimes at the time they were committed.

     

    Privacy advocates say prosecutors should have to show a magistrate that they have enough probable cause to obtain a warrant. But the government says the records are important and, under a1986 federal law, no warrant is necessary.

     

    The outcome could have great consequences for digital privacy.

     

    Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (plus two other consolidated cases)

     

    The first case of the term asks whether employers can force workers to settle disputes through individual arbitration, rather than collectively.

     

    The Obama administration sided with workers, saying forced arbitration clauses are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which grants employees the right to “concerted activities.”

     

    But the Trump administration switched sides after the court granted the case, saying the companies were correct under the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925.

     

    Jennings v. Rodriguez

     

    An evenly divided Supreme Court could not decide last term whether noncitizens who are scheduled to be deported can be kept in jail indefinitely or whether they must receive a bail hearing after six months.

     

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit came up with the six-month requirement and said the potential deportees had a right to bail if they pose no danger to the public and are unlikely to flee. The government said noncitizens can have no such expectations.

     

    The case was scheduled for reargument, and Gorsuch presumably will cast the deciding vote.

     

    Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute

     

    This case concerns how states remove voters from their rolls to keep them current.

    Ohio removes voters who have been inactive and then fail to respond to notices from the state over four years.

     

    But an appeals court agreed with civil rights activists who said the practice violates federal law, which says registration cannot be canceled for “a failure to vote.”

     

    This is another case in which a change in administration has altered the Justice Department’s view. The department now supports Ohio.

     

    Christie v. NCAA

     

    This long-running case will determine whether New Jersey can allow sports betting at its casinos and racetracks.

     

    The state is challenging a federal law that limits such betting to Nevada, and a ruling for New Jersey could open betting to other states.

     

    Janus v. AFSCME

     

    The Supreme Court said 40 years ago that states could require public employees to pay a fee to unions to cover the cost of collective bargaining to prevent workers from reaping the benefits without sharing the cost.

     

    But conservatives say that forces workers to pay for speech with which they might disagree.

     

    The court appeared ready to overturn its precedent in 2016. But Scalia’s death meant there were no longer five justices to make a majority. The new case would mean Gorsuch casts the deciding vote.

     

     

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2017/10/01/38d5bbc2-a521-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_court-1049am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.33a8d9a1415d

     

  • 09/30/2017 12:02 AM | Deleted user

    The Bar Association of San Francisco

     

    The Environmental Law Section presents:

    Meet your Environmental Regulators

     

    October 5, 2017: 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm

     

    Prices include hors d'oeuvres and two drink tickets.

     

    Register for this Event

     

    Join us for the Annual Members Reception where you will meet with representatives of many important environmental regulatory agencies, including:

    California Department of Toxic Substances Control


    California Coastal Commission


    Bay Area Air Quality Management District


    San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission


    California Attorney General's Office


    U. S. Environmental Protection Agency


    Bay Area County Local Oversight Programs


    U. S. Department of Justice


    Regional Water Quality Control Board


    Native American Heritage Commission

     

    Thank you to our Sponsors:


    Allen Matkins
    APEX
    Arnold Law Practice
    Barg Coffin Lewis & Trapp
    Beveridge & Diamond
    CDIM Engineering
    DLA Piper
    Downey Brand
    Dudek
    Edgcomb Law Group LLP
    EKI Environment & Water Inc.
    Environmental General Counsel LLP
    ERM-West, Inc.
    Farallon Consulting
    Farella Braun + Martel
    Geosyntec Consultants
    GHD
    Hanson Bridgettt
    Hunsucker Goodstein
    Hunton & Williams LLP
    Jeffer Mangels Butler Mitchell
    Kennedy/Jenks Consultants
    Langan
    Marten Law PLLC
    Ramboll Environ
    Stoel Rives
    Terraphase Engineering
    Veritas Environmental Consulting Inc.

     

     

    Location:

    City Club of San Francisco
    155 Sansome St.
    San Francisco, CA 94104

     

    Schedule:

    Program: 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.

     

    Cost:

    Government Complimentary
    BASF Student Member $45.00
    Nonprofit $45.00
    Section Member $55.00
    BASF Member $65.00
    Non-Member $80.00

     

    Note: All prices increase by $10.00 on the day of the program.

     

    Event Code: G172908

     

    Questions about our seminars and the registration process?

     

    Register for this Event

     

    Fax or Mail your registration: Registration Form ( PDF)

     

  • 09/30/2017 12:01 AM | Deleted user

    The Bar Association of San Francisco 

     

    The Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Section

     

    October 4, 2017: 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm


     

    MCLE Credits - 1 H, Lunch will be provided.

     

     

    With distinguished court leaders:


    Supervising Judge Peter J. Busch

    Judge John K. Stewart

    Sandra Hilton
    Assistant Director, Probate Court Services

    Cynthia Jones
    Director, Probate Court Services

     

    With other court staff

    The Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Section thanks Judge Busch, Judge Stewart, and the entire court staff for their contributions to the efficient and equitable administration of justice in the San Francisco Probate Court.

     

    Location:

    Sir Francis Drake

    450 Powell Street

    San Francisco. CA 94102 

     

     

    Schedule:

    MCLE Registration: 11:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.


    Lunch/Program: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

     

    Cost:

    Section Member $95.00
    BASF Member $110.00
    Non-Member

    $125.00

     

    Note: All prices increase by $10.00 on the day of the program.

     

    Event Code: G170513

     

    Questions about our seminars and the registration process?

     

     

    Fax or Mail your registration: Registration Form ( PDF)

     

     

  • 09/29/2017 7:28 AM | Deleted user

    Bernard E. Witkin Alameda County Law Library

     

     

    October 3, 2017 @ Noon

    $35.00 advanced registration

    $45.00 day of the event

    MCLE 2.0 hours participatory credits 

     

     

    Wage and hour issues continue to dominate the employment law landscape. The panelists, experienced practitioners in this field, will discuss the latest cases and trends.    

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 09/29/2017 7:26 AM | Deleted user

    SFGate.com

    September 27, 2017

    By Bob Egelko

     

    Court interpreters and Superior Court officials in coastal Northern California counties have agreed on a labor contract providing a 21 percent wage increase over four years, ending a yearlong dispute that included a series of one-day walkouts.

     

    A majority of the 142 members of the California Federation of Interpreters voted to approve the agreement last week, and court officers in 12 counties endorsed it this week.

     

    Officials said it would raise interpreters’ maximum wages from $76,419 to $92,888 a year by September 2020, though they will still be paid less than interpreters in federal courts or private contractors. Wages have been frozen since last October, when the previous contract expired.

     

    Interpreters translate for witnesses and other court participants who speak little or no English. The contract covers a region that includes the Bay Area and coastal counties from Monterey to the Oregon border.

     

    The union led walkouts in many of the counties in April and July. The union said its members had suffered a 4 to 6 percent loss in take-home pay this year because of mandatory increases in pension contributions, a loss the courts had offset for other employees by increasing their pay.

     

    The new contract does not address that issue but includes a “re-opener” that would allow another round of wage negotiations in July 2019.

     

    The agreement “represents an important step in equalizing the treatment that staff interpreters receive as compared to other court employees,” said Camille Taiara, a union representative. “More work remains to be done, however, to erase the disparate treatment of staff court interpreters and bring our wages up to par with market demands.”

     

    Michael Yuen, executive officer of the San Francisco Superior Court and chairman of court administrators for the region, said, “We are pleased that our interpreter employees will receive a well-deserved wage package. These professionals ensure that non-English speakers are able to access justice in our courts.”

     

     

    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Northern-California-courts-language-interpreters-12233825.php

     

     
  • 09/29/2017 7:24 AM | Deleted user

    Bloomberg Law

    September 28, 2017

    By Susan Decker and Cynthia Koons, Bloomberg News

     

     

    AbbVie Inc. reached a deal with Amgen Inc. that will allow a copy of blockbuster arthritis drug Humira to be sold in Europe next year — but a U.S. version won’t hit shelves until more than four years later.

     

    Financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed. Amgen will pay AbbVie patent royalties when it begins sales of its drug, called Amgevita, in Europe on Oct. 16, 2018. The U.S. version, called Amjevita, will come to market on Jan. 31, 2023.

     

    Settling with Amgen removes one possible legal threat for AbbVie, which gets almost two-thirds of its revenue from Humira, the world’s top-selling medicine with $16 billion in 2016 sales.

     

    While the patent on the drug’s active ingredient expired last year, Abbvie has claimed to own more than 100 additional patents that would keep rivals off the market.

     

    A trial in the Amgen dispute, involving 10 patents, was scheduled for November 2019, in what could have been just the first wave of litigation between the two companies.

     

    Biotechnology drugs like Humira are made from living organisms, so it’s more difficult to make copies of them than it is to develop generic versions of traditional drugs.

     

    The legal authority to get biosimilars approved by the FDA was passed by Congress in 2010, and the courts haven’t settled key legal issues over how the process works. In the interim, companies have been battling each other in court over intellectual-property rights. As a result, few so-called biosimilars have entered the U.S. market, and those that have been cleared haven’t done much to drive down prices.

     

    Breathing Room

     

    The settlement “provides incremental reassurance” that a biosimilar of Humira won’t hit the U.S. market before 2023, giving AbbVie time to develop new medicines and become less reliant on one drug, Jeffrey Holford, an analyst with Jefferies LLC, said in a note to clients. He estimated Amgen will pay royalties of around 10 percent of its sales.

     

    AbbVie shares advanced 5.6 percent to $89.50 at 9:55 a.m. in New York. Shares of Amgen rose 0.6 percent to $186.07.

     

    Often in settlements over traditional drugs, the first company to settle will get a promised lead time that it can be on the market before anyone else. It’s unknown if there’s such an agreement in this case, Umer Raffat, an analyst with Evercore ISI, said in a note to clients.

     

    Officials with the two companies couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

     

    Raffat said one reason for the settlement may have been that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board had rejected Amgen challenges to two patents on the formulation of Humira before the agency, which could have made it harder for Amgen to win in court.

     

    Boehringer Ingelheim has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for its biosimilar to Humira, but hasn’t begun sales because of patent litigation. The current suit against Boehringer involves eight patents, though AbbVie said it’s identified a total of 74 patents that may be infringed by Boehringer’s copy.

     

    Other companies are working to develop their own copies of Humira and some, including Coherus Biosciences Inc. and Novartis AG’s Sandoz, have been filing challenges with the patent office, which uses an easier legal standard to invalidate a patent.

     

    “Whilst consensus is rapidly moving towards our thesis that U.S. biosimilars are unlikely to launch prior to this, there are many biosimilar developers working on Humira and we expect ‘noise’ on this issue from time to time,” Holford said.

     

    –With assistance from Catherine Larkin and Tatiana Darie.

     

     

     https://biglawbusiness.com/abbvie-settles-legal-fight-against-amgen-over-humira-copycat/

     

     



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