The case involves a father suing the City of West Covina and two police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after social workers removed his minor son from the home following an investigation into a bruise on the child's leg. The plaintiff alleged that the officers' actions violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to familial association and constituted a warrantless entry into his home in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The court granted summary judgment to the city defendants on the Fourteenth Amendment claim, reasoning that the officers did not physically remove the child, make the removal decision, or otherwise directly interfere with the plaintiff's familial rights. It denied summary judgment on the Fourth Amendment claim due to disputed facts regarding consent to enter the home and the absence of any warrant or applicable exception such as exigent circumstances.
In Doe v. Match.com, the plaintiff, a former subscriber to the online dating service, sued Match.com in California state court seeking injunctive relief under Civil Code § 1770(a)(10) after alleging she was raped by another subscriber who was a serial sexual predator; she claimed the defendant failed to implement adequate screening procedures. The case was removed to federal court, where the plaintiff had sought a TRO and preliminary injunction to require screening. The district court held that the plaintiff lacked Article III standing to pursue injunctive relief because she had canceled her subscription after the assault, resubscribed solely to pursue litigation, and presented no evidence of a concrete, imminent threat of future injury from using the service to meet others, citing precedents like City of Los Angeles v. Lyons. As a result, the court remanded the case to Los Angeles County Superior Court rather than dismissing it. The ruling focused solely on justiciability and did not address the merits of the underlying claim.
The case involved Spa De Soleil, Inc., a cosmetics manufacturer, suing its insurer General Star Indemnity Co. for breach of contract after the insurer denied coverage and defense in a lawsuit by Issimo International over defective and undelivered cosmetic products. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, finding no duty to defend or indemnify. The core reasoning was that the underlying claims alleged contractual breaches, defective products, and intentional misrepresentations rather than covered property damage from an occurrence, and that policy exclusions for the insured's products and work applied, even under the professional liability endorsement.
The case involved actress Shirley Jones filing a class action against Corbis Corporation, an online provider of image copyright licenses, alleging that Corbis violated her statutory and common law rights of publicity by displaying sample photographs of her on its websites to market and sell licenses without her consent. Corbis moved for summary judgment on grounds including consent, First Amendment protection, and Copyright Act preemption, while Jones moved for partial summary judgment and class certification. The court granted Corbis's motion for summary judgment and denied Jones's motions. The core reasoning was that Jones manifested consent to the photographs through her conduct of posing on red carpets at events where she knew images would be taken, displayed, and distributed by photographers, rendering her claims invalid, and that she was not an adequate class representative because no licenses for the images at issue had been sold.
The case involved Amini Innovation Corp. suing KTY International Marketing for copyright and design patent infringement after the defendant allegedly sold furniture copying the plaintiff's protected designs in its B40000, D40000, and E6500 collections. The defendant was served, agreed to be bound by a related judgment, but later failed to respond to settlement efforts or provide evidence after the stay was lifted, leading to entry of default. The court granted the motion for default judgment in part after weighing the Eitel factors and accepting the well-pleaded allegations as true, entering judgment for $151,000 in statutory damages, $25,081 in attorneys' fees, $346.66 in costs, and a permanent injunction against further sales of infringing goods. The damages were based on statutory minimums and per-work amounts justified by evidence of saved development costs, as actual lost revenues could not be determined due to lack of discovery.
In Lavino v. Metropolitan Life Insurance, plaintiff Kelly Lavino sued MetLife under ERISA to obtain long-term disability benefits under her employer's welfare benefit plan after MetLife terminated benefits for fibromyalgia. The court had previously found MetLife abused its discretion in ending benefits under the plan's "own occupation" standard and remanded for review under the "any occupation" standard, including whether the disability was physical or psychiatric. MetLife determined the disability was psychiatric and thus limited to two years of benefits, but the court found this determination mistaken after reviewing the administrative record. The court concluded MetLife abused its discretion due to procedural irregularities and conflicts of interest, ordering payment of ongoing "any occupation" benefits for the physical disability.