This Ninth Circuit order arises from a class-action lawsuit by farmworkers against Global Horizons and orchard operators (Valley Fruit Orchards and Green Acre Farms) alleging multiple violations of Washington’s Farm Labor Contractor Act (FLCA). The district court had awarded statutory damages for several violations, prompting an appeal that raised unsettled questions about the statute’s damages provisions. Rather than decide the case, the Ninth Circuit certified three questions to the Washington Supreme Court: whether a court that elects to award statutory damages must impose $500 per plaintiff per violation or may choose a lesser amount; whether a mandatory $500 award would violate state public policy or due process; and whether damages may be awarded to persons not shown to have been aggrieved by the specific violation. The court stayed the federal appeal pending the state court’s answers, noting that no Washington appellate decision had interpreted the relevant FLCA language and that authoritative guidance was necessary to resolve the dispute.
The case involved GoPets Ltd., the developer of a virtual pet game, suing Edward Hise, Joseph Hise, and their company Digital Overture under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Lanham Act. The defendants had registered gopets.com in 1999 and later re-registered it, along with other similar domain names, after GoPets Ltd. began using its “GoPets” service mark. The Ninth Circuit held that re-registration of an already-registered domain name by a new registrant does not qualify as “registration” under the ACPA, so the transfer of gopets.com did not violate the statute; however, the court affirmed that the defendants’ initial registration of the additional similar domains was done in bad faith and violated the ACPA. It also affirmed a Lanham Act violation based on the defendants’ use of misleading text on the gopets.com site. The court reversed the relief granted for the gopets.com ACPA claim, affirmed the award of statutory damages for the other domains, and remanded for further consideration of possible Lanham Act relief and attorney’s fees.
The case involved class action lawsuits claiming that companies violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act by purchasing personal driver information from state databases in bulk for potential future use. The plaintiffs argued that obtaining the data without an immediate permitted purpose was unlawful, even though the companies' eventual uses complied with the statute. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district courts' dismissals, holding that the DPPA permits bulk purchases as long as the information is obtained for a permissible use, without requiring immediate or actual use in every instance. The court reasoned that the statute's focus is on the end use of the information rather than the method or timing of acquisition.
The case involved Ronald Velasquez, a California prisoner convicted of first-degree murder, who filed a federal habeas corpus petition more than three years after his conviction became final. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's dismissal of the petition as untimely under AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations. The court reasoned that the time between Velasquez's successive state habeas petitions was not tolled because the delays of 92 and 81 days were unreasonable under California law, and there were no extraordinary circumstances warranting equitable tolling.
The case involved a class action lawsuit filed in California state court by Bradford Coleman against Estes Express Lines and related companies for alleged violations of California labor laws, including failure to pay overtime and provide meal breaks. The defendants removed the case to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), but the plaintiff sought remand under the local controversy exception. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed whether a district court could consider evidence beyond the complaint to determine if the local controversy exception applied, specifically regarding the significance of relief sought from and conduct by a local defendant. The court held that the analysis is limited to the allegations in the complaint and affirmed the district court's decision to remand the case to state court.
The case involved brothers Aaron and Matthew Benay suing Warner Bros. Entertainment and related defendants for copyright infringement under federal law and breach of contract under California law, alleging that the film The Last Samurai copied elements from their copyrighted screenplay after it was pitched to one of the production companies with an implicit understanding of compensation if used. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on both claims. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment on the copyright claim due to insufficient evidence of copying, but reversed on the breach of contract claim, finding triable issues of fact on the existence of an implied-in-fact contract and determining that the statute of limitations had not begun to run because the idea had not been disclosed to a substantial segment of the public. The court remanded the contract claim for further proceedings, including on issues like privity.
