In Brief: The Columbus Bar Blawg

When bloggers are looking for inspiration, they often resort to a “link dump,” posting links to items that may be of interest.  It’s not that I need inspiration, but I do have a number of items that I’ve seen recently that I thought might be of interest.  Most of these links are from this week, but forgive me if you’ve seen these items already:

• In interesting litigation news, the Dallas Mavericks (NBA champions this year) are involved in litigation with Hillwood Investment Properties, a company controlled by H. Ross Perot Jr.  Attorneys for the Mavericks, run by principal owner Mark Cuban, filed a four-page motion for summary judgment with a very visual “evidence” section.  Check out the title of the brief, too.  Coverage of the filing can be found here, here, here (vulgur language alert, though), and here.
• Three items make a “trend” in the journalism world, right?  Well, I’ve seen a few different versions of this story about judges having issues with “wired” jurors.
• Do you remember the fuss about “Google Health,” where you would upload your medical records into the cloud and have it available to you from whereever?  I recall concerns about HIPAA and medical privacy, and other legal issues.  Well, Google’s done away with it now, announcing its demise today on its blog.  

• If you litigate civil cases in federal court, you’re probably aware of Twombly and Iqbal.  In the Sixth Circuit this week, two separate panels (though Judge Griffin was on both panels) examining motions to dismiss in different antitrust cases came to two different results about the impact of Twombly and Iqbal.  Both cases will be reported decisions.  In the first case, New Albany Tractor, the court noted:

Before Twombly and Iqbal, courts would probably have allowed this case to proceed so that plaintiff could conduct discovery in order to gather the pricing information that is solely retained within the accounting system of [defendants]. It may be that only[defendants]have knowledge of whether [defendant]exercises control over the terms and conditions of [a third party's]sales to retailers, including the retail operations of [a third party]. The plaintiff apparently can no longer obtain the factual detail necessary because the language of Iqbal specifically directs that no discovery may be conducted in cases such as this, even when the information needed to establish a claim of discriminatory pricing is solely within the purview of the defendant or a third party, as it is here.  ***By foreclosing discovery to obtain pricing information, the combined effect of Twombly and Iqbal require plaintiff to have greater knowledge now of factual details in order to draft a “plausible complaint.” *** Without discovery, pricing information or any fact that would support an allegation of illegal economic collusion becomes far harder to obtain.

In the second case, however, the plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss — possibly because the plaintiff had discovery from a parallel case filed prior to Twombly.

• Finally, from DC federal court, here’s a story about the difficulties the parties are having concerning the trial date in a legal malpractice case brought by a Nobel prize-winning economist against his former divorce attorney.  Love the plaintiff’s reason for wanting to continue the trial date.