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For the past two weeks, we’ve reviewed and compared the reversal rates for every District and Division of the Court of Appeal in civil and criminal cases at the Supreme Court.  But all affirmances and all reversals aren’t created equal, which is a problem with inferring too much from a reversal rate alone.  Whether the Court of Appeal’s decision is affirmed or reversed, a 7-0 decision from the Supreme Court arguably implies a different message…
Last time, we began reviewing the performance of each District and Division of the Appellate Court for the years 1990 to 2017 using a different metric: average votes each year to affirm the Appellate Court’s decision, regardless of whether the ultimate result was to affirm or reverse.  After reviewing the numbers for Chicago’s First District in our last post, this time we’re looking at the data for the rest of the state. The Second District’s…
The Fifth Circuit has affirmed a denial of all attorney fees under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act based on the “outrageous facts” and the conduct of the plaintiff’s attorneys. Crystal Davis alleged that Credit Bureau of the South violated Texas and Federal Debt Collection Practices Acts by using the words “credit bureau” in its name when attempting to collect a water bill of $107.29.  Davis also alleged that the defendant misrepresented itself in a…
For the past two weeks, we’ve been reviewing the reversal rates before the Supreme Court of each District and Division of the Appellate Court since 1990.  But not all affirmances (or reversals) are created equal.  A 4-3 reversal is arguably a different thing than a 7-0 reversal (and the same goes for affirmances by those votes).  We calculated average votes to affirm each District and Division, year by year: votes for the prevailing side in…
The Legal Skills Prof Blog ran this post about the legal industry losing 2,400 jobs in November. This followed gains in September-October. Overall, the industry lost 100 jobs in the last 12 months. My Take: Another reason to avoid law school. I don’t know why the industry isn’t growing. My guess is technology is eliminating jobs. But the reason doesn’t matter. It’s hard enough to get a good job in growing industries. Going to professional…
Last time, we compared the twenty-eight year reversal rate for each District and Division of the Court of Appeal in civil and criminal cases before the Supreme Court.  Then we began our review of the year-by-year data in criminal cases for the First District, and the first half of the Divisions of the Second District.  Today, we’re covering the rest of the state: Divisions Six through Eight of the Second District, Districts Three through Six,…
There is an interesting case before the California on the issue of whether that state’s pension benefits are guaranteed. The Sacramento Bee reports here. The State’s argument: “Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the California Constitution requires the state to mismanage its affairs and continue a broken system for decades, even after the state has concluded the program is severely (if not fatally) flawed and cannot be implemented as originally intended.” Participants disagree. The case…
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Hollywood hijacked reality in this week’s episode of “Bull.” Let’s shake things up this week and play a game of “Truth or Bull.” But first, a quick synopsis. If you watch the show, you may want to skip this column as the entire piece will be a ginormous spoiler. This week’s episode, “Separation,” had two distinct story lines. The first centered around a rich German, Geoffrey Schreiber, who was being sued by a museum for…
Jump To: Table of Contents | Civil Decisions | Short Civil Decisions | Criminal Decisions Good evening, Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario released this past week. Topics covered included: 1. A review of the conflicting case law relating to the deduction of statutory accident benefits (“SABs”) paid before a trial from the amount of tort damages awarded at trial. The Court rejected the approach that…
The Iowa Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in eight cases Dec. 11 and 12. Four other cases will be submitted to the Court without oral argument. Among the cases set for argument are two appeals brought by state and local government employee unions arguing that amendments made by the Iowa General Assembly in 2017 to Iowa’s public-employee bargaining law violate the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. Following are summaries of…