IMDb Age Law Declared Unconstitutional

From Law360.com

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a California law requiring IMDb to remove an actor’s age information upon request, an effort to fight age discrimination, was “clearly unconstitutional.” Ruling that “regulation of speech must be a last resort,” U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the state should have tried less invasive options, like beefing up existing discrimination rules, rather than “censor a source of truthful information.”  (more…)

Gold King Contractor to Face Navajo Nation Claims

Environmental Restoration LLC, which contracted with the EPA to work at the Colorado mine and is allegedly partly responsible for the disaster that polluted two rivers that flowed into the Navajo Nation and New Mexico, had asked U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo to toss the lawsuits, but the judge found there was enough evidence to proceed with most of the plaintiffs’ claims.

The judge first declined to toss the state and Navajo Nation’s Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act claims for cost recovery and injunctive relief. In particular, she rejected Environmental Restoration’s assertion that is was not a facility “operator” as defined by CERCLA.

She noted that the company was one of the parties present and working at the site on Aug. 4 and Aug. 5, 2015.

Read more in Law360  By Juan Carlos Rodriguez

The Navajo Nation is represented by John Hueston, Moez Kaba, Andrew Walsh, and Kasey Mitchell.

 

DOJ Memo Signals Qui Tam Sea Change

Memo suggests shift in DOJ’s qui tam approach

By Brian Hennigan and Padraic Foran

The Department of Justice issued an internal memorandum this month that signals a shift in its approach to qui tam actions, encouraging government attorneys to act more aggressively to dismiss certain False Claims Act cases. Whether this policy will actually result in more dismissals remains to be seen. But the policy is a welcome one, especially for defendants. It also has immediate and significant implications for all qui tam litigants, especially those in the pre-intervention stage.

In every qui tam action filed under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S. Section 3739, the government is authorized to investigate and decide whether to intervene — that is, take over the litigation. About 75 percent of the time, the government declines to do so. But the scant 25 percent of cases in which it does intervene account for the overwhelming majority of recoveries. In 2017, more than 87% of total qui tam recoveries (3,011,269,763) came from intervention cases. Non-intervention cases accounted for less than 13 percent of recoveries (or $425,767,335). In 2016, non-intervenors fared even worse, accounting for just 4 percent of total recoveries.

Despite the low success rate of non-intervention cases, the government seldom seeks their dismissal. Yet dismissal, according to the memo, is necessary if the DOJ is to perform its “important gateway keeper role in protecting the False Claims Act.” And until this month, there have not been formal guidelines for seeking dismissals.

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