It’s rare that a party to a contract can breach it but not be liable for a remedy. Yet that’s precisely what happened last week in Southern Financial Group, LLC v. McFarland State Bank, No. 13-3378 (7th Cir. Aug. 15, 2014), a...more
In United States ex rel. Heath v. Wisconsin Bell, Inc., No. 12-3383 (7th Cir. July 28, 2014), the Seventh Circuit grappled with this bar on the use of publicly disclosed information, refusing to apply it in a case involving...more
Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 to deal with the accounting scandals that resulted in the downfall of the likes of Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen, and others. In its October Term 2014, the Supreme Court will...more
Putting together all the Seventh Circuit’s decisions from the last few decades on subject-matter jurisdiction would yield an impressive textbook on the subject. The court (and Judge Easterbook, in particular) has adhered...more
There’s nothing inherently unique about the substantive issues in Burzlaff v. Thoroughbred Motorsports, Inc., No. 13-2520 (July 10, 2014), a decision released yesterday by the Seventh Circuit. The plaintiff, Ronald Burzlaff,...more
7/15/2014
What is or what is not a federal question under Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v. Darue Engineering & Manufacturing, 545 U.S. 308 (2005), is an issue that continues to perplex lawyers, judges, and law students alike. In...more
In Goldman v. Gagnard, No. 12-2706 (June 27, 2014), the Seventh Circuit (in an opinion authored by Judge Tinder) waded into a long-running, continent-spanning dispute, which it characterized as “Dickensian” in character,...more
We last wrote about Mitchell v. JCG Industries, No. 13-2115 (7th Cir. Mar. 18, 2014), in mid-March, when one judge on the panel (all suspected Judge Posner) confirmed his “intuition” that plaintiffs in a donning-and-doffing...more
The word “laches” is from French, meaning “remissness” or “slackness.” One of the familiar equitable defenses, laches developed in chancery to prevent unreasonable delay in pursuing a right or claim, lest that delay prejudice...more
Late last year the Seventh Circuit issued its decision in Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Van Hollen, No. 13-2726 (7th Cir. Dec. 20, 2013), a constitutional challenge to a new Wisconsin law (known as Act 37) that...more
The Seventh Circuit recently issued two opinions with interesting evidentiary issues. We wrote about the multiple levels of hearsay in Jordan v. Binns, No. 11-2134 (7th Cir. Apr. 4, 2013), last week. And, this week, the...more
What is “excusable neglect” under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1)? The answer is that it depends, but generally it’s not much. That’s the first lesson from the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in In re Canopy Financial, Inc., No....more
Last year, around this time in fact, we wrote about the Federal Arbitration Act and the effect of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011), on an argument under Wisconsin law about the unconscionability of an...more