California Employment Development Department Severance Pay, Dismissal or Separation Pay Severance pay is not wages for unemployment insurance purposes. There is no specific code section in the California Unemployment Insurance Code which declares that severance pay is not wages. We cite Section 1265 when we state that severance pay is not wages. The authority for […]
Author: admin
The “fair use” doctrine
GOOGLE LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1183 – Supreme Court 2021 Copyright and patents, the Constitution says, are to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 8. Copyright […]
FMLA interference and retaliation
The FMLA provides job security to employees who must be absent from work because of their own illnesses, to care for family members who are ill, or to care for new babies.” Bachelder v. America West Airlines, Inc., 259 F.3d 1112, 1119 (9th Cir. 2001) (citing 29 U.S.C. § 2612). Through the FMLA, “Congress made it unlawful for […]
The Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards
The New York Convention provides a carefully structured framework for the review and enforcement of international arbitral awards. Only a court in a country with primary jurisdiction over an arbitral award may annul that award. Courts in other countries have secondary jurisdiction; a court in a country with secondary jurisdiction is limited to deciding whether […]
Statutes of limitation and the discovery rule
Fox v. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., 110 P. 3d 914 – Cal: Supreme Court 2005 “Statute of limitations” is the collective term applied to acts or parts of acts that prescribe the periods beyond which a plaintiff may not bring a cause of action. (3 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (4th ed. 1996) Actions, § 405, p. 509; […]
The public trust doctrine
Center for Biological Diversity, Inc. v. FPL Group, Inc., 166 Cal. App. 4th 1349 While the public trust doctrine has evolved primarily around the rights of the public with respect to tidelands and navigable waters, the doctrine is not so limited. “[T]he public trust doctrine is not just a set of rules about tidelands, a […]
Oil Pollution Act of 1990
IN RE: OIL SPILL BY the OIL RIG “DEEPWATER HORIZON” IN the GULF OF MEXICO, ON APRIL 20, 2010 On April 20, 2010, a blowout, explosions, and fire occurred aboard the semi-submersible drilling rig DEEPWATER HORIZON as it was preparing to temporarily abandon a well, known as Macondo, it had recently drilled some 50 miles […]
Artist’s “moral rights”
The term “moral rights” has its origins in the civil law and is a translation of the French le droit moral, which is meant to capture those rights of a spiritual, non-economic and personal nature. The rights spring from a belief that an artist in the process of creation injects his spirit into the work and that […]
Sources of international law
The Supreme Court has enumerated the appropriate sources of international law. The law of nations “may be ascertained by consulting the works of jurists, writing professedly on public law; or by the general usage and practice of nations; or by judicial decisions recognizing and enforcing that law.” United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153, 160-61, […]
The collateral estoppel effect of unlawful detainer judgments
Because “[a]n unlawful detainer action is a summary proceeding ordinarily limited to resolution of the question of possession[,] [citation] … any judgment arising therefrom generally is given limited res judicata effect.” (Malkoskie v. Option One Mortgage Corp. (2010) 188 Cal.App.4th 968, 973 [115 Cal.Rptr.3d 821].) The approach courts take to applying collateral estoppel in this setting […]