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Archive 2007-2008

November 15, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Four legal challenges to gay-marriage ban have now been filed. Santa Clara University Law School Professor Gerald Uelmen said the majority ruling was already having a nationwide effect. With the justices only a few feet away, Uelmen also opined that the court could not overturn Proposition 8 without also admitting that its May 15 decision improperly revised the state Constitution. The lawsuits against Proposition 8 contend that the initiative changed the tenets of the state Constitution and therefore amounted to a revision, which can only be placed on the ballot by a 2/3 vote of the Legislature. Proposition 8 stemmed from a signature campaign.

November 13, 2008
Christian Science Monitor
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could institute a compromise in the gay marriage issue with a sweep of his pen. The deal: Get the government out of the marriage business. Couples gay and straight would get civil unions from city hall. Then, if they wanted, they could get married within a church. Religious institutions must be granted freedom to refuse marriage to anyone, and existing same-sex marriages should be considered legal. That would be fine with Patricia Cain, a law professor at Santa Clara University and a married lesbian, only if it is the national standard and the federal Defense of Marriage Act is repealed. Otherwise, jurisdictions where civil marriage is solely for straight couples will remain. "Equality has been my goal, not marriage," says Ms. Cain. But, "some people on both sides are very attached to the word 'marriage.' "

November 7, 2008
Xinhua General News Service
Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to define that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," received 52.5 percent of the votes in Tuesday's election, compared to 47.5 percent opposed, election results showed. Gerald Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said he was not optimistic that the challenge would succeed, based on the cases in which the court has addressed the difference between a revision and an amendment.

October 30, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Proposition 8 would amend the state Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, but the measure does not address what would happen to the estimated 16,000 same-sex couples who have tied the knot since gay marriage became legal in California on June 17. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen believes the initiative would nullify existing marriages. The high court could apply the measure prospectively and still invalidate marriages because Proposition 8 says they are not valid or recognized. By voting for Proposition 8, "people should realize they are taking something away from people who believe they were married," he said. "What voters would be saying is, 'We don't recognize your marriage.' "

October 21, 2008
The New Zealand Herald
While protests at other colleges focus on Iraq or global warming, here, where 10 per cent of students study economics, the furor is over the naming of a new institute after the diminutive, bespectacled Friedman, who taught at the University of Chicago for 30 years. "Friedman's over," said Bruce Lincoln, a religion professor who joined about 70 others at a recent campus protest where some demonstrators sucked on pacifiers to illustrate their charge that the university has tried to muffle debate surrounding the Milton Friedman Institute. Friedman's son added that his father is wrongly portrayed as a conservative, noting he held many views considered liberal, including support for decriminalizing drugs and opposition to the Iraq war. "The people who (call him a right-winger), if you ask them which Milton Friedman books they've read, they'd say, 'zero'," said David Friedman, a law professor at Santa Clara University.

October 16, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Contending that a top local prosecutor repeatedly sought to subvert justice, the state bar is recommending that Ben Field be suspended from practicing law for three years a punishment that would represent an unheard of public discipline against a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney. "There is clearly greater attention," said Gerald F. Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who recently directed a statewide commission exploring causes of wrongful conviction.

October 4, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
The verdict in the most recent O.J. Simpson trial came and went in the dark of night in a Las Vegas courtroom. The proceedings might not have been breathlessly awaited, but the outcome still provoked strong emotions through Los Angeles, a city indelibly marked by the first Simpson trial 13 years ago. "I just don't want to talk about O.J. Simpson anymore," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University Law School and the former dean.

October 4, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
The financial crisis: How our mortgages got us into this mess.... Before long, many of the solid mortgages within these investments were tainted by being packaged with loans that never should have been written, as well as with credit card, auto loan and commercial real estate debt. Investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers both had been aggressively investing in these mortgage bundles, meaning their assets had lost much of their value. To complicate matters, they were not forthcoming with their lenders and investors about the condition of their investments. This created a crisis in confidence and essentially triggered a run on both banks. "When clients like the large hedge funds and pension funds felt they weren't getting clear answers,'' said Santa Clara University's Stephen Diamond, "they started pulling money out, which undermined both banks further.''

September 29, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
In a century-old former farmhouse in San Jose, David Friedman is a living paradox who writes about the promise and perils of futuristic technologies even as he collects medieval weapons and other artifacts from the past. Speaking recently at an authors' panel at the Mountain View headquarters of Google, Friedman likened technology to an unstoppable train. "There are no brakes available. ... If it can be done, it will be done," he said at an event that was recorded and posted on YouTube. "So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt."  Kerry Macintosh, a law professor at Santa Clara University and colleague of Friedman, said students "are entranced" by his unconventional and eclectic thinking. "He teaches imaginative courses that force students to see things in a new way," she said. Santa Clara University law school Dean Donald Polden offered an example: a course on comparative legal systems that drew examples from medieval law, from the traditions of the American Indian Cheyenne and from Islamic law, contrasting these to contemporary norms. "He is creative and imaginative," Polden said of Friedman.

September 19, 2008
The Hollywood Reporter
SAG's membership demanded change Thursday, electing members of the opposition Unite for Strength slate and shifting the balance of power on the union's national board. Stephen Diamond, a Santa Clara University School of Law professor who was once in the running for the SAG national executive director position, said that ultimately the national board is the one that directs the negotiating committee. Nonetheless, there are no expectations that there will be immediate movement in the contract talks. "Unless the national board can muster the two-thirds majority to change that committee or eliminate that committee, the MembershipFirst representatives will stay on the negotiating committee," he said. "If Unite for Strength has in mind a changed approach to negotiating the contract, they will have some hoops to jump through to change that structurally."

September 16, 2008

OC Register (California)

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/atkins-years-support-2158386-state-prison
SCU law professor Kathleen Ridolfi  co-wrote a column in the Orange County Register with former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp. "California state legislators have passed a new bill that does the morally right thing and provides much needed support and services for people who have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated – the same services the state currently provides to parolees and ex-convicts. It's time to do the right thing and sign AB2937 into law. The state must take responsibility for its errors and provide the wrongfully convicted the same support offered the guilty."

September 16, 2008
The International Herald Tribune
Investors wiped out $1 billion of the market value of UAL, United's parent, within minutes of an erroneous news flash on Bloomberg screens about a United bankruptcy. Google and the Tribune Co., the owner of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, whose Web site was the source of the article that led to the headline, soon blamed each other for causing the fiasco. ''I would be concerned about the credibility I lost with my customers more than I would about that a big fat lawsuit that is going to hit me,'' said Eric Goldman, an associate professor at the law school of Santa Clara University. ''Everyone here lost some credibility with its readers,'' Goldman said. ''Most obviously Google News, because they were the person in the chain who presented the information to the reader who made the bad judgment.''

September 11, 2008
Back Stage East
More drama erupted last week in the already contentious election to fill 11 seats and 22 alternate spots on the Screen Actors Guild's national board. The catalyst was a seemingly innocuous bar code stamped on polling post cards the guild sent to members over Labor Day weekend. The bar code is explained in a disclaimer: "This post card includes a unique bar code to ensure that only active members in good standing participate in this poll. The confidentiality of your response will be maintained." Stephen Diamond, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law and a former candidate for SAG national executive director, said guild staffers could usethe information to target members who voted to accept the AMPTP's deal and urge them to change their minds. "I think there is understandable concern among members that if they vote against the current guildstrategy it could lead to harassment or other forms of pressure that could affect the lives and possibly the careers of guild members," Diamond wrote via email.

September 8, 2008
The Daily News of Los Angeles (California)
Lawyers for Juan Alvarez say the 11 deaths were not the result of fire, but of a train wreck. Ellen Kreitzberg, associate professor of law at Santa Clara University's School of Law and an expert on capital punishment, raised the possibility that prosecutors had rushed to judgment on seeking the death penalty and heightened the stakes in a case where there had been no intent to kill. "It looks like this jury on the one hand was very thoughtful and was able to set aside what was clearly just emotional testimony from the (victims') family members and clearly graphic testimony of the crime and actually look at more than the crime, which is what they're required to do," she said.

September 8, 2008
Lawyers USA
Under a settlement, Target has agreed to pay $6 million to the plaintiffs and make its website fully accessible to blind customers by March 2009, as well as submit to training and ongoing monitoring by the NFB. The settlement is a reminder for companies that "if websites haven't been changing their behavior to make sites accessible, it could cost them," said Eric Goldman, Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. "And $6 million is grossly in excess of what it would have cost Target to fix the website in the first place. "

September 8, 2008
The New York Times
When a Palestinian gunman burst into a bat mitzvah celebration in northern Israel in 2002, killing 6 people and wounding more than 30, the attack sparked anger and despair, and military retaliation by Israel. It also prompted a lawsuit in New York, which has taken an unusual turn. The new defense lawyers have proposed a bond of $15 million, saying that their clients cannot afford $192.7 million, which they said was nearly 10 percent of the annual budget of the entire Palestinian Authority. The defendants ''are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy,'' they said in court papers. Beth Van Schaack, an associate law professor at Santa Clara University, said that the legal process, if the Palestinians do participate fully, could allow an inquiry into Palestinian finances, and whether money went to support terrorism. ''The Abbas administration has gotten themselves in a little bit of a bind,'' Professor Van Schaack said. ''If they are claiming, 'We can't put up the bond because we don't have the money,' '' she said, ''that opens the door to do some level of discovery about money.''

September 5, 2008
Traffic World
The Los Angeles-Long Beach ports on Oct. 1 intend to begin collecting a $35 per-TEU clean-trucks fee on most drayage moves. The ports will use the revenues for subsidies to truckers that purchase new trucks that comply with the ports' strict emission requirements. At Thursday's teleconference, Stephen Diamond, associate professor of law at Santa Clara University, joined environmental and community health groups in Southern California in stating that preventing implementation of the concession plans would result in continued truck pollution and health risks near the ports. Using a balance of harm argument, Diamond said the well-documented health risks of diesel pollution are more significant than the narrow interests of trucking companies and therefore the restraining order should not be issued.

August 12, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Santa Clara County prosecutors have taken the rare step of conceding they never had the evidence to back up criminal charges against two San Jose lobbyists, both of whom were recently declared 'factually innocent" in a case that has unraveled amid allegations of a political vendetta. Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi, a Santa Clara University law professor and head of the law school's innocence project, called the development "unusual" and suggested a lawsuit against the county is a possible next step. District attorneys' offices seldom concede innocence even after agreeing to dismiss a criminal case, generally taking the position they simply had insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.

July 22, 2008
TalkLeft the Politics of Crime (Blog)
Recent Supreme Court cases have said that whether the death penalty is cruel and unusual depends upon the nation's "evolving standards of decency." Santa Clara University law professor Ellen Kreitzberg adds: "I think we should be asking whether or not prosecutors should be thinking more carefully or more thoughtfully about seeking the death penalty where they are not really making a showing of any intent to kill."

July 20, 200
The Daily News of Los Angeles (California)
Legal and capital punishment experts say prosecutors who argued strongly for the death sentence for 29-year-old convicted murderer Juan Manuel Alvarez had little chance of winning that recommendation from the jury. On Tuesday a jury of nine women and three men rejected the prosecution's call for the death penalty, instead believing the defense's contention that Alvarez had not meant to kill or harm anyone. The panel sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the deadly Jan. 26, 2005, crash. Ellen Kreitzberg, associate professor of law at Santa Clara University's School of Law and an expert on capital-punishment law, raised another issue. "I think the more interesting question is why the prosecutor decided to pursue the death penalty in this particular case,'' said Kreitzberg. "Even though there were a number of people who lost life, it at least appears even from an objective look at the evidence and from the jurors' statements that this was predicated on a felony murder -- the fact that it was a felony and people died without any intent to kill being shown by the defendant. ``I think we should be asking whether or not prosecutors should be thinking more carefully or more thoughtfully about seeking the death penalty where they are not really making a showing of any intent to kill.''

July 16, 2008
hollywoodreporter.com
Stephen Diamond, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law and a former candidate for SAG national executive director, said SAG leaders certainly have the upcoming elections on their minds. "I think the elections are probably playing a significant role now in shaping the tactical approach of the guild leadership," he said. "The problem with that, of course, is it suggests to the producers that the leadership is more interested in preserving power than in good-faith bargaining."

July 8, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
David Ghent, Santa Clara County's longest serving death row inmate, could have been Exhibit A in last week's report from a state justice commission on problems and delays in California's death penalty system. Nearly thirty years after first being condemned to death for murdering a San Jose woman in her home, Ghent's case is remarkable for the lengths of time in which nothing happens. The latest delays recently prompted the California Attorney General's office to urge a federal judge to end more than three years of waiting for a ruling that would unlock Ghent's languishing case. "What happens is that the net result of the delay is it is just impossible to retry and put on a convincing case for death after all that time," said Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor and executive director of the state justice commission.

July 2, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
When voters were asked to sign petitions for a November initiative to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, they were told the measure would not change state law, which at the time banned same-sex marriage. But then, after the signatures were gathered, the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to wed. Now supporters of gay marriage are asking the state high court to take the initiative off the ballot, partly on grounds that voters who signed petitions were misled about the measure's potential effect. "For the court to take an initiative off the ballot, it has to be very clear to the court that the measure doesn't belong on the ballot," said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, an expert on the court. "And in context of this issue, it would be especially explosive." Nevertheless, Uelmen called the argument over accuracy "powerful." "As it stands now, the measure would make a very dramatic change in the law," Uelmen said. "It would say to thousands of married couples, 'Your marriage is no longer recognized.' "

July 1, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
California's administration of the death penalty is "close to collapse" and would require massive new state spending or changes in sentencing laws to end decades of delay and dysfunction, a state commission reported Monday. The findings, by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, grew out of the first comprehensive look at the state's death penalty in the 30 years since capital punishment was restored in California. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, executive director of the commission, called the report "kind of like poking a stick in a hornet's nest" but said he hoped it would provoke debate.

July, 2008
94 A.B.A.J. 19
Click on the Web address juicycampus.com and you'll get sleazy, anonymous gossip posted from colleges around the country: the "sluttiest girls," the "biggest cocaine users." However, Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman says it would be a mistake for Congress to cut back on statutory immunity. He argues that the marketplace will take care of websites known for unreliable and inaccurate information. "Anything-goes websites relying on section 230(c) insulation are not an accident or an unexpected defect of the statute," says Goldman, an expert in cyberlaw. "They are its natural and logical consequence." He adds: "The question is whether the harms they may facilitate are larger than the benefits of a robust immunization that stimulates and protects lots of legitimate behavior. Personally, I think the benefits of a robust immunization greatly outweigh the costs created by sites like JuicyCampus, so it would be a mistake to overreact to them."

June 27, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
Facebook, the Web's second-largest social-networking site, may soon reach the end of a long legal debate over whether its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, stole the idea for the company from former university classmates. Eric Goldman, assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law and director of the school's High Tech Law Institute, said that the settlement included handing over an undisclosed amount of Facebook stock and the ConnectU founders could still "be a thorn in Facebook's side as a minority stakeholder." "It just moved the battle to a new venue," Goldman said.  Goldman added that ConnectU wasn't just looking for financial compensation when it filed its suit. "ConnectU initiated the lawsuit before Facebook clearly reached the lofty valuation it has today," Goldman said. "From my perspective, this lawsuit has not always been about money. There were some key emotional concerns that were infusing ConnectU's complaint."

June 19, 2008
Business Wire
Santa Clara University School of Law adjunct professor, Eugene Hyman '77, and the State of California Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara will be honored with the2008 United Nations Public Service Awardat a ceremony on June 23 in New York City. Hyman and the court are being recognized in the category of 'Improving transparency, accountability, and responsiveness in the Public Service' for 'Juvenile Delinquency Domestic Violence and Family Violence Court.' "Santa Clara School of Law is very proud of our alumnus and faculty member, Judge Gene Hyman, for the wonderful contributions he and his colleagues on the court have made and for the recognition given by the United Nations," says Donald J. Polden, Dean of the Santa Clara School of Law. "Judge Hyman, over the span of his career, epitomizes the Santa Clara Law graduate-a lawyer of competence, conscience, and compassion."

June 16, 2008
Lawyers US
AThe use of trademarks sold as "keywords" by Google and other search engines to trigger "sponsored links" on the side of a search page continues to be a hot button issue for any business with a website - including law firms. The legal question is whether a trademark is infringed if a competitor buys the trademark and uses it to trigger an online advertisement for its own company, such that a consumer searching for the trademark will pull up an ad for the competitor. Courts are split over the answer. "Trademark-driven advertising is an integral part of many lawyers' practices," said Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and author of the Technology & Marketing Law Blog at http://blog.ericgoldman.org.

June 12, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
The new chief judge of the federal appeals court in San Francisco dabbles as a paintball warrior, computer gamer and scuba diver. A political conservative and free-speech libertarian, he led a successful campaign in 2001 to stop court officials in Washington, D.C., from monitoring the Internet use of federal judges and court employees. On Wednesday, Judge Alex Kozinski was on the hot seat after the Los Angeles Times disclosed that a Web site of his contained numerous sexual photos and videos - showing nudity and bestiality - while he was preparing to preside over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles. Longtime court commentator Gerald Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said the episode raises "a question of judgment" but doesn't appear to be grounds for removal from the case. Amar had a similar assessment. "There's lots of stuff that's embarrassing to each of us, that we wouldn't want the public to know," he said. "Maybe this was an indiscretion in judgment ... but I don't see how that bears on his fitness to handle cases that involve that kind of subject matter."

June 8, 2008
The Post-Crescent
It's estimated that about 100 times each year in the United States, a mother murders her child, according to Cheryl Meyer, a psychology professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Meyer and co-author Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, researched more than 200 cases from 1990 to 1999 involving mothers who killed their children. Oberman said she was drawn into the subject of mothers who kill their children while teaching at Loyola University in Chicago in the late 1980s. She got a call from an attorney friend who had a 14-year-old client indicted for murder after her baby's death. The more she investigated the subject, the more cases she found. What started as one scholarly article on neonaticide in a law journal became the genesis of the first book Oberman wrote with Meyer, Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the 'Prom Mom'. "There was almost nothing in the medical literature at the time," Oberman said.

June 5, 2008
BackStage
On May 28 at around 4 a.m. Pacific time, producers reached a tentative agreement on a new network prime-time television contract with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Six hours later, they resumed their second round of negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild on a new TV and film deal. Talks between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke off May 6, largely over new-media issues. Stephen Diamond, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law and a former candidate to be SAG's national executive director, said that bargaining separately hurt SAG and AFTRA considerably because it diverted their attention from an important issue: increasing residuals for DVDs, a huge source of revenue for AMPTP companies. Diamond argued that the way to secure a boost would have been for all the unions to have united a long time ago, something that was not possible given SAG and AFTRA's feuding. "Instead of focusing on AFTRA, [SAG] could have been focusing a year and a half ago on DVDs," he said. "They could have been creating a climate where they were making the argument that the DVD formula is unfair."

May 29, 2008
Mobile Register
Germans are reeling over a recent string of cases involving mothers accused or convicted of killing their babies. The grisly killings have come at a time when the country's low birthrate has left the government searching for ways to encourage people to have more children. Christian Pfeiffer, director of the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony in Hannover, said relentless media coverage to such scandals has helped draw attention to the age-old problem of child abandonment, leading to more outreach programs for troubled new mothers. Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California and co-author of a new book, When Mothers Kill, said Germany's search for effective ways to prevent infanticide is more progressive than the response in the U.S. American mothers kill more children each year than German mothers, but Oberman cautioned against relying too heavily on statistics. From abortion laws to health care access, she said the social conditions that drive a mother to kill are too complicated to quantify.

May, 2008
ABA Journal
If a generic term is used to trigger ads, there's no legal problem. But if the ads are triggered when a user types in a trademarked term like Continental Airlines, that constitutes trademark infringement, even when the trademark does not appear in the text of the ad, according to many businesses and trademark attorneys. The threshold issue is whether using a trademark to trigger an online ad constitutes using the mark in commerce. Such a "use in commerce" is a prerequisite for finding infringement under the Lanham Act, the federal trademark law. But because the Lanham Act, first passed in 1946, was not written with the Internet in mind, it does not explicitly state whether using a mark to trigger an online ad constitutes using the mark in commerce. "The statute is inherently ambiguous," says Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. Nor have the courts been able to resolve it. "The courts are pretty evenly split down the middle on this," says Goldman. "There are about 10 decisions on each side."

May 23, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
The internet company Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting as its board struggles to escape a shareholder uprising led by the billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn. The potentially rowdy gathering in California was due to be held on July 3 but Yahoo has put it off to an unspecified date "expected to be around the end of July 2008". "I actually think this helps Icahn, because it gives him more time to drum up support for his efforts," Stephen Diamond, a professor of corporate law at Santa Clara University, told Silicon Valley's Mercury News. "But it may also give Yahoo more time to work out some kind of alternate transaction with Microsoft."

May 18, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
In the days leading up to the California Supreme Court's historic same-sex marriage ruling Thursday, the decision "weighed most heavily" on Chief Justice Ronald M. George -- more so, he said, than any previous case in his nearly 17 years on the court. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has closely followed George's court tenure, said "the biggest surprise" of the marriage ruling was that George favored it. Uelmen said George must have done "some real soul searching."

May 17, 2008
Business Wire
The Honorable Phyllis Hamilton, U.S. District Court Judge and a Santa Clara University School of Law alumna addressed Santa Clara Law's class of 2008 at a commencement ceremony held today in the University's Mission Gardens. At the ceremony, 302 J.D degrees and 9 LL.M degrees were awarded. Of the J.D. degrees, 147 were awarded to women and 166 were awarded to students of color. The LL.M. (Masters of Laws) degrees included three programs, U.S. law for foreign lawyers, intellectual property law, and international and comparative law.

May 16, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. Lawyers on both sides of the debate said they were uncertain how a victory for the proposed November initiative -- which both sides predict will qualify for the ballot -- would affect gay couples who marry during the next several months. University of Santa Clara law professor Gerald Uelmen, who has closely followed the state high court for decades, said he was "blown away" and "very surprised" by the ruling. "The court is exerting some leadership here, and I think it needs to be said that it is a new role for the court," Uelmen said. "This has not been a court that has been willing to stick its neck out and lead the way on cutting-edge issues like this that involve such strong political feelings."

May 16, 2008
National Public Radio
In its 4-3 decision, the court said marriage was a basic civil right and that the state constitution guarantees that right to heterosexual and gay Californians. Santa Clara University law professor Margaret Russell says the patchwork of marriage laws across the nation could lead to difficulties for same sex couples. "It may lead to litigation if there are couples from California who want to move to other states or be legally recognized as couples in other states and those states refuse."

May 8, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Craigslist vs eBay: clash of cultures. Independent observers such as Steve Diamond, a business law professor at Santa Clara University, suggest that Newmark and Buckmaster are driven by mostly by self-interest. If they don't care about making more money, Diamond says, why are they attending investment conferences?

May 2, 2008
The Washington Post
Apple, maker of the iPod media player, said yesterday that it would start selling movies through its iTunes online store the same day they are released on DVD. With digital downloads and rentals, the studios still need to figure out how to make movies available without jeopardizing the more lucrative DVD sales, said Steve Diamond, an entertainment-law professor at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. At the same time, the studios want to put films online to stem the demand for pirated copies, he said.

April 30, 2008
The Dallas Morning News
When several men broke into a Waxahachie truck terminal last October, tied up a security guard at gunpoint and crashed a semi-trailer loaded with $1 million in cigarettes through the front gate, they didn't know one of them was a snitch for the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. A sheriff's detective who was in contact with the informant that night said he didn't know the crime would turn into an armed robbery. But the informant was surprised to be arrested months later, saying the detective knew for weeks what he was planning. Some local and national law enforcement experts say the Waxahachie case is a prime example of the unregulated and sometimes messy relationships between police and informants that can lead to abuses. In the Waxahachie heist, the thieves had to drive the stolen truck past a manned security gate. Had the security guard been shot during the robbery, the Sheriff's Department would have had some difficult questions to answer, experts say. "When there is a known risk of harm to innocent victims, that crosses the line," said Gerald F. Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor and former federal prosecutor. Mr. Uelmen, the law professor, said most police departments spell out in writing what informants can and cannot do.

April 17, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Despite a top prosecutor's prediction that executions could resume this year in California -- at a rate of one a month -- the state still faces significant legal hurdles before it can send more inmates to their deaths, legal experts said Wednesday. Santa Clara University law professor Ellen Kreitzberg agreed that the challenges "certainly are not going to be re-solved quickly."

April 11, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. has yet to succeed, but that hasn't stopped preparations for what would be the next step - the regulatory battle. "With Microsoft, there will be greater attention paid to antitrust than with other companies," said Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University.

April 5, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
In many DNA cases, eyewitness identifications are proven wrong. Some studies have shown that 80 percent of exonerations by DNA have come in cases where the victim identified the suspect. Experts say victims finger the wrong person because of stress, suggestibility and sometimes a poor facility with faces of people of other racial backgrounds. In this case, however, both victim and suspect are Latino. "We are very fallible," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who sits on a state commission urging safeguards to prevent wrongful convictions. "Eyewitness identification is given much more weight than it deserves," Uelman says.

March 31, 2008
Business Wire
Santa Clara University School of Law was once again named one of the top 100 law schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report. The annual graduate school ranking also recognized the law school as having one of the most diverse student populations. "We are proud that Santa Clara University's law school continues to be appreciated on a wider spectrum for our commitment to educating future lawyers of competence, conscience, and compassion and for preparing them for leadership roles in the legal profession and in our communities," said Donald J. Polden, dean of the law school. The Intellectual Property Law program at the Santa Clara School of Law also ranked high, coming in among the top 10 in the country. Other California law schools recognized for their strong IP programs are University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. "Our strong faculty, staff and student communities, our deep curricular offerings, and our location in the heart of the Silicon Valley combine to make Santa Clara Law School a very special place to study IP and high tech law," said Eric Goldman, assistant professor and academic director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara. According to the survey, 92.5 percent of SCU law graduates were employed nine months after graduation.

March 30, 2008
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Cookie Ridolfi remembers a time not long ago when the Northern California Innocence Project was in trouble. Ridolfi and Linda Starr launched the program at the Santa Clara University School of Law in 2001 to help wrongfully convicted prison inmates regain their freedom. But by 2004, the non-profit program had lost the state funding it needed to continue.  She ended up with two fairy godmothers. Denise Foderaro read the story and showed it to her husband, Frank Quattrone, the investment banker who just two days earlier had been found guilty of obstruction of justice. His conviction was overturned in March 2006. "My own experience with the justice system was a real eye opener and inspired my involvement with the project," Quattrone said Thursday night at the Innocence Project's inaugural awards dinner in San Jose. Quattrone now serves as chair of the project's advisory board and received its Leadership Award at the dinner, which raised more than $1 million. "What happened to me pales in comparison to what happened to all the exonerees" in attendance that night, Quattrone said. "This award belongs to them."

March 24, 2008
Lawyers USA
The fact that Second Life members can make "visual representations of goods throws a monkey wrench into the le-gal analysis," Duranske explained. "There is no question that in the real world, if someone made shoes with real laces and a swoosh on the side, they would be knocking off Nike shoes. But Nikes for an avatar - are those knock-offs, or something new called virtual shoes? Or a picture of shoes?" Virtual products might constitute an entirely new product from the standpoint of a trademark analysis, he said. Eric Goldman, a professor of cyberspace law and the Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, agreed. Trademark law "is designed to protect consumers from making the wrong choices in the marketplace. If my avatar drinks a virtual Coke in a virtual world, maybe that doesn't affect my marketplace choices whatsoever," he said. "Displaying a can of Coke in the virtual world is not different than discussing it in an editorial context on a website. But what if someone starts selling it?"

March 5, 2008
Traffic World
The Long Beach clean truck plan on Monday ran into just the kind of trouble the city was trying to avoid. The American Trucking Associations said plans by ports violate federal law preempting local regulation of the routes and services of licensed motor carriers. The ATA points to a Supreme Court decision on Feb. 20 striking down a law in Maine requiring tobacco shippers to use only delivery companies that verify recipients' age. In that case, the Court said that federal law preempts state actions connected with "rates, routes or services," even if the connection is indirect. Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University in Northern California, says the decision does not apply in the California ports' case. The Port of Los Angeles is simply attempting to protect its financial interests as a participant in harbor trucking, he said.

March 4, 2008
Consumerist
Lifestyle Lift claims it's a "minor one-hour procedure with major results," but a lot of customers who have paid for the procedure have been left unhappy, and they've consequently posted reviews about it on a plastic surgery review blog called RealSelf. Lifestyle Lift has sued RealSelf, claiming trademark infringement, and now RealSelf has countersued, claiming Lifestyle Lift padded RealSelf's site with shill reviews.  Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman, who has advised RealSelf on the case, posts about the issue on his personal blog: No matter how many times I see it--and in the Internet era, I see it all too frequently--I always shake my head in disappointment and frustration when a company uses trademark law to lash out against unflattering consumer reviews. To these companies, trademark law is a cure-all tonic for their marketplace travails, and trademark doctrine is so plastic and amorphous that defendants have some difficulty mounting a proper defense. As a result, all too frequently, the threat of a trademark lawsuit causes the intermediary to capitulate and excise valuable content from the Internet.

March 3, 2008
Pacific Shipper (California)
The American Trucking Associations says a recent Supreme Court decision in Maine will help turn an expected ATA challenge of Los Angeles harbor trucking rules into a "slam-dunk" case. Steve Diamond, a law professor at Santa Clara University in Northern California, disagrees. Diamond, who has been following the evolution of the clean-trucks program at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, says the ATA's case is "over the backboard."

February 23, 2008
Los Angeles Times (California)
Commissioners recommended that the state resume funding for the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law and the California Innocence Project at Cal Western Law School in San Diego, the primary legal groups in the state fighting to overturn wrongful convictions. The Legislature in 2001 allocated $1.6 million over two years to provide lawyers to assist inmates with innocence claims. The legal assistance funding was eliminated in 2003 because of state budget cuts. To date, the two Innocence Projects "have succeeded in helping to exonerate 11 people, two based on DNA evidence and nine on other grounds. Each exoneration has saved the state the cost of housing an innocent person," the commission said. The group also pointed out that the 1996 exoneration of Kevin Green, an Orange County man who spent more than 15 years in prison for the assault on his wife and murder of their unborn child, led to the conviction of the real murderer and rapist. The report said the two Innocence Projects are now actively investigating 288 cases and have a backlog of 700 cases. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, the executive director of the commission, said that Assemblymen Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, would introduce legislation embodying the group's reform proposals and others.

February 7, 2008
BackStage
After coming within a whisker five years ago of merging, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild are all but severing their ties, a move that could escalate competition between the unions and possibly force some 44,000 dual cardholders to choose between the two. "I think it's unfortunate," Stephen Diamond, a labor attorney and associate professor of law at Santa Clara University in California, said of the potential split. "They have, obviously, common members in the industry and potentially significant leverage over the large conglomerates. This has to be a national battle, not a Hollywood battle." (Diamond was once a candidate to be SAG's national executive director.)

February 4, 2008
The New York Times
Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google. 'Google can tap into all of the ill will that Microsoft has created in the last couple of decades on the antitrust front,' said Eric Goldman, director the High-Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

February 2008
Inside Counsel
A parts company wasn't happy with the performance of an eBay listing company and in late 2005 posted a four-part article on his Web site titled "Special Report: You Gotta Be Berserk to Use an eBay Listing Company! The Whole Story." The article detailed his problems with Bidzirk, as illustrative of the shortcomings of eBay listing companies. Bidzirk was unhappy with the article and took legal action. Because Smith's online article used Bidzirk's name and logo without authorization, the company sued Smith in January 2006 for, among other things, trademark infringement. According to Eric Goldman, who teaches IP law at Santa Clara University School of Law, using trademark law to suppress online criticism is not always successful because courts are becoming less friendly to such lawsuits.

February 2008
Inside Counsel
In People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, the 4th Circuit held that a parody site titled "People Eating Tasty Animals" was engaging in commerce because it contained links to third-party commercial Web sites. The court came to this conclusion even though the parody site derived no revenue from these links. In Taubman Co. v. Webfeats, the 6th Circuit held that a Web site was engaging in commerce because it had a mere two links to commercial sites. Cases such as this "have turned the use in commerce element into a bizarre link-counting witch hunt," according to Eric Goldman, who teaches IP law at Santa Clara University School of Law.

January 31, 2008
Technology Daily
A handful of senators are considering whether granting the FTC "civil-penalty authority" could bolster enforcement capabilities in the areas of data security, telephone records fraud and malicious, secretly installed computer programs. Santa Clara University technology law professor Eric Goldman questioned the idea of expanding FTC authority. "What's the problem that needs to be fixed?" he asked. On the adware front, the agency "has been able to do a great deal with the tools they've already got," he said.

January 16, 2008
Washington Internet Daily
Marketing in Web 2.0 "isn't all that different" from Web 1.0, adhering to the same principles of truth in advertising and keeping consumer trust, said Eric Goldman, director, University of Santa Clara Law School High Tech Institute. But Web 2.0 efforts are leveraging social networks on the premise that consumers more often respond to friends' recommendations than to ads, he said. With services such as Facebook's much-maligned Beacon (WID Dec 6 p3), "the goal is to get friends to recommend things to friends, rather than trying to insert a message into a dialogue or experience people don't want interrupted," he said. In general, Beacon and its ilk that use "credibility transference" are "surprisingly unregulated," he said. So far, the law has had a "tough time distinguishing between communication among friends and communication about friends with a business component," he said. "The real challenge is from consumer reactions" to social networks being "pimped out" and "when the marketer gets a hand caught in the cookie jar" consumers lose trust, he said. "The Beacon incident is going to combine with a few other Facebook missteps to put a long term dent in its brand and relationship with consumers," he said.

January 15, 2008
The Virginian-Pilot Edition
For years, Braxton Berkley was exposed to chemicals while helping build top- secret military planes at Lockheed Martin's storied Skunk Works plant. He says those chemicals made him ill - but his case reached a dead end at the state's highest court.

The California Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal not on legal merits but because four of the seven justices cited a conflict of interest because they have stock in oil companies that provided some of the solvents at issue in the case. The court's action has been the talk of the appellate bar, leaving lawyers on both sides in disbelief and law professors scratching their heads for a precedent. "It's an odd one," Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said.

January 14, 2008
Washington Internet Daily
Amazon.com must pay Basis Technology for its role in launching Amazon's Japanese e-tailer, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts ruled. An early investor in Basis, Amazon must give up its seat on the Basis board and its position as a preferred shareholder under the ruling. Basis can resume using the Amazon.com name and logo in its promotional materials and will get more compensation from Amazon, Basis said. 1-800 Contacts sued LensWorld.com in U.S. District Court, Salt Lake City, for buying "1800Contacts" as a keyword. Santa Clara University Law Professor Eric Goldman called the suit "ironic" since 1-800 Contacts "routinely" has bought others' trademarks as keywords, as in the WhenU.com case (WID Feb 36 p5). In that case, 1- 800 Contacts lost in the Second Circuit, which rejected its claim on keyword advertising because WhenU's use didn't meet the standard for "trademark use in commerce." The ruling has "spawned no less than a half-dozen Second Circuit-based court rulings that keyword advertising isn't a trademark use in commerce," Goldman said. The company was "so concerned" when Utah legislators banned the practice that it "helped push the legislators to back down," he said.

January 11, 2008
Inside Bay Area (California)
Leading judges and scholars rendered a grim verdict Thursday on how well the California justice system is carrying out the ultimate punishment as a state commission began an unprecedented review of the death penalty. From California Chief Justice Ronald George, a death penalty supporter, to law professors who oppose capital punishment, the theme was consistent -- the state's death penalty system is a mess. Ellen Kreitzberg, a Santa Clara University law professor, provided a study of nearly 800 California death sentences that shows the current death penalty may be too "expansive." Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan said the overly broad list of crimes that qualify for the death penalty is the root of California's bloated death row.

December 13, 2007
BackStage
Actors' Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild will renegotiate their most lucrative contracts with producers sometime in 2008. Steve Diamond, who teaches labor relations at the Santa Clara University School of Law and is a former candidate to be SAG's national executive director, said it will be crucial for SAG to present a united front. "In a time period when SAG really has the opportunity to learn and to prepare, [it] seems to be caught up in internecine battles over other issues," he said. "There's a train heading straight for you, and that train is going to get bigger and bigger and move faster and faster. You have to be ready to meet it." Diamond noted that, like SAG, the WGA membership has been politically divided into East and West camps, but quelling those disagreements was instrumental to building their strength. "In the year running up to the writers guild strike, you did not see the level of acrimony and division within the [WGA] leadership that is currently affecting SAG. I think the failure to resolve those issues could have a significantly negative effect on their ability to meet the challenge that the industry presents," Diamond said. "You just wonder why the new [SAG] officers and staff leadership hasn't been able to provide the direction that the organization needs to resolve those issues, because that's what they're really hired to do."

November 21, 2007
San Jose Mercury News (California)
Shares in power producer Calpine tumbled nearly 50 percent Tuesday amid news that it had cut its estimated value by $900 million, raising questions about its ability to fully pay creditors and complicating its emergence from bankruptcy. Shareholders of common stock "stand last in line" in a bankruptcy reorganization, explained Stephen Diamond, a business law professor at Santa Clara University. "Restructuring is maybe a polite word for slash and burn," said Diamond, referring to the layoffs and sales of assets. He likened May's role to a surgeon who "takes off an arm in order to save the patient."

November 20, 2007
Los Angeles Times (California)
The California Supreme Court on Monday called for a constitutional amendment to ease the backlog in the state's death penalty system, which takes an average of 17 years to execute a condemned convict -- twice the national average. Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said he had serious concerns about the "tremendous impact" the proposal could have on the state-funded agencies that represent death row inmates. "They will need a lot more staff," and that will be costly, he said.

November 11, 2007
Company Counselor
On November 6, 2007, the Association of Corporate Counselhosted a seminar in Palo Alto, CA on the issues facing ecommerce 2.0. Eric Goldman, who is an Assistant Professor and Director of High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, said that there were several ways to verify a person's geography while transacting on the Internet. First, ask the user to self report. Once it is known where the user is, the person can be treated under the laws of that area. Another method to determine geography is to do an IP address analysis.

November 8, 2007
Back Stage East
To an understand the writers strike and the current state of affairs in Hollywood, one first has to understand how labor and management define new media. As far as the Writers Guild of America is concerned, the Internet, cell phones, and MP3 players are new ways