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The Eleventh Circuit recently held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on excessive fines applies to monetary awards in non-intervened FCA actions—the first federal court of appeals directly to address the application of this constitutional protection in non-intervened cases. See Yates v. Pinellas, No. 20-10276 (11th Cir.). However, the panel concluded that while the amount of the fine in this case was "very harsh," it was not unconstitutionally excessive. In Yates v. Pinellas, following the government's [...]

In the recent decision entitled Doe v. Hopkinton Public Schools, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected students' contention that posting abusive and embarrassing video of another student online was protected speech. The student members of the high school hockey team sued the Hopkinton (Mass.) school district, the superintendent of schools, and the high school principal, and argued they were wrongfully disciplined by the high school. Some students photographed and video-recorded a fellow [...]

New York, N.Y. (January 11, 2022) - The New York Court of Appeals' decision in Aybar v. Aybar, 2021 N.Y. Slip Op. 05393, issued on October 7, 2021, overturned over 100 years of precedent in ruling that foreign corporations are no longer subject to being dragged into lawsuits in New York State court under the theory of "consent by registration." The case at issue was filed in New York state court by plaintiff accident victims after a [...]