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Welcome to Left Coast Appeals

At Left Coast Appeals, we provide insights into all things Ninth Circuit. Check out our Ninth Circuit Statistics page, which offers an empirical window into the Court’s workings. At our En Banc Tracker, we monitor the Court’s busy en banc proceedings. And at This Week at the Ninth, we highlight key recent decisions.

Follow us on Twitter @LeftCoastAppeal. And check out our sister blog Federal Circuitry, which takes a data-driven look at the Federal Circuit.

January 08, 2021 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at the Ninth: Harassment and Acquiescence
By: James R. Sigel
The Ninth Circuit waited until the sixth day of 2021 to issue its first published opinion of the year, and it still has yet to release the sort of business-related civil decision that we here at Left Coast Appeals would ordinarily highlight. But the
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December 31, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at The Ninth: Dr. Seuss and Constitutional Cures
By: James R. Sigel
As one might expect, the past two weeks in the Ninth Circuit have been relatively quiet (though emergency litigation concerning California’s shelter-in-place order has kept some panels very busy ). But as always, the Court kept churning out opinions in cases of interest. Here,
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December 17, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at the Ninth: Secrets and Specialties
By: James R. Sigel
This week, the Ninth Circuit resolves a novel question about continuing violations under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and invalidates an agency’s conclusion that computer programmers are not entitled to “specialty occupation” visas. ELI ATTIA v. GOOGLE LLC As a matter of first impression,
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December 10, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at the Ninth: Trans Fat and Stolen Emails
By: James R. Sigel
This week, we take a look at one Ninth Circuit decision addressing the difficult Article III issues that arise in certain types of consumer class actions, and another in which the Ninth Circuit examined the application of the Stored Communications Act to emails backed
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December 04, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at the Ninth: Willfulness and Waterways
By: James R. Sigel
This week, the Ninth Circuit came back from the Thanksgiving break with a bang, issuing three long-awaited en banc decisions in criminal and immigration cases. Here at Left Coast, however, we’ve focused on two other civil decisions—issued by smaller panels, perhaps, but no less
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December 01, 2020 - Ninth Circuit Insights
Know Your Ninth Circuit Panel: Who Appoints Visiting Judges?
By: James R. Sigel
Last week , we explored where the Ninth Circuit’s many visiting judges call home. This week, we investigate a slightly different subject: which president appointed those visiting judges? Some court watchers have suggested that federal courts of appeals tend to invite visiting judges who
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November 24, 2020 - Ninth Circuit Insights
Know Your Ninth Circuit Panel: Who Gets Invited?
By: James R. Sigel
Last week , we noted that the Ninth Circuit’s visiting judges together perform the work of roughly 6 additional Ninth Circuit judges. But who, exactly, secures an invite to help serve as these supplemental members of the Ninth Circuit? This week, we examine our
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November 19, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at The Ninth: Answers and Amounts in Controversy
By: James R. Sigel
This week, we take a look at two decisions tackling novel procedural issues. In the first, the Court strictly applied the amount-in-controversy requirement of the Class Action Fairness Act, faulting a defendant for not substantiating every aspect of its calculations of the plaintiff’s potential
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November 18, 2020 - Ninth Circuit Insights
Know Your Ninth Circuit Panel: Six Extra Judges
By: James R. Sigel
Ninth Circuit appeals are not always decided by Ninth Circuit judges. Because of the Court’s nation-leading workload, the Ninth Circuit regularly relies on visiting judges to fill out the panels that hear and resolve cases. But who are these visiting judges, and exactly how
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November 12, 2020 - This Week at the Ninth
This Week at The Ninth: Collections and Coverage
By: James R. Sigel
This week, we examine one Ninth Circuit decision holding that a debt collector cannot insulate itself from liability under the Federal Debt Collection Practice Act by contractually obligating its clients to provide it with accurate information, and another holding that an HMO’s refusal to
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