Appellant Edward Wojcik ("Wojcik") and his wife, Debra, brought suit against the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission ("Lottery Commission") and a handful of Lottery Commission officials for damages arising out of Wojcik's termination as a Lottery Commission employee. After dismissing the claims against one defendant on Eleventh Amendment grounds, the district court granted the remaining defenda

Defendant-Appellant, Jefferson County School District ("the District"), appeals the district court's judgment granting declaratory and injunctive relief to Plaintiffs-Appellees, Donald Fleming et al. The district court entered judgment for the Plaintiffs, holding that the District's guidelines governing a tile painting project at Columbine High School ("CHS") violated the Plaintiffs' constitutiona

Plaintiff-appellant Service Professionals, Inc. ("SPI") is a minority-owned business. Defendant-appellee Allstate Insurance Company maintains a list of vendors to which it refers its insureds for repair work. SPI was on this list, but allegedly received a disproportionately low number of the referrals. SPI filed the present suit alleging that Allstate's referral practices amounted to racial discri

Appellant Thomas Wallace was fifty-three years old when he was terminated from O.C. Tanner Company ("Tanner") after twenty years of employment and repeated recognition as one of the company's top sales managers. He disputes the company's claim that he was spending excessive time on a personal project that he had concealed from Tanner officials, and claims that age discrimination led the company to

Plaintiffs-Appellees Dean Kinney and David Hall brought suit against seven law enforcement officials, the seven cities or counties that employ these officials, and the East Texas Police Chiefs' Association,(2) asserting four claims: (1) a 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2) claim alleging conspiracy against Kinney and Hall because of their testimony in judicial proceedings, (2) a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim alleging v

Plaintiffs Willie W. Gray, Gregory C. Gray, Glenda C. Gray, Wilmer J. Gray, Another Image Management, Inc., doing business as "The Popcorn Shoppe," and TPS Packaging, Inc., also known as TPS Popcorn Co., Inc., (collectively, "Gray") appeal the district court's grant of summary judgment to Defendant Meijer, Inc. ("Meijer") on their claim of trade dress infringement under the Lanham Act. We affirm.

Ernesto L. Montoya, formerly employed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration ("MSHA"), appeals the district court's dismissal of his national-origin and age discrimination claims against the MSHA for lack of jurisdiction, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), due to his failure to file his suit in a timely manner. Montoya argues that the period of limitation prescribed by the Civil Service R

Therma-Scan, Inc. (TSI), a Michigan corporation, brought this lawsuit for trademark infringement and unfair competition against Thermoscan, Inc., a Georgia corporation. TSI sought monetary damages and injunctive relief, as well as cancellation of Thermoscan's allegedly infringing trademark. The district court granted Thermoscan's motion to enforce a purported settlement that the parties reached du

In this case, plaintiff-appellant John Garrett, a black man, alleges that he was the object of both racial discrimination and slander during and after a shopping trip to a Radio Shack store. The district court dismissed the case in its entirety. We affirm the dismissal of the appellant's race-discrimination claim but reverse as to his defamation claim.

I. BACKGROUND

This appeal stands

Defendant RRL Corporation is an automobile dealer doing business under the name Lexus of Westminster. Because of typographical and proofreading errors made by a local newspaper, defendant's advertisement listed a price for a used automobile that was significantly less than the intended sales price. Plaintiff Brian J. Donovan read the advertisement and, after examining the vehicle, attempted t

Failure to protect teacher from sexual harassment by a student. Plaintiff, age 44, claimed that she was psychologically traumatized by being depicted in sexually offensive ways. She further claimed that defendant failed to take steps to stop the distribution of an underground newspaper that contained the offensive depictions.

In this case, we consider whether and under what circumstances a law enforcement agency must disclose to a probationary employee who is a peace officer confidential documents obtained or prepared in the course of a routine background investigation of that officer, conducted pursuant to Government Code section 1031, subdivision (d).1 In addition to weighing the effect of various statutory prov

Thomas A. Shalberg appeals from the decision of the Circuit Court of Camden County finding him liable to Thomas A. Turner for $28,500 damages for breach of contract for failing to close on the sale of Buster's Billiards, a pool hall in Camdenton, Missouri. Shalberg claims that any damages for the alleged breach of contract would be nominal, as the only evidence of the value of the business as a go

Patrick Swindall sued Cox Enterpises, Inc. for libel for statements made in an editorial published in Cox's newspaper, the Atlantic Constitution. In 1989, a federal court indicted Swindall for perjury. Swindall was convicted for nine counts of perjury, of which the Eleventh Circuit revered three and affirmed six. In 1999, the Atlanta Constitution published an editorial entitled "Barr's claims ou

Anthony Mathis is a 59-year-old African-American man with over 24 years of experience in car sales. Notwithstanding that background, when he applied for a job as a salesman at Phillips Chevrolet, Inc. ("Phillips"), Phillips never even interviewed him. Instead, it hired seven younger, white salespeople--a move that prompted Mathis to sue the dealership for age and race discrimination. A

William P. Moore, III, contacted Bruce Bird, an engineer, regarding his ability to design a bridge that would meet Moore's needs. Moore sued Bird Engineering Company, P.A., (Bird Engineering) alleging defects in Bird's design for a bridge built on Moore's residential property. After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of Moore. The district court found against Bird Engineer

Defendant-Appellant, Jefferson County School District ("the District"), appeals the district court's judgment granting declaratory and injunctive relief to Plaintiffs-Appellees, Donald Fleming et al. The district court entered judgment for the Plaintiffs, holding that the District's guidelines governing a tile painting project at Columbine High School ("CHS") violated the Plaintiffs' constitutiona

The plaintiff, chairman of a publicly-traded company, brought suit against the defendant, a newspaper reporter, for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. At the end of the trial, the jury returned a sizeable verdict in favor of the plaintiff on his claim for false light invasion of privacy, but a take-nothing verdict on the defamation claim. For the reasons stated below, we vacate the ju

Plaintiff, Christopher M. Edwards, filed an action against defendants, Paddock Publications, Inc., the publisher of the Daily Herald, and several of its reporters and editors, alleging defamation and false light arising from certain newspaper articles that misidentified plaintiff as having been arrested in conjunction with a drug "bust" in the northwest suburbs. Defendants' theory of the case was

The questions presented are whether there is a First Amendment right to use special license plates bearing the letters "SHTHPNS," and whether a car registrant's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment are violated when a state department of motor vehicles revokes these plates after the department realizes that they have been issued in error. We answer both questions in the negative and t

Automobile Club Inter-Insurance Exchange ("Insurer") appeals from a declaratory judgment finding coverage under two different automobile policies for an accident involving two pedestrians and a van. We find Insurer's failure to file the relevant portion of one of the policies results in an incomplete record on appeal and precludes analysis of Insurer's first point wherein it argues that coverage d

Plaintiff Olga Garcia appeals from part of a final order of judgment entered in the Law Division, Special Civil Part, following a bench trial on her complaint filed against "Budget Car & Truck Rental" (Budget)See footnote 22 and respondent-defendant L&R Rental, Inc. (L&R) a foreign corporation. The complaint contained the following counts: consumer fraud under N.J.S.A. 56:8-2; unlawful practice u

A local community college wants newspaper editors to tell who ratted them out. The editors stand firm and would be solaced by the words of a past newsperson:

If your editorial writer . . . "takes the fence," thinking of the dangers of antagonizing somebody or other, including the publisher's wife, he can't write anything worth reading and it is not worth while hiring him . . . ."

H.L.

In November 1989, Jerome Metcalf read two newspaper articles about the Army’s practice of training surgeons at inner-city hospitals to expose them to combat-like conditions. Based on these articles, Jerome and his wife Laurie (“the Metcalfs”) conceived a story about a county hospital in inner-city Los Angeles and the struggles of its predominantly black staff. Along with th

Objecting to his portrayal in Jonathan Harr's best-selling book A Civil Action, an account of toxic tort litigation over contaminated well water in Woburn, Massachusetts, that allegedly caused the death of several children, John J. Riley, Jr., sued Harr and his publisher for defamation and related torts. He was joined in that lawsuit by his wife, Diane W. Riley. The district court granted summary