California

A three-judge California appeals court panel has denied an Oakland mayoral candidate’s appeal of a lower court’s decision to toss out her libel suit against a weekly newspaper concerning coverage of her campaign.

Marcie Hodge, a local politician who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Oakland in 2010, sued the East Bay Express for defamation soon after a September 2010 column ran in the newspaper questioning the motivations behind her bid.

Two photographers whose cameras were confiscated and photos were deleted for taking pictures near customs buldings at the California/Mexico border have sued the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency for violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and EarthRights International have filed motions to quash subpoenas issued by Chevron Corp. to three e-mail providers for the data and location information of more than 100 email accounts over the span of nearly a decade.

The subpoenas, which were issued in federal courts to Google and Yahoo in San Franciso and Microsoft in New York City at the beginning of October, represent Chevron’s latest attempt in an ongoing legal battle to prove that an Ecuadorian judge falsified information in an $18 billion lawsuit against the oil giant.

A federal court awarded a California-based journalist and author nearly half a million dollars in fees, concluding two FOIA litigation battles with the FBI that lasted for more than 25 years.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco ruled Thursday that the FBI must pay Seth Rosenfeld $479,459 in attorneys’ fees because the journalist “substantially prevailed” in the two lawsuits he filed against the FBI.

A federal court dismissed nearly all of the claims in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FBI spying on Muslim Americans, ruling that the government could invoke the “state secrets” privilege to avoid almost all litigation.

A California appellate court upheld the dismissal of a libel suit brought by the head of a small startup tech company against the Internet blogging company Gawker Media.

The University of California Berkeley Police Department has settled with an independent photographer who sued the department after he was arrested and had his photographs confiscated while covering a protest in 2009. As part of the $162,500 settlement, the department has also agreed to change its policies towards the media and train officers about journalists' legal protections.

A California appeals court ruled Friday that a malicious prosecution lawsuit against a Los Angeles-based attorney may proceed, reversing a lower court's holding that the state's anti-SLAPP statute protected the lawyer.