Precedent is a principle or rule established in a legal case that becomes authoritative to a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar legal issues or facts. The legal doctrine stating that courts should follow precedent is called stare decisis.
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law.
The district courts of appeal (DCAs) are the intermediate appellate courts of the Florida state court system. There are currently six DCAs:
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that Article One of the U.S. Constitution did not give the United States Congress the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states that is further protected under the Eleventh Amendment. Such abrogation is permitted where it is necessary to enforce the rights of citizens guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment as per Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer. The case also held that the doctrine of Ex parte Young, which allows state officials to be sued in their official capacity for prospective injunctive relief, was inapplicable under these circumstances, because any remedy was limited to the one that Congress had provided.
International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918), also known as INS v. AP or simply the INS case, is a 1918 decision of the United States Supreme Court that enunciated the misappropriation doctrine of federal intellectual property common law: a "quasi-property right" may be created against others by one's investment of effort and money in an intangible thing, such as information or a design. The doctrine is highly controversial and criticized by many legal scholars, but it has its supporters.
The attractive nuisance doctrine applies to the law of torts in some jurisdictions. It states that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by an object on the land that is likely to attract children. The doctrine is designed to protect children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object, by imposing a liability on the landowner. The doctrine has been applied to hold landowners liable for injuries caused by abandoned cars, piles of lumber or sand, trampolines, and swimming pools. However, it can be applied to virtually anything on the property.
Comparative negligence, called non-absolute contributory negligence outside the United States, is a partial legal defense that reduces the amount of damages that a plaintiff can recover in a negligence-based claim, based upon the degree to which the plaintiff's own negligence contributed to cause the injury. When the defense is asserted, the factfinder, usually a jury, must decide the degree to which the plaintiff's negligence and the combined negligence of all other relevant actors all contributed to cause the plaintiff's damages. It is a modification of the doctrine of contributory negligence that disallows any recovery by a plaintiff whose negligence contributed even minimally to causing the damages.
Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804, 532 P.2d 1226 (1975), commonly referred to simply as Li, is a California Supreme Court case that judicially embraced comparative negligence in California tort law and rejected strict contributory negligence.
Lugosi v. Universal Pictures, 603 P.2d 425, was a decision of the Supreme Court of California with regard to the personality rights of celebrities, particularly addressing whether these rights descended to the celebrities' heirs. The suit was brought by the heirs of Béla Lugosi, his son Bela Jr. and his fifth wife Hope Lugosi, who jointly sued Universal Pictures in 1966 for using his personality rights without the heirs' permission on toys, posters, model kits and the like. The trial court initially ruled in favor of the Lugosi heirs, but Universal Studios won the case in an appeal. The court determined that a dead person had no right to their likeness, and any rights that existed did not pass to their heirs.
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that governs jurisdiction over the removal of American Indian children from their families in custody, foster care and adoption cases.
Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, 26 Cal. 3d 588 (1980), was a landmark products liability decision of the Supreme Court of California which pioneered the doctrine of market share liability.
Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 24 Cal.2d 453, 150 P.2d 436 (1944), was a decision of the Supreme Court of California involving an injury caused by an exploding bottle of Coca-Cola. It was an important case in the development of the common law of product liability in the United States, not so much for the actual majority opinion, but for the concurring opinion of California Supreme Court justice Roger Traynor.
Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720 (1977), is a United States Supreme Court case that involved issues concerning statutory standing in antitrust law.
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Butterworth, 658 F.2d 310, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit case that significantly influenced the development of modern Indian Gaming law. In Seminole Tribe, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the State of Florida did not have authority to enforce the Florida Bingo Statute on the Seminole Tribe of Florida's reservation, even though Florida is a Public Law 280 state with special rights to extend criminal and limited civil jurisdiction over Indian Country. Because of the decision, the Seminole Tribe was able to build and operate the nation's first tribally-owned high-stakes bingo parlor on their reservation in Florida, even though bingo for profit was illegal under Florida law at the time. Many other tribes later followed the Seminole Tribe's lead by building their own bingo parlors on their reservations, leading many scholars to call the Seminole Tribe's victory in this case the "birth" of modern commercial gambling on reservations.
American Motorcycle Association v. Superior Court, 20 Cal. 3d 578 (1978), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of California that first adopted a comparative fault regime for apportionment of liability among multiple tortfeasors for negligence in California.
Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 560 U.S. 702 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Florida Supreme Court did not effect an unconstitutional taking of littoral property owners' rights to future accretions and to contact the water by upholding Florida's beach renourishment program.
Cahoon v. Cummings, 734 N.E.2d 535, was a case decided by the Indiana Supreme Court that adopted the loss of a chance doctrine for tort liability.
Bryan v. Itasca County, 426 U.S. 373 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a state did not have the right to assess a tax on the property of a Native American (Indian) living on tribal land absent a specific Congressional grant of authority to do so.
Franklin v. State, 257 So. 2d 21, was a case in which the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida's sodomy law as being "unconstitutional for vagueness and uncertainty in its language, violating constitutional due process to the defendants." The court retained the state's prohibition on sodomy by ruling that anal and oral sex could still be prosecuted under the lesser charge of "unnatural and lascivious" conduct, thus reducing the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 570 U.S. 595 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that land-use agencies imposing conditions on the issuance of development permits must comply with the "nexus" and "rough proportionality" standards of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, even if the condition consists of a requirement to pay money, and even if the permit is denied for failure to agree to the condition. It was the first case in which monetary exactions were found to be unconstitutional conditions.
