Law in the Time of Corona

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN, LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN

SMU Dedman School of Law professor Joanna L. Grossman and Stanford law professor Lawrence M. Friedman discuss the implications of COVID-19 on the execution of wills and marriage. Grossman and Friedman argue that the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates how quickly and universally Americans rush into court, demanding from judges legal solutions to ethical, political, and social issues.

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Williams v. Taylor Seidenbach, Inc.

Dockets: 18-31159, 18-31161

Opinion Date: May 4, 2020

Judge: James C. Ho

Areas of Law: Civil Procedure

The Fifth Circuit held that the district court properly entered partial final judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), and thus the court has jurisdiction to hear these appeals. Accordingly, the court remanded to the panel for a ruling on the merits. In this case, by following the framework set forth in Rule 54(b) and obtaining a partial final judgment as to Taylor Seidenbach and McCarty, plaintiffs preserved their right to appeal against those defendants. The court held that Rule 54(b) provides a complete solution for plaintiffs who, like the plaintiffs here, sue multiple defendants, but then later seek an appealable final judgment as to only a subset of those defendants. Furthermore, plaintiffs have many options to preserve their right to appeal under these circumstances, and they have properly exercised one of those options here. Consequently, the court need not answer certain questions that have been raised in this en banc proceeding.