Oh sheet, the background-check forms

A job applicant who suffered no harm, lost no job, and had not one inaccurate line in the background report can still sue the employer who ran the background check, to pursue statutory damages. The damages range from $100 to $1,000, but when multiplied by the number of employees joined in a class action, that single page form suddenly becomes a very expensive sheet in the employee’s file to make a mistake on. Counting by the zeros it might add to the judgment value, it is the literal O-sheet piece of paper, not even funny. Such is the practical lesson of Askins v. CRST Expedited, Inc., No. A172921, June 4, 2026, where the First District held that an employer’s failure to follow the federal "FCRA" (the Fair Credit Reporting Act) rules for the disclosure form is itself the injury, and that no separate harm is needed to sue over it in a California court.

Who Cares About the CARES Act?

With the COVID pandemic in the past, and no new pandemic announced yet, who would be caring today about the “CARES” Act (Pub. L. No. 116-136, 134 Stat. 281 (2020)? I am talking about one of its remaining requirements, the length of an eviction notice, mandated to be at least 30 days for the “covered” properties. Turns out, the tenants, the landlords, and the practitioners care about this issue a lot, on both sides of the docket. Has it expired already or not? The quest to find the answer continues.

SVF Grosvenor Del Rey Corp.: to whom thy payment is made

A landlord who indicates in a pay-or-quit notice that the payment would be acceptable by one of several methods, must insert the full scope of identification for each of the indicated means of payment, even if it sounds repetitive or counter-intuitive. And that identification now means the person to whom the payment is being delivered, not just the person to whom the payment is made. That is the core meaning of the decision in SVF Grosvenor Del Rey Corp. v. Schwarz, No. 25APLC00345, that was published on May 27, 2026. A three-day notice to pay rent or quit that offers a tenant to pay by mail must state the name, telephone number, and address of the person to whom the rent is to be sent, likewise for a personal delivery, even if it is the same person. An incomplete description in one of the methods would sink the entire notice, even if the other methods were flawlessly described, and even if the missing information on the mailing delivery would be a copy of what was indicated for an in-person payment.

Colonial Manor: what to know about the tenant’s wife

Landlord’s duties in drafting an eviction notice and the scope of the burden of proof in the consequent eviction lawsuit just got enlarged by the decision handed down from the Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The case is Colonial Manor, Inc. v. Reyes, No. 24APLC00316, as modified May 19, 2026 (modified opinion PDF). The landlord now has to account for a tenant’s spouse, to see if he or she should be treated as an original tenant, even if the spouse moved in years later.

On March 7, 2025, it was announced that the White House is intending to cancel off the federal funds' support program from the Columbia University, to the tune of $400 Millions. By March 21, 2025, the university had found the way to restore the cash flow, responding with this statement. This thinly veiled maneuver, the "dramatic concessions" as Reuters has put it, sent shock waves worldwide. Columbia students were reportedly upset, which is of course understandable. No one would wish to be associated with such a u-turn on its stance to the right of speech, freedom to associate, or even basic privacy (the "concessions" included the agreement to prohibit face masks).

But, it turned out there is some luck for Columbia next generation of graduates after all, at least for the ones from its law school.

On March 14, 2025, the White House had officially let the world know what it thinks about the law firm "Paul Weiss."  The same (and very effective!) lever of cutting out the source of funding was applied to a private law firm, because its too found itself enjoying those same principles of speech and association too freely (evidently, there are now tighter limits to these freedoms).

Paul Weiss is not the only firm in the White House's crosshairs, and Columbia is not the only university put on the funding chopping block. But, just like Columbia, Paul Weiss made history by being the first one in their field to dispel with suddenly inconvenient and expensive freedoms, and to return to the feeding pens.

On March 20, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, agreed to reverse its course and align itself with the government.  What took Columbia two weeks, Paul Weiss did in just 6 days. Even the White House was surprised, calling it "a remarkable change of course."

This might be very, very, sad news for democracy, but hey, it is great news for the Columbia law school grads––because now they know, at least one law firm will not turn them down for the reason that their diplomas were marred in some constitutional controversy. And the pull of the similarly situated employers in all likelihood will grow. Unfortunately, the same is expected from the pull of the schools.

The future is looking very bright. I summed it up like this:

Don't worry, there is still a freedom of choice:

You can opt to trade your freedom of voice

For the right to be able to buy new toys.

 

And here is an AI doodle for you on the topic:

Honey Look, My Ballot Envelope Has a Hole

Last Sunday, I thought of spending at least a part of the weekend to vote. I unpacked the ballots, read the booklet, contemplated the choices to make ... and, since I was planning to vote early by making a deposit to the ballot box, I looked at the envelope too.  Once in the past, I made a mistake while filling in the envelope, and I wanted to make it right this time on the first attempt.

The envelope had circle hole through it, which I thought was there for the purpose of indicating whether the envelope has something in it.  When I folded the ballots and inserted them in the envelope to check how things fit, I noticed that "Trump" choice from the ballot showed up right in that hole, and remained visible. It showed up the same way when I flipped the ballots, because the name and the hole both happened to be centered from both sides of the envelope.  It caught my eye, and made me spend the rest of my weekend thinking if this is an issue worth talking about. I concluded that it does, and, with the hopes that the practice will be avoided for the benefit of all participants involved, I share my thoughts here.

How the legal profession can come to a halt, and what you can do to keep on going

For almost the entire day yesterday, Thomson Reuters Westlaw was down. I am using it since 2009 and this was the first time I have experienced the outage there, overall a pretty good indicator of the things working 99% of the time. Suddenly being left without this research tool, it was a powerful reminder that nothing is guaranteed to be ever-present and available for us online, and with our dependency on it, it is scary to think about the "what if" situation. This made me think of two things: that the progress in our profession could be curbed, and that we should take those contingencies into account if we wish to keep on going.