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Hi CIPAWorld!
These Vivek Shah’s rulings have been coming fast and furious and one more has just given him another setback. This is a quick update on the saga but for anyone following all of this, it is another satisfying result. Recall that he was declared a vexatious litigant in the Central District of California for filing numerous of frivolous CIPA lawsuits, not pursuing them and as soon as a defendant would push back (i.e. bringing a motion to dismiss), he would dismiss the case altogether. See the link below.
After the ruling, he appealed the order and moved to expedite that appeal to the Ninth Circuit, to which the Ninth Circuit subsequently denied his request to fast-track the appeal. Well, now, after waiting about a month, Shah filed an ex parte application asking the district court to pause the order while his appeal is pending. To make a simple analogy, an ex parte application is the legalese equivalent of someone cutting the entire line at the DMV (and we know how much of a drag those DMV lines are). Well, an ex parte application requires one to show a genuine urgent reason why having a matter progress through the ordinary process is insufficient and requires special treatment (and also that the person seeking the application is “without fault in creating the crisis that requires ex parte relief”).
To no one’s surprise, the court wasn’t persuaded by Shah. He never explained why this couldn’t wait for a regular noticed motion nor why he’d suffer irreparable harm without emergency intervention (which is a real problem when he has sat on the issue for over a month before filing the ex parte application). Waiting thirty days and then claiming the sky is falling is a tough sell and the court appropriately denied the application. The court’s order declaring Shah a vexatious litigant stands while the appeal continues on its normal schedule.
The cite to the order is Vivek Shah v. Crain Commc’ns, Inc., No. 2:26-CV-03070-RGK-CTS, 2026 WL 2498536 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 24, 2026).
Until next CIPAWorld and as always, be safe.
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