This published 9th Cir. opinion here has an interesting bit about the use of unpublished memorandum dispositions:
although memorandum dispositions can be cited, and may prove useful, as examples of the applications of settled legal principles when a district court or litigant is interested in demonstrating how a given principle operates in practice, a nonprecedential disposition is not appropriately used—as it was here—as the pivotal basis for a legal ruling by a district court. Among other problems with such usage, heavy reliance by a district court on a nonprecedential disposition leaves this Court on appeal without a legal analysis to review, as the disposition relied upon by the district court has at most marginal relevance to our analysis on appeal.
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