Reciprocity and the Hague Judgments Convention
In a prior post, I reported on recent developments that offer a basis for (cautious) optimism that the United States may soon take the necessary steps to ratify the Hague Judgments Convention (HJC). In...
View ArticleGovernor Newsom Signs Holocaust Art Bill
Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2867 into law. The bill provides that California law applies in suits brought by a California resident involving the theft of art or other personal...
View ArticleD.C. Circuit Remands Helms-Burton Case Against Cimex
Exxon (then Standard Oil) owned several subsidiaries in Cuba that were expropriated without compensation by the Cuban government in 1960. In 1996, Congress enacted the Cuban Liberty and Democratic...
View ArticleChoice-of-Law in Terrorism Cases Redux
On September 16, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Senior Judge Richard J. Leon) decided Messina v. Syrian Arab Republic. This case is the latest in a long series brought by...
View ArticleSystemic Due Process and the Hague Judgments Convention
The State Department is exploring ratification of the Hague Judgments Convention (HJC) and Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (COCA). It has announced a meeting of the Advisory Committee on...
View ArticleInterlocutory Appeals and State Sponsors of Terrorism
In a decision only lawyers could love, the Second Circuit held on September 3, 2024, that it lacked appellate jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal by the Republic of Sudan brought in a...
View ArticleFifth Circuit Doubles Down on International Shoe
A recent Fifth Circuit decision stoutly reaffirmed that court’s en banc position that the personal jurisdiction analysis is the same under the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments. Indeed, reading Hardy...
View ArticleThe Burden of Proving Foreign Sovereign Immunity
The Supreme Court has granted cert in Republic of Hungary v. Simon and will soon hear oral argument, likely in December. The principal question is how to interpret “property exchanged for such...
View ArticleFrom Standards to Rules in Private International Law?
Linda Silberman, Clarence D. Ashley Professor of Law Emerita at NYU School of Law and TLB Advisor, has recently posted to SSRN a number of her lectures from her summer 2021 Hague Academy General Course...
View ArticleDoes the New York Convention Apply to Investor-State Awards?
On August 9, 2024, in Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Co. v. Federal Republic of Nigeria, the D.C. Circuit held that Nigeria was not immune from suit to enforce an arbitral award for a Chinese...
View ArticleSupreme Court Grants Cert in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico
This morning, the Supreme Court granted cert in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. As regular readers will know, Mexico sued Smith & Wesson and other gun manufacturers in...
View ArticleTransnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2024
Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses four transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as several others that...
View ArticleJPMorgan Caught Up in U.S. Sanctions Against Russia
A recent dispute in U.S. federal court shows that efforts to isolate Russia through sanctions are seeping into the courts of both countries. As the economic and legal regimes of Russia and the United...
View ArticleA Troubling Decision in the EDNY
In the annals of troubling decisions relating to the enforcement of foreign forum selection clauses, a recent opinion, Gurung v. MetaQuotes, Ltd., by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of...
View ArticleApplying the TVPRA to Foreign Websites
The facts of Doe v. WebGroup Czech Republic are horrific. The complaint alleges that a U.S. citizen, fourteen years old, was filmed being raped, repeatedly, in the United States. Videos of the assaults...
View ArticleU.S. and Foreign Litigation Relating to the Events in Gaza
High profile cases against Israel and Germany have been bought before the International Court of Justice, alleging violations of international law with respect to events in Gaza following the October...
View ArticleParol Evidence and the CISG
In MCC-Marble Ceramic Center, Inc., v. Ceramica Nuova d’Agostino, S.p.A. (1998), the Eleventh Circuit held that the American parol evidence rule does not apply in cases governed by the U.N. Convention...
View ArticlePersonal Jurisdiction and the Montreal Convention
I recently discussed the Fifth Circuit’s remarkably unremarkable personal jurisdiction analysis in a case involving a Montreal Convention claim. Before reaching the constitutional personal jurisdiction...
View ArticlePuerto Rico, Law 75, and Forum Selection Clauses
Many years ago, Puerto Rico’s legislature approved the Dealer’s Contract Act—known as Law 75—to protect local distributors. Law 75 provides that a principal dealing with a distributor in Puerto Rico...
View ArticleConstitutionality of TVPA Challenged in First Circuit
As previously reported at TLB, a Massachusetts jury last year awarded $15.5 million in damages against Jean Morose Viliena for torture and extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act...
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