Eleventh Circuit Applies Fuld in Helms-Burton Case
On July 23, 2026, in Rodriguez v. Imperial Brands, PLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction of claims against two British corporations under the Helms-Burton Act for trafficking in property expropriated by Cuba. The opinion is one of the first by a circuit court…
Continue ReadingClause Confusion (Part II)
In a prior post, I showed that lawyers sometimes fail to distinguish choice-of-law clauses from forum selection clauses. In this post, I provide several examples of cases where judges made precisely the same mistake. In some of these cases, these errors were harmless. In others, they were not. Harmless Error There are a multitude of…
Continue ReadingClause Confusion (Part I)
There are many things in life that resemble something else. Some people struggle to distinguish alligators from crocodiles. Others have a hard time telling the difference between butterflies and moths. I myself cannot taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi… a fact that horrifies my family. All of these mistakes are both understandable and forgivable….
Continue ReadingThe Post-Award Battlefield: What Stabil Means for Wartime Investment Awards
The next phase of Ukraine-related investment law will not unfold primarily before arbitral tribunals. It will unfold in domestic courts asked to convert wartime arbitral awards into recoverable money. The D.C. Circuit’s decision in Stabil LLC v. Russian Federation, affirming jurisdiction to enforce Crimea-related awards against Russia, shows both how far award creditors have come…
Continue ReadingFourth Circuit Affirms Extraterritorial Injunction in IP Dispute
The Fourth Circuit (Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III) recently affirmed an extraterritorial preliminary injunction in a cross-border intellectual property dispute. In dmarcian Inc. v. DMARC Advisor BV, the court engaged in distinct extraterritorial analyses of federal trademark law, federal trade secret law, and state tortious interference claims. It is a particularly well-written opinion worth reading…
Continue ReadingFourth Circuit Reaffirms Lack of Official Immunity for Jus Cogens Violations
On July 8, 2026, the Fourth Circuit held in Kuiper v. Reyes Mena that a former colonel in the Salvadoran Army is not immune from suit for the extrajudicial killings of Dutch journalists in 1982 during El Salvador’s civil war. Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Paul V. Neimeyer reaffirmed the circuit’s holding in Yousuf…
Continue ReadingSafari Choice-of-Law Clauses
In June 2026, I went on a safari in Tanzania with my family. We went on a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti, visited a Masai village, and saw all of the Big Five. Before we embarked on these adventures, we were asked to sign an Assumption of Risk, Waiver of Liability, and Indemnification…
Continue ReadingValue Beyond Price: The Vindication Function of Transnational Litigation
Embedded in a recently decided Supreme Court case about Cuba and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act—Exxon Mobil v. Cimex—was a debate about the basic purpose of suing foreign government entities. The Supreme Court majority rejected the view that such suits are fruitless unless the plaintiff is likely to be able to collect a monetary judgment…
Continue ReadingW.D. Texas Asserts the Exclusivity of U.S. Jurisdiction in Patent Cases
Patent disputes often create jurisdictional conflict. A lot of attention recently has been focused on complex and policy-laden litigation involving standard essential patents, but garden-variety infringement claims can lead to challenges too. A federal court in Texas recently issued an anti-suit injunction blocking parallel litigation in China in such a claim. Its order asserted that…
Continue ReadingStrange Statutory Interpretation in Foreign Relations Law: The October 2025 Term
The back end of the Supreme Court’s October Term 2025 brought us three decisions in statutory cases dealing with foreign relations law. Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. explored the scope of the Helms Burton Act, a sanctions statute targeting Cuba. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S.A. (Cuba) held that this statute…
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