Smagin‘s Surprises
Last week’s decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin was surprising in a number of respects, from the line-up of the Justices to the possible shift it signals in the presumption against extraterritoriality.
Continue ReadingSupreme Court Approves Using Civil RICO to Help Enforce Arbitral Awards
Last week, the Supreme Court held in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin that civil RICO can be used to help enforce foreign arbitral awards. Specifically, the Court held that concealing assets to avoid paying a U.S. judgment that confirmed a foreign arbitral award could satisfy civil RICO’s “domestic injury” requirement, allowing the award-creditor to pursue a claim…
Continue ReadingSupreme Court decides Yegiazaryan v. Smagin
The Supreme Court just released its opinion in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin. For prior coverage on TLB by Bill Dodge see here, here, here, and here. The issue in the case was whether the plaintiff adequately plead a domestic injury under RICO. The foreign plaintiff alleged that the defendants worked together illegally to frustrate his collection…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. California
Thirty years ago next week, the Supreme Court addressed the extraterritorial reach of U.S. antitrust laws in Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. California. The Court reiterated that the Sherman Act applies to anticompetitive conduct abroad that causes substantial intended effects in the United States, but it divided sharply over the role of “international comity.” Writing…
Continue ReadingWaiving Choice of Law
When I teach Conflict of Laws, I tell my students that they must always perform a choice-of-law analysis when there is a conflict between the laws of two jurisdictions. This is sound advice for doing well on the final exam. It is not, however, strictly true. In fact, litigants waive this issue all the time….
Continue Reading“Tag Service” and Section 1782
[This post originally appeared at Letters Blogatory and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.] Bill Dodge has a really interesting post about a decision from the bench in an SDNY Section 1782 case, In re Fourworld Event Opportunities Fund. Decisions like this are from the darkest corner of the legal dark web. They are not published. They are not available…
Continue ReadingHappy Juneteenth!
Happy Juneteenth! We are celebrating and thinking about the history of this important day, as we hope you will. Regular blogging resumes tomorrow.
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: Federal Rule 44.1
For this installment of Throwback Thursday, we are going back to the year 1966. In that year, the Supreme Court adopted important changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing class actions, amendments that have garnered substantial commentary ever since. This post addresses a less-heralded change, the introduction of Federal Rule 44.1 governing foreign…
Continue ReadingU.S. Immunity of International Organizations Since Jam v. IFC: New Challenges and Opportunities
In 2019, the Supreme Court reset the U.S. law of immunities for international organizations with its landmark judgment in Jam v. International Finance Corporation. That case overturned the long-held understanding that the International Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA), 22 U.S.C. §§ 288 et seq., entitled international organizations designated under it to virtually absolute immunity from U.S….
Continue Reading“Sticky Beliefs” about Transnational Litigation
Empirical legal scholarship has been on the rise. But empirical research on transnational litigation remains relatively uncommon. This limits our knowledge of transnational litigation and, by hindering assessment of claims about transnational litigation, it allows what I call “sticky beliefs” to take hold. Sticky beliefs are assertions made without empirical support, which are then uncritically…
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