Desperately Seeking Interlocutory Appeal
Despite some excellent opinions correctly interpreting the Hague Service Convention (HSC) and Rule 4(f)(3) in recent years, the district courts continue to be deeply divided on recurring questions of international service of process, in particular the permissibility of service by email or by other electronic means. Bill Dodge and I think such questions are clearly…
Continue ReadingA Primer on Personal Jurisdiction
Personal jurisdiction (or “authority to adjudicate”) refers to the authority of a court to make a binding determination with respect to a person or a thing. In personam jurisdiction refers to the authority to determine the rights or obligations of a person (including a business). In rem jurisdiction refers to the authority to determine ownership…
Continue ReadingNew Article on Old Admiralty Discretion
The Notre Dame Law Review has just published my new article, “Admiralty, Abstention and the Allure of Old Cases.” The heart of the article is a description of the federal courts’ long-standing discretion to decline jurisdiction over admiralty disputes between foreign parties. Defendants in transnational cases have recently tried to invoke this old admiralty practice…
Continue ReadingFourth Circuit Applies Recent Supreme Court Decision on RICO Injuries
In Percival Partners Ltd. v. Nduom, the Fourth Circuit (Judge Harris, joined by Judge Thacker and Judge Richardson) applied last Term’s decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin (2023) to conclude that the plaintiffs’ alleged RICO injury was impermissibly extraterritorial. In an analysis that embraced Yegiazaryan’s contextual approach to siting RICO injuries, the Fourth Circuit held that…
Continue ReadingSecond Circuit Denies Rehearing En Banc in Fuld v. PLO
Last week, the Second Circuit denied rehearing en banc in Fuld v. Palestinian Liberation Organization, an important personal jurisdiction decision that TLB has previously covered here, here, and here. The denial prompted a dissent by Judge Steven Menashi, joined in whole or in part by three other judges, which in turn prompted a concurrence by…
Continue ReadingFederal Circuit Reconsiders Extraterritorial Patent Damages
The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Brumfield v. IBG LLC suggests that U.S. patent holders may be able to obtain damages for foreign activities that flow from domestic acts of infringement proscribed by 35 U.S.C. § 271(a). This is a new development: as the Federal Circuit explained, the Supreme Court’s extraterritoriality analysis in WesternGeco LLC…
Continue ReadingSaying Yes to the World, But No to Personal Jurisdiction
The Northern District of California (Judge Susan Illston) recently dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction a suit brought by California residents against the German airline Lufthansa for harms emanating from the plaintiffs’ experience boarding a flight in Saudi Arabia en route to San Francisco. As the court noted in Doe v. Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft, the…
Continue ReadingHow Do Federal Courts Determine Foreign Law?
Sarah Alsaden has recently published her research on how federal district judges are determining the content of foreign law. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 44.1, a federal court’s determination of foreign law is a question of law (not of fact), and “[i]n determining foreign law, the court may consider any relevant material or source,…
Continue ReadingTLB Turns Two!
Two years ago today, we launched the Transnational Litigation Blog in hopes of building a community of practitioners, academics, and students similarly interested in these fascinating and important issues. We are grateful to all of our readers, and we are especially grateful to the 91 authors (in addition to the five of us) who have…
Continue ReadingHow To Find Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign Website Operators
The Supreme Court’s recent personal jurisdiction decisions have raised more questions than they have answered. Meanwhile, the high Court has studiously avoided explaining how twentieth-century personal jurisdiction doctrine should map onto a twenty-first century world defined by Internet commerce, global supply chains, and cloud computing. The work of maintaining and updating a practical framework for…
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