Texas Court Gives Foreign Judgment Broad Res Judicata Effect
Gottwald v. Dominguez de Cano is a not a case that most readers would normally hear of. It is a Texas Court of Appeals decision giving res judicata effect to a Mexican judgment to bar a claim in state court to recover money paid in a Mexican land sale more than a decade ago. But…
Continue ReadingU.S. Covid Lawsuits Against China
[This post is based on a keynote address delivered at a webinar on “Law Across Borders” hosted by the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law on October 16, 2025.] At a conference at Wuhan University two years ago, I provided a U.S. perspective on China’s new Foreign State Immunity Law. By passing this law, China adopted…
Continue ReadingD.C. Circuit Allows Venezuela Expropriation Case to Proceed
On October 3, 2025, the D.C. Circuit issued its latest opinion in Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Co. v. Venezuela. Judge Gregory G. Katsas affirmed the district court’s rulings that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s (FSIA) expropriation exception allows the plaintiff’s claim, that the district court has personal jurisdiction, and that the act of state…
Continue ReadingTransnational Litigation at the Supreme Court, October Term 2025
Today is the first day of the Supreme Court’s October Term. This post briefly discusses transnational litigation cases in which the Court has already granted cert, as well as others that are in the pipeline and could be decided this Term. Cases in which the Court Has Granted Cert So far, the Supreme Court has…
Continue ReadingDOJ Takes Broad View of Foreign Affairs Preemption in Pipeline Case
The Trump Administration has made so many broad assertions of executive power this year that it can be hard to keep track. One such assertion that has not made headlines is found in a statement of interest filed on September 12, 2025, in Enbridge Energy v. Whitmer. At issue is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 2020…
Continue ReadingNew Paper on Extraterritorial Application of the Wire Fraud Statute
I have written before about a circuit split over when the federal wire fraud statute applies extraterritorially. The lower federal courts disagree about how much use of U.S. wires is required to make an application of the statute “domestic.” The Second Circuit has held that use of U.S. wires must be a “core component” of…
Continue ReadingDistrict Court Denies Saudi Arabia’s Motion to Dismiss 9/11 Claims
On August 28, 2025, Judge George B. Daniels (Southern District of New York) denied the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) motion to dismiss claims arising from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, Judge Daniels concluded that the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to establish an exception to KSA’s…
Continue ReadingMore on Serving Foreign Defendants’ U.S. Counsel to Avoid the Hague Service Convention
In April, one of us wrote a post describing a case in which Judge Carol Bagley Amon (Eastern District of New York) relied on New York rules to order service on foreign defendants through their U.S. counsel. Because the service was completed in the United States, there was no occasion to transmit documents for service…
Continue ReadingWelcome, Hannah Buxbaum!
We are excited to announce that Hannah Buxbaum has joined us as a TLB editor! Hannah is an esteemed scholar who writes on jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, and other topics related to international litigation and comparative law. Regular readers may recall her posts on anti-suit injunctions and on the Venezuelan deportation litigation. Hannah just joined the law…
Continue ReadingTrump Administration Backs Helms-Burton Plaintiffs in Two CVSGs
Last week, the Solicitor General filed briefs recommending that the Supreme Court grant review in two cases under the Helms-Burton Act. Passed in 1996, Helms-Burton allows U.S. nationals who own claims to property expropriated by Cuba to sue any person who traffics in such property, potentially for three times the value of the claim. Under…
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