Arbitration

Fourth Circuit Rejects Forum Non Conveniens Defense to Enforcing Arbitral Award

The New York Convention governs the recognition and enforcement of most foreign arbitral awards in the United States. Article V of the Convention sets forth limited grounds on which enforcement may be refused. But Article III makes the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards subject to “the rules of procedure of the territory where the award…

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Ninth Circuit Creates Split on Serving Motion to Confirm Arbitration Award

How does one serve process to confirm an arbitral award on parties outside the United States? The answer turns out to be quite complicated. In Voltage Pictures LLC v. Gussi S.A. de C.V., the Ninth Circuit charted a careful path through the maze of interactions between the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and the Federal Rules…

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Ninth Circuit Gets Tangled Up in Minimum Contacts and Due Process

Do the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections require minimum contacts? And do those protections apply to foreign states sued under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)? Those are the fundamental questions on which Ninth Circuit judges offered differing approaches as they resolved a recent petition for rehearing en banc. Regular TLB readers may recall that…

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Russia Continues Pressing Sovereignty Claims in the Yukos Award Saga

Russian 200 ruble note

Yukos Oil Company (“Yukos”) shareholders’ attempts to enforce their $50 billion arbitral award against the Russian Federation are moving forward in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On November 17, 2023, Judge Beryl Howell denied Russia’s motion to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities…

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Supreme Court Roundup (October Term 2022)

During its 2022 Term, which ended four weeks ago, the Supreme Court decided five cases with important implications for transnational litigation. The questions included whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) applies to criminal proceedings; the standard for aiding and abetting under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA); whether states may exercise general personal jurisdiction over foreign…

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Supreme 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…

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Supreme Court Oral Argument in Extraterritorial RICO Case Marked by Confusion

The Supreme Court heard oral argument last week in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin and CMB Monaco v. Smagin, two cases testing when civil RICO can be used to help enforce a foreign arbitration award. Because I have described the facts in a previous post, I will be brief here. Smagin and Yegiazaryan are Russian citizens who…

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Preview of Supreme Court Argument in Civil RICO Extraterritoriality Case

On April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin and CMB Monaco v. Smagin, which ask how RICO’s private right of action applies to intangible property, in this case a California judgment confirming a foreign arbitral award. The cases have important implications not just for civil RICO but also for international arbitration….

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Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragon?: Some Thoughts on Smagin v. Yegiazaryan

This Term, the Supreme Court will hear a dispute between two wealthy Russians relating to an international arbitration award in London arising out of a failed real estate venture in Moscow. The case pits two competing tendencies of the Justices against one another: (a) their penchant for preventing such seemingly foreign litigation from proceeding in U.S….

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Court Holds that Chinese Investor May Try to Enforce Arbitral Award Against Nigeria

Over the past two decades, China has invested heavily in Africa. A recent study found that between 2001 and 2018, China invested $41 billion in African countries and loaned an additional $126 billion. Some of these investments generated disputes, and some of those disputes are finding their way to U.S. courts. In a recent decision,…

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Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School
ingrid.wuerth@vanderbilt.eduEmail

William Dodge

George Washington University Law School
william.dodge@law.gwu.eduEmail

Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law School
mgardner@cornell.eduEmail

John F. Coyle

University of North Carolina School of Law
jfcoyle@email.unc.eduEmail

Zachary D. Clopton

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
zclopton@law.northwestern.eduEmail

Noah Buyon

Duke University School of Law
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Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom

University of Cambridge
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Ben Köhler

Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
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Melissa Stewart

University of Hawai'i, William S. Richardson School of Law.
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Ian M. Kysel

Cornell Law School
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Craig D. Gaver

Bluestone Law
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Gregg Cashmark

Vanderbilt Law School
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Rochelle C. Dreyfuss

NYU School of Law
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Linda J. Silberman

New York University School of Law
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Timothy R. Holbrook

Emory University School of Law
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