The Extraterritorial Reach of Criminal Statutes
When federal statutes do not indicate how far they reach, courts apply a presumption against extraterritoriality to limit their geographic scope. Last year, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. (2023), the Supreme Court revised the presumption by requiring conduct in the United States for a statute’s application to be considered domestic. Meanwhile, lower courts…
Continue ReadingFirst Circuit Allows Some of Mexico’s Claims Against Gun Manufacturers to Move Forward
Mexico has strict gun laws. There is one gun store in the country, and Mexico issues fewer than fifty gun permits a year. Yet Mexico has the third most gun-related deaths in the world because it borders the United States. An estimated half million guns flow from the United States into Mexico each year. In…
Continue ReadingNinth Circuit Decides Cassirer in Favor of Spain
In 2005, Claude Cassirer sued a state-owned museum in Spain to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro that the Nazis stole from his grandmother. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court on a choice-of-law question, and the Court held that state, rather than federal, choice-of-law rules should determine the applicable law in cases under…
Continue ReadingExecution of Judgments Against the Assets of Foreign Sovereigns Located Abroad
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) provides immunity from execution for the “property in the United States of a foreign state.” It does not confer immunity on a foreign state’s property located abroad. The limitation makes sense: to the extent that a foreign sovereign’s property located outside the United States is not subject to the…
Continue ReadingNew Decision on Email Service Under the Hague Service Convention
Regular TLB readers may recall that federal district courts are struggling with an important procedural question: whether they may authorize email service when the defendant resides in a country that is party to the Hague Service Convention. In Smart Study Co. v. Acuteye-U.S., Judge Gregory H. Woods (SDNY) held that the answer is no. The…
Continue ReadingFederal Court in Nevada Allows Ethiopia Bribery Claims to Move Forward
In a fascinating decision, the District Court for the District of Nevada (Judge Richard Boulware) recently allowed civil RICO claims to proceed against a Nevada resident based on bribery in Ethiopia, while dismissing claims against Ethiopian government entities under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Fremichael Ghebreyesus v. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia not only…
Continue ReadingDistrict Court Rejects Forum Non Conveniens Motion in Haiti Price-Fixing Case
The plaintiffs in Celestin v. Martelly brought a class action alleging that Haitian President Michel Joseph Martelly hatched a scheme to impose fees and fix prices on money transfers, food remittances, and international calls to and from Haiti and that Haitian and U.S. companies joined the scheme in violation of U.S. antitrust law, the federal…
Continue ReadingCert Petition Defends Partial Forum Non Conveniens Dismissals
A pending cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court asks whether a district court may dismiss part of an action pursuant to the doctrine of forum non conveniens (“FNC”) while allowing the rest of the case to proceed. The Tenth Circuit held that it could not in DIRTT Environmental Solutions Inc. v. Falkbuilt Ltd. because…
Continue ReadingCassirer on Remand: Considering the Laws of Other Interested States
Claude Cassirer brought suit in federal court in California eighteen years ago against the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum of Madrid, Spain, to recover a painting by Camille Pissarro that was stolen from his grandmother by the Nazis during World War II. After a reversal and remand from the U.S. Supreme Court last summer, the case is…
Continue ReadingNinth Circuit Applies New Supreme Court Interpretation of RICO’s Geographic Scope
On August 11, 2023, the Ninth Circuit became the first lower court to apply the new test for “domestic injury” under RICO that the Supreme Court announced in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin (2023). In Global Master International Group, Inc. v. Esmond Natural, Inc., the Ninth Circuit held that a Chinese company stated a valid civil RICO…
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