The FSIA “Two Step”—Venue in Enforcement Actions Against Foreign States
When a party holding a foreign judgment or arbitral award wants to enforce the judgment or award against assets in the United States, it normally brings an enforcement action in the jurisdiction where the assets are located. But when the judgment debtor is a foreign state, the venue provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act…
Continue ReadingRecapping Media Coverage of Mallory
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., a personal jurisdiction case on review from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Robert Mallory, a Virginia resident employed in Virginia and Ohio, sued Norfolk Southern, then based and incorporated in Virginia, in Pennsylvania state court. The case asks the Supreme Court…
Continue ReadingLower Court Grapples with Supreme Court Ruling on Section 1782 and Investor-State Arbitration
Back in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a circuit split on the applicability of Section 1782’s discovery tools for private commercial arbitration, and simultaneously addressed a related issue of Section 1782’s use in investor-state arbitration. The investor-state issue came to the Court in the case of AlixPartners LLP v. The Fund for Protection…
Continue ReadingConsent and Personal Jurisdiction: The Mallory Oral Argument
On Tuesday November 8, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway, a case that Reuters called “a sleeper case . . . [that] could be a nightmare for corporations.” The case involves a railway worker, Robert Mallory, a resident of Virginia, who had worked for Norfolk Southern for…
Continue ReadingOral Argument on Personal Jurisdiction Today
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument today in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway, a personal jurisdiction case in which the defendant “consented” to general jurisdiction in Pennsylvania based on a corporate registration statute. Although Mallory itself involves no transnational facts, the case could have important implications for foreign defendants. Pennsylvania’s registration and long-arm statutes,…
Continue ReadingNew Scholarship on the FSIA
Vivian Grosswald Curran (University of Pittsburgh) has a draft article up on SSRN entitled Nazi Stolen Art: Uses and Misuses of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Many important FSIA cases have involved great works of art stolen by the Nazis including the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Altmann v. Republic of Austria concerning the ownership…
Continue ReadingSecond Circuit Again Limits Extraterritorial Reach of Commodity Exchange Act
In Laydon v. Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A., the Second Circuit once again held that the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) does not apply to futures contracts traded on U.S. exchanges that are tied to the values of foreign commodities. Although the transactions in this case undoubtedly occurred in the United States, the court held that the claims…
Continue ReadingSDNY Rejects Immunity for Former Diplomat in Trafficking Case
To ensure that diplomats can perform their functions without harassment, international law grants them broad immunity from the criminal and civil jurisdiction of the state to which they are accredited. Unfortunately, some diplomats seem to treat such immunity as a license to abuse their domestic servants. Earlier this year, Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk reported on a…
Continue ReadingForeign Data Protection Laws: Greater Impact on U.S. Discovery than Foreign Blocking Statutes
Litigants are increasingly relying on foreign data protection laws – especially new laws in China and the European Union – to resist discovery requests from courts in the United States. Historically, U.S. courts do not limit discovery just because the production of the requested materials or information would violate foreign laws. So far, as Bill…
Continue ReadingDoes the TVPRA Apply Extraterritorially? Thoughts on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Amicus Brief in Doe v. Apple
As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly limited the scope of the implied cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), victims of human rights abuses have looked to other U.S. statutes for remedies. One of these is the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which creates a civil remedy against perpetrators and others…
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