Cassirer Plaintiffs Ask Supreme Court to GVR
On Friday, the plaintiffs in Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation filed a cert petition asking the Supreme Court to grant, vacate, and remand (GVR) the Ninth Circuit’s decision in light of new California legislation mandating the application of California law to the merits of the case. It would be standard practice for the Court to…
Continue ReadingChoice of Law in Terrorism Cases Redux
On September 16, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Senior Judge Richard J. Leon) decided Messina v. Syrian Arab Republic. This case is the latest in a long series brought by victims of state-sponsored terrorism in the District of Columbia. In a pair of prior posts, I argued that the courts’…
Continue ReadingGovernor Newsom Signs Holocaust Art Bill
Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2867 into law. The bill provides that California law applies in suits brought by a California resident involving the theft of art or other personal property during the Holocaust or other political persecutions. Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel introduced AB 2867 in response to the Ninth Circuit’s decision earlier this…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach Conflict of Laws (2024 Update)
This post updates our series explaining how professors can use resources on TLB to teach various classes. Previous posts have discussed Transnational Litigation, Civil Procedure, Foreign Relations Law, and International Business Transactions. This post discusses Conflict of Laws. All of these posts are accessible at our Teaching Resources page. Primers and Topic Pages Conflict of…
Continue ReadingNinth Circuit Denies Rehearing En Banc in Cassirer
The legal saga surrounding the Cassirer family’s attempt to reclaim a Camille Pissarro painting seized by the Nazis has taken another step. Litigation in Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation has bounced among the Central District of California, the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of the United States. (For more coverage…
Continue ReadingChoice of Law and the CISG
Last week, I wrote about a New York case in which the court and the litigants failed to recognize the applicability of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). In today’s post, I discuss a case decided by a federal court in Rhode Island, Chilean Sea Bass Inc. v….
Continue ReadingOverlooking the CISG
The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) entered into force in 1988. Its stated goal is to harmonize the law of sales across many different countries, thereby making it unnecessary for courts in these countries to perform a choice-of-law analysis when the dispute involves an international sales contract. The…
Continue ReadingMicrosoft’s Dispute Resolution Provisions Are (Still) a Mess
Exactly one year ago today, I authored a post titled “Microsoft’s Dispute Resolution Provisions Are a Mess.” In it, I argued that the “Jurisdiction and Governing Law” clause in the form purchase order used by Microsoft and its subsidiaries in 109 countries around the world was “incoherent.” My goal is writing the post was to…
Continue ReadingGanpat’s Saga Continues
Regular TLB readers may recall the tragic story of Kholkar Vishveshwar Ganpat, an Indian citizen and merchant seaman who lost his toes to malaria, allegedly because his ship failed to stock sufficient antimalarial medicine when it docked at Savannah, Georgia. In 2018, Ganpat sued the ship’s operator, Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS), in federal district…
Continue ReadingBread and Butter
There is a tendency when blogging to focus on cases that that are (1) important, (2) novel, (3) strange, or (4) wrong. These are the sorts of cases that most people—and, candidly, the TLB editors—find to be most interesting. (My colleague Bill Dodge may be an exception.) Every now and then, however, it is useful…
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