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Elephant habeas: California petition denied
The Los Angeles County Superior Court has summarily denied the Nonhuman Rights Project’s latest habeas petition supposedly filed on behalf of two elephants. The reason: elephants are property, not persons. “Certainly, Billy and Tina should be treated with adequate care for their physical and mental wellbeing; but habeas corpus is not the enforcement vehicle. As……
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Case of the day: In re Gliner
The case of the day is In re Gliner (9th Cir. 2025). Gregory Gliner was married to Veronica Bourlakova, the daughter of Russian businessman Oleg Bourlakov. After Burlakov died, there was a dispute about whether Veronica was entitled to inherit. The dispute led, Gliner claimed, to an article published pseudonymously on politicallore.com, accusing Gliner of……
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Oh, vendors
I had an interesting and unusual experience this week. I help a lot of lawyers take depositions without compulsion abroad. But it’s not that common for me to have to take a deposition abroad in a state that is a party to the Evidence Convention and where advance permission from the competent authority in that……
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Case of the day: Molecular Dynamics v. Spectrum Dynamics
The case of the day is Molecular Dynamics, Ltd. v. Spectrum Dynamics Medical Ltd.(2d Cir. 2025). Molecular Dynamics was a joint venture formed by SDBM Ltd. and Chancey Capital Corp. on the one hand and Biosensors International Group Ltd. on the other. The idea was to share intellectual property in order to develop “parallel but……
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The new Practical Handbooks are out
Practitioners, academics, officials, and others will be glad to know that the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law has just published the new editions of the Practical Handbooks on the operation of the Service Convention and the Evidence Convention. I promise you no one has paid me to say: I use……