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Case of the Day: European Community v. RJR Nabisco
I’m going outside the official Letters Blogatory Scope of Coverage to write about European Community v. RJR Nabisco, Inc. (E.D.N.Y. 2011), an interesting reversal of the usual FSIA case. In the usual case, a sovereign defendant asserts immunity from jurisdiction in the US courts. In today’s case, the sovereign—or the supposed sovereign—was the plaintiff. The……
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Case of the Day: Semtek International v. Information Satellite Systems
The case of the day is Semtek Interntional, Inc. v. Information Satellite Systems (D. Mass. 2012). Semtek had a contract with Merkuriy Ltd., a Russian company in the business of commercializing satellite capacity. Semtek sued Merkuriy and Pyotr Sivirin, Merkuriy’s executive director, claiming that Merkuriy and Sirivin breached the contract, which gave Semtek the right……
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Case of the Day: Delizia Ltd. v. Eritrea
The case of the day, Delizia Ltd. v. Eritrea (S.D.N.Y. 2012), is a short, fun decision. Delizia had a contract to sell $12 million dollars of equipment to the Eritrean Ministry of Defense. The Ministry stopped making payments. The contract had an agreement to arbitrate, so Delizia commenced an arbitration in Sweden. Eritrea did not……
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Cert. Watch: Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran
One of our cases of the day, Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 637 F.3d 783 (7th Cir. 2011), is on SCOTUSBlog’s list of petitions to watch for tomorrow’s conference at the Supreme Court. The case involved efforts of a victim of a Hamas terror attack in Israel to collect on a default judgment against……
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Case of the Day: Devi v. Rajapaksa
The case of the day is Devi v. Rajapaksa (S.D.N.Y. 2012). The case arises out of the long and bloody civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. The plaintiff, Vathsala Devi, is the widow of Thurairajasingham, also known as Colonel Ramesh. The defendant, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is the President of……