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Case Summaries

International Law

[09/03] Allied Maritime, Inc. v. Descatrade SA
An order vacating the process of maritime attachment and garnishment issued on April 15, 2009 attaching defendant's assets to secure a putative foreign arbitral award and dismissal of the complaint for lack of jurisdiction is affirmed where the district court properly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over defendant’s bank account in Paris, France, the suspense account created by the bank in response to the attachment order, and any other intangible property arising from an electronic funds transfer.

[09/02] Bodum USA, Inc. v. La Cafetiere, Inc.
In a suit for common law trade dress of a French-press coffee maker known as the Chambord, district court's judgment in favor of the defendant is affirmed as, Article 4 of the parties' contract is clear and precise as it allows defendant to sell the coffee maker design anywhere except France - provided that it does not use the Chambord or Melior names and does not use plaintiff's supply channels for four years.

[09/02] Bakalar v. Vavra
In an action seeking a declaration that plaintiff was the owner of a drawing by Egon Schiele, judgment for plaintiff is vacated where: 1) although it is unclear whether a cause of action comparable to the counterclaims of defendants could be successfully brought in Austria, allowing the claims to go forward under New York law was consistent with the principles underlying the decision of the Supreme Court of Austria; and 2) the district judge, by applying Swiss Law, erred in placing the burden of proof on defendants to show that the Nazis looted the drawing.

[09/01] Funai Elec. Co., Ltd. v. Daewoo Elec. Corp.
In a patent infringement suit pertaining to various electrical and mechanical components of video cassette players and recorders (VCRs), judgment of the district court is affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded where: 1) district court's judgment of infringement of three patents and the damages for the infringement are affirmed; and 2) district court's determination of no successor liability in applying the South Korean law is reversed and remanded.

[08/30] Lechoslaw v. Bank of America
In plaintiff's suit against a bank for damages, claiming that a four-and-a-half month delay in receiving his $31,787.34 disrupted the construction of a motel and restaurant in Poland and caused him severe emotional distress, judgment of the district court is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff has failed to meet his burden of proving that the Bank in Poland met the requirements for the exercise of personal jurisdiction, and trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the Bank did not waive its defense of lack of personal jurisdiction; 2) there was no abuse of discretion on the facts in the court's exclusion of the statement as offered against Bank of America (BoA); 3) there was no evidence that BoA violated chapter 93A in any of its dealings with plaintiff, and the district court properly entered judgment in its favor; and 4) it was not an abuse of discretion for the courts not to reopen discovery according to the Hague Convention.

[08/30] Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. Chimet, S.P.A.
In Delta Airlines' suit for declaratory judgment seeking to limit its liability for losing approximately 100 kilograms of pure platinum shipped from Italy to Pennsylvania, district court's grant of defendant's motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds is affirmed as the district court did not abuse its discretion by granting defendant's motion to dismiss as the private interest factors affecting the convenience of the litigants and the public interest factors affecting the convenience of the forum weighed in favor of litigating this dispute in Italy.

[08/24] Karpenko v. Leendertz
In a child custody dispute, a grant of a mother's petition for the child's return under the Hague Convention of the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is affirmed and the minor child's immediate return to her mother in the Netherlands is ordered where: 1) the district court's findings of fact were not clearly erroneous; and 2) the application of the unclean hands doctrine would undermine the Hague Convention's goal of protecting the well-being of the child, of restoring the status quo before the child's abduction, and of ensuring that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in the other Contracting States.

[08/17] City of N.Y. v. Permanent Mission of India to the U.N.
In an action by New York City against certain foreign missions for unpaid property taxes, a denial of defendants' motion to dismiss is reversed where the Notice issued by the Department of State was a lawful exercise of the Department's authority under the Foreign Missions Act, and the Notice operated in this case to render appellants exempt from the property taxes imposed by the City, and so nullified the City's existing tax liens against appellants.

[08/16] OSS Nokalva, Inc. v. European Space Agency
In a software corporation's suit against the European Space Agency (ESA), for breach of contract relating to license agreements and corresponding software maintenance agreements, district court's judgment is affirmed based on reasons other than those relied on by the district court as, in light of the "same immunity" language in the International Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA), it is unreasonable to assume that those international organizations that were established under the IOIA after foreign sovereign immunity had been altered by the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) would still be subject to that level of immunity enjoyed by foreign governments and international organizations in 1945. Therefore, ESA is not entitled to immunity as it stood for foreign sovereigns in 1945.

[08/12] Thai I-Mei Frozen Foods Co., Ltd. v. US
In an anti-dumping duty case, involving frozen and canned warmwater shrimp from Thailand, the Court of International Trade's decision reversing and remanding Commerce's first remand determination is reversed as Commerce's statement of a general preference for exclusion of sales outside the ordinary course of trade where, as here, the date are for like products sold by other respondents, is reasonable. Thus, Commerce reasonably determined that in this case, where such data were readily available, and indeed had been used for the other two respondents, it was reasonable to make its determination excluding sales outside the ordinary course of trade.

[08/12] Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain
In an action by an American citizen whose grandmother's Pissarro painting was allegedly confiscated in 1939 by an agent of the Nazi government in Germany because she was a Jew, denial of motions to dismiss the complaint are affirmed where: 1) the court lacked jurisdiction to review the district court's decision declining to dismiss the action for lack of personal jurisdiction and a case or controversy; and 2) 28 U.S.C. section 1605(a)(3) did not require the foreign state against whom the claim was made to be the one that took the property.

[08/09] Kern County Dep't of Human Serv. v. Superior Court
A County Department of Human Services' petition for a writ of mandate, challenging a juvenile court's refusal to find that the department properly noticed a parent of a jurisdictional/dispositional hearing on juvenile dependency supplemental and subsequent petitions is granted where: 1) the Hague Service Convention does not apply to supplemental and subsequent juvenile dependency proceedings in light of the juvenile court's ongoing dependency jurisdiction and provided it has previously found proper notice to the parent; and 2) alternatively, assuming that Convention could apply to supplemental and subsequent juvenile dependency proceedings, any duty to serve notice under the Convention was discharged in this case by the father's general appearance in the juvenile court after the department filed its subsequent and supplemental petitions.

[08/09] World Holdings LLC v. Fed. Repub. of Germany
In an action to obtain payment on certain bonds issued by the Federal Republic of Germany, the denial of Germany's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is affirmed where Article II of the Agreement Between the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany Regarding Certain Matters Arising from the Validation of German Dollar Bonds stated that no bond "shall be enforceable unless and until it shall be validated," but that did not necessarily mean that a plaintiff may not bring a legal action in the U.S. courts to seek enforcement of a bond that had not been validated.

[08/06] MBI Group, Inc. v. Credit Foncier du Cameroun
In an action against the government of Cameroon and a state-owned mortgage finance corporation, alleging a breach of an agreement to develop low-cost housing, the dismissal of the action based on forum non conveniens is affirmed where: 1) plaintiffs consistently worked to undermine their suit in Cameroon, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that their efforts succeeded; and 2) the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the public and private interests strongly favored dismissal.

[08/04] In re Vanessa Q.
Family law court's determination that petitioner, who is currently incarcerated in Mexico, had abandoned his three children in terminating his parental rights is affirmed as petitioner's argument that the judgment is void for lack of personal jurisdiction because he was not properly served with notice of the proceedings in accordance with the Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters fails because he made a general appearance through his counsel at the hearing on the petition and thus consented to the court's exercise of jurisdiction over him.

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