Justia International Law Opinion Summaries

Defendants, all Somalis, were convicted, among other things, of the crime of piracy under 18 U.S.C. 1651 after they launched an attack on the USS Nicholas on the high seas between Somalia and the Seychelles. On appeal, defendants challenged their convictions and sentences on several grounds, including that their attack on the USS Nicholas did not, as a matter of law, amount to a section 1651 piracy offense. Because the district court correctly applied the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, art. 101, definition of piracy as customary international law, the court rejected defendants' challenge to their Count One piracy convictions, as well as their mandatory life sentences. Defendants raised several additional appellate contentions which the court also rejected. Accordingly, the court affirmed the convictions and sentences of each of the defendants. View "United States v. Dire; United States v. Ali; United States v. Umar; United States v. Gurewardher; United States v. Hasan" on Justia Law

The International Child Abduction Remedies Act, 42 U.S.C. 11601, entitles a person whose child has been removed from his custody to the U.S. to petition for return of the child. Father and mother lived with their daughter, three years old, in Canada. The parties are of Indian ethnicity; theirs was an arranged marriage. During a vacation in India, mother alleged domestic abuse, so that father was detained, while mother flew to the U.S. with daughter. Mother gave birth to a second child in the U.S.; that child is not at issue. The district court ordered the child returned to Canada. The child was taken from her mother by U.S. Marshals, based on the father’s assertion that the mother is a flight risk because India is not a signatory of the Hague Convention. The child lived with her father in a hotel in Chicago until she was returned to her mother pending appeal. The Seventh Circuit vacated and remanded for a hearing on whether being with the father will inflict psychological harm on the child. The court noted the conflicting assertions of the parents and that the district court did not explore the issue, apparently seeing it as a foreign problem. View "Khan v. Fatima" on Justia Law

Petitioner-Appellant Jesus Hector Palma-Salazar was indicted in 1995 for conspiracy to distribute cocaine; he was arrested in Mexico in 2002. After he was extradited to the United States pursuant to an extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico, Petitioner pled guilty and began serving his sentence. In 2010, Petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging his confinement at the Administrative Maximum Prison in Florence, Colorado (ADX). He alleged his confinement at ADX violated his Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights and also the extradition treaty. The district court denied his petition. It concluded it lacked jurisdiction to consider his Fifth and Eighth Amendment claims because they were challenges to the conditions of his confinement and must, therefore, be brought under "Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics," (403 U.S. 388 (1971)). It also concluded Petitioner's confinement at ADX did not violate the extradition treaty. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's conclusion. View "Palma-Salazar v. Davis" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from a dispute between Ghana and Balkan Energy Company where Balkan contracted with Ghana to refurbish and recommission a 125 megawatt power barge. Ghana filed an application for discovery pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782, seeking documents exchanged in a separate lawsuit between the current defendants. The district court granted Ghana's application and ordered the Missouri companies (collectively ProEnergy) to produce documents. ProEnergy produced some documents and discovery materials from its lawsuit with Balkan, but it refused other documents related to the settlement of that lawsuit. Because ProEnergy had already produced most of the documents, depositions, and interrogatory answers from its lawsuit with Balkan, and because ProEnergy was not party to the foreign litigation, the court was not persuaded that any fundamental unfairness was caused by the district court declining to compel production of the settlement documents. Accordingly, the court affirmed the decision. View "Government of Ghana v. ProEnergy Services, LLC, et al." on Justia Law

Petitioners sued the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), which authorized a cause of action against "[a]n individual" for acts of torture and extrajudicial killing committed under authority or color of law of any foreign nation. The district court dismissed the suit, concluding that the TVPA's authorization of suit against "[a]n individual" extended liability only to natural persons. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed. The Court held that, as used in the TVPA, the term "individual" encompassed only natural persons. Consequently, the TVPA did not impose liability against organizations. Therefore, the Court affirmed the judgment of the lower courts. View "Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority" on Justia Law

This case arose when plaintiffs acquired on the secondary market hundreds of millions of dollars of non-performing bonds issued by the Republic of Argentina. In due course, plaintiffs began to bring suit in the United States courts to collect the debt. In these eleven consolidated appeals, they moved to attach a New York bank account owned by ANPCT. The court held that the district court correctly held that the funds in the ANPCT account were subject to attachment pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1610 because they were "used for a commercial activity in the United States." View "NML Capital, Ltd. v. Republic of Argentina" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, nine children in the custody of PMC, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against three Texas officials, in their official capacities, seeking to represent a class of all children who were now, and all those who will be, in the State's long-term foster care. The gravaman of plaintiffs' complaint is that various system-wide problems in Texas's administration of its PMC subjected all of the children in PMC to a variety of harms. Applying the standards announced in the Supreme Court's recent opinion, Wal-mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the court held that the district court failed to conduct the "rigorous" analysis required by Rule 23 in deciding to certify the proposed class. The court also held that the district court abused its discretion by certifying a class that lacked cohesiveness under Rule 23(b)(2). Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's class certification order and remanded for further proceedings. View "M.D., et al. v. Rick Perry, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed from a judgment of the district court granting defendants' motion to dismiss and denying as moot plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on liability. The District Court held that plaintiffs failed to state a claim, under a variety of theories, based on defendants' purchase and possession of an interest in the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Egypt. The court concluded that the facts alleged in plaintiffs' Amended Complaint, if true, told a tragic story of religious discrimination in Egypt in the 1960s and the court understood the desire for compensation. However, that wrong, if it did indeed occur, was inflicted by the Egyptian government, not by defendants. Because the district court correctly determined that the Amended Complaint failed to state a claim against defendants and also therefore correctly denied plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment as moot, the judgment of the district court was affirmed. View "Bigio v. The Coca-Cola Co." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from an order of the district court denying his motion to dismiss, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, plaintiffs' separate actions to recover for breach of contract. The district court based its subject matter jurisdiction determination on the commercial activities exception to foreign sovereign immunity as set forth in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), 1602-11. The district court also denied defendant's motions to dismiss, made pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). At issue was, as regards to "clause two" of the commercial activities exception, whether plaintiffs' claims were sufficiently "based upon" any act that defendant performed in the United States that was "in connection with [defendant's] commercial activity" in Brazil. Also at issue was, with respect to "clause three," whether defendant's extraterritorial commercial acts caused a "direct effect" in the United States. In both cases, defendant contended that the district court erred in finding the requirements of the exception to be satisfied and thus argued that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the cases. The court held that defendant was immune under the Act and therefore reversed the district court's order. View "Rogers v. Petroleo Brasileiro, S.A." on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed from an order of the district court granting respondent's motion to quash subpoenas issued pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782. Petitioner sought assistance from the district court to order discovery from three non-parties for use in a securities fraud action he filed in Germany. The district court allowed the discovery and the relevant subpoenas were issued. However, before any discovery was produced, respondent moved to vacate that order and quash the subpoenas. The district court granted the motion and ruled that the requested discovery could not be "for use" in the German tribunal because it was unlikely to be admitted in the foreign jurisdiction. The court reversed the order, concluding that the "for use" requirement was not limited to the actual receipt of materials into evidence in the foreign proceeding. View "Brandi-Dohrn v. IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG" on Justia Law