Justia International Law Opinion Summaries

MARPOL is the common name for the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1340 U.N.T.S. 62. At issue was whether the United States had jurisdiction to prosecute a nominated surveyor for knowingly violating the MARPOL treaty while aboard a foreign vessel docked in the United States. After thorough review of the relevant treaty and U.S. law, the court held that the United States had jurisdiction to prosecute surveyors for MARPOL violations committed in U.S. ports. Further, under the court's lenient standards of review for issues raised for the first time on appeal, the court found no reversible error in the indictment or jury instructions. Finally, the court affirmed the district court's denial of judgment of acquittal. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Pena" on Justia Law

Sierra filed a motion under FRCP 60 in the district court that had issued default judgments against defendant, an officer of a French corporation that bought assets from an insolvent California insurance company pursuant to a rehabilitation plan, asking that court to correct judgments to add an explanation sufficient to permit its enforcement in France. The district court granted the motion and entered two corrected judgments. Defendant appealed. The court affirmed because the operative, substantive terms of the corrected judgments were identical to the terms of the original judgments. Therefore, the amendments only clarified the original intent of the judgments, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in making those changes under Rule 60(a). The court also held that, by failing to challenge the original judgments, defendant waived his arguments as to setoff, release, and the nature and amount of his liability. Finally, the court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to stay entry of the amended or corrected judgments. View "Garamendi v. Hennin" on Justia Law

This case arose when some Ecuadorian citizens sued Chevron in an Ecuador court, alleging that Chevron was responsible for environmental damage there. As the proceedings in Ecuador unfolded, Chevron sued the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their attorneys in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their attorneys had committed fraud in the proceedings in Ecuador. As part of the New York litigation, Chevron subpoenaed documents from the Weinberg Group and the subpoena was issued from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Weinberg Group asserted the attorney-client and work product privileges over some of the documents responsive to the subpoena. Chevron moved to compel production of those documents in the D.C. district court. The D.C. district court found that the crime-fraud exception applied and granted Chevron's motion to compel, relying almost entirely on a decision in favor of Chevron by the New York district court in the underlying fraud investigation. The court concluded that, given that the D.C. district court relied on the decision of the New York district court and that the New York district court's decision was subsequently reversed by the Second Circuit, the court must vacate the D.C. district court's decision and remand. View "Chevron Corp. v. Weinberg Group" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a breach of contract action seeking over $12 million from the Royal Family Al-Saud and sixteen of its members (collectively, defendants) for failing to pay him for artwork he alleged they commissioned. Plaintiff had designed 29 sculptures for the Royal Family in 2006 and 2007. Defendants kept the sculptures but never paid plaintiff for any of them. Plaintiff attempted to serve process on defendants by mailing a copy of the summons and complaint to the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, where plaintiff ordinarily communicated with defendants in past instances, but the Embassy refused to accept the first class mailing. The district court dismissed the pro se complaint for failure to prosecute under Local Civil Rule 83.23 because plaintiff failed to serve process on defendants pursuant to FRCP 4(f). The court held that, viewing all of the circumstances - the reasonable probability that plaintiff could obtain service on at least one of the defendants, plaintiff's dogged attempts to effect service of process and the district court's failure to provide "a form of notice sufficiently understandable to one in [plaintiff's] circumstances fairly to apprise him of what is required" to serve process, and to provide notice of the consequences of failing to serve process - the district court abused its discretion in dismissing the complaint. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment. View " Angellino v. Royal Family Al-Saud, et al." on Justia Law

GSS Group brought this action to confirm a foreign arbitration award against the Port Authority of Liberia. The district court dismissed the petition for lack of personal jurisdiction after concluding that the Port Authority did not have sufficient contacts with the United States. The court concluded that the Port Authority claimed to be an independent juridical entity in its motion to dismiss, and GSS Group failed to contest that characterization. GSS Group's omission left in tact the Bancec presumption, First National City Bank v. Banco Para el Comercio Exterior de Cuba, which, under TMR Energy v. State Property Fund of Ukraine, guaranteed the Port Authority treatment as a separate "person" entitled to due process protection. That protection included the right to assert a minimum contacts defense. GSS Group had not identified any connection between the Port Authority and the United States and conceded that none existed. Therefore, the district court correctly dismissed the petition for lack of personal jurisdiction. View "GSS Group Ltd v. National Port Authority" on Justia Law

The Mission brought this interlocutory appeal from the district court's denial of immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1602-1611. At issue was whether the Mission could be sued for the damage to an adjoining property caused by its alleged failure to comply with the New York City Building Code, N.Y. City Admin. Code tit. 28, ch.1. The court rejected the Mission's argument that the immunity accorded to its decision to base its operations in a townhouse and to renovate the building for such use extended to the tort allegedly committed during its implementation of that decision. Although the Mission was not under an obligation to construct the chancery at any particular location, once it decided to do so it could not disregard the nondelegable duty of care imposed upon it by the city's Building Code. Accordingly, the court held that the obligation to protect the party wall was not discretionary and that the Mission could not avail itself of the protection of the FSIA's discretionary function exception. View "USAA Casualty Ins. Co. v. Permanent Mission Of The Republic of Namibia" on Justia Law

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