Justia International Law Opinion Summaries

Taxpayers, United States citizens claiming to be bona fide residents of the Virgin Islands, petitioned the Tax Court, challenging the IRS's deficiency notices. In consolidated appeals, the court reviewed the Tax Court's denial of the Virgin Islands' motion to intervene in Taxpayers' proceedings in the Tax Court. The court concluded that the Virgin Islands qualified for intervention of right under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) and held that Rule 24(a)(2) applied in this instance. Because the court concluded that the Tax Court should have allowed the Virgin Islands to intervene as a matter of right under Rule 24(a)(2), the court did not reach the question of whether the Tax Court abused its discretion in denying permissive intervention under Rule 24(b)(2). Accordingly, the court remanded with instruction to grant the Virgin Islands intervention. View "Huff v. Commissioner of IRS, et al." on Justia Law

Mary, who has both U.S. and Irish citizenship, attended college in Ireland.She and Derek lived together in Ireland for 11 years, but never married. Their son was born in Illinois. The three returned to Ireland 11 days later. A few months later Mary and the baby moved to Illinois against Derek’s wishes. As an unmarried father, Derek had no standing under Irish law to resort to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which requires return of children to their country of habitual residence if they are “wrongfully removed to or retained in” another country in breach of the custody rights of the left-behind parent. After 3-1/2 years, an Irish court granted Derek guardianship and joint custody. Mary was in Ireland with the baby for the final hearing. The court allowed her to temporarily return to Illinois. Eight months later Derek filed a Hague Convention petition in Illinois. The district court ordered the child returned to Ireland. The Seventh Circuit reversed. The district court incorrectly treated the parents’ last shared intent as a test for determining habitual residence. Under the Hague Convention, that determination is a practical, flexible, factual inquiry. When Mary moved with the baby to Illinois she was his sole legal custodian and removal was not wrongful under the Convention. By the time of the alleged wrongful “retention,” his life was too firmly rooted in Illinois to consider Ireland his home.View "Redmond v. Redmond" on Justia Law

The government appealed the district court's order which altered the terms of a bond the Coast Guard had fixed for the release of a detained ship that was under investigation and restricted the types of penalties the government could seek for the ship's potential violations of certain ocean pollution prevention statutes. The ship at issue, the Pappadakis, an ocean-going bulk cargo carrier carrying a shipment of coal to Brazil, was detained by the Coast Guard because the vessel had likely been discharging bilge water overboard. The court reversed and remanded for dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) where the matter was not subject to review in the district court because the Coast Guard's actions were committed to agency discretion by law. Consequently, the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider the petition.View "Angelex Ltd. v. United States" on Justia Law

Petitioner filed a complaint with OSHA, asserting that Saybolt and Core Labs had violated Section 806 of the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act of 2002, Title VIII of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 18 U.S.C. 1514A(a), by retaliating against him for blowing the whistle on an alleged scheme to violate Colombian tax law. OSHA, an ALJ, and the Board all rejected petitioner's complaint. The court concluded that petitioner did not demonstrate that he engaged in protected conduct because he did not complain, based on a reasonable belief, that one of six enumerated categories of U.S. law had been violated. Petitioner had not demonstrated that he engaged in any protected activity, and given this, the court could not say that Core Labs knew that petitioner engaged in a protected activity that was a contributing factor in the unfavorable actions of withholding petitioner's pay raise and ultimately terminating him. Accordingly, the court affirmed the Board's dismissal of petitioner's complaint because he had not demonstrated that his claim fell within the scope of section 806. View "Villanueva v. U.S. Dept. of Labor" on Justia Law

Solvay’s 817 patent claims an improvement to a method of making a hydrofluorocarbon (HFC-245fa), which does not deplete the ozone layer as legislatively mandated to replace ozone-depleting alternatives. HFC-245fa is especially useful in preparing polymeric materials used for insulation in refrigeration and heat systems. The patent has a 1995 priority date. In 1994, Honeywell and RSCAC entered into a contract, under which RSCAC engineers, in Russia, studied commercial production of HFC-245fa. RSCAC sent Honeywell a report documenting a continuous process capable of producing high yields of HFC-245fa. Honeywell used the report to run the same process in the U.S., before the 817 patent’s priority date. Solvay sued Honeywell, alleging infringement. Honeywell argued that the Russian inventors made the invention in this country by sending instructions to Honeywell personnel who reduced the invention to practice in the U.S. The district court held that the RSCAC engineers should be treated as inventors who made the invention in the U.S. under 35 U.S.C. 102(g)(2), that RSCAC disclosed claim1 in a 1994 Russian patent application such that they did not abandon, suppress, or conceal it. The Federal Circuit affirmed judgment for Honeywell. It is not required that the inventor be the one to reduce the invention to practice if reduction to practice was done on his behalf in the U.S., so Honeywell’s invention qualified as prior art.View "Solvay, S.A. v. Honeywell Int'l, Inc." on Justia Law

The client was the target of a grand jury investigation into alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The grand jury served a subpoena on the client’s former attorney and the government moved to enforce this subpoena and compel testimony, under the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. The client sought to quash the subpoena by asserting the attorney-client privilege and work product protection. After questioning the attorney in camera, the district court found that the crime-fraud exception applied and compelled testimony. The Third Circuit affirmed, holding that the district court applied the correct standard in determining whether to conduct an in camera examination of a witness, requiring a showing of a factual basis adequate to support a good faith belief by a reasonable person that in camera review of the materials may reveal evidence to establish the claim that the crime-fraud exception applies. The court did not abuse its discretion in applying that standard, in determining procedures for the examination, or in ultimately finding that the crime-fraud exception applied. View "In Re: Grand Jury Subpoena" on Justia Law

The Bank filed this interpleader action to determine ownership of funds held on deposit in an account in the name of the Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement (FDSP), an entity organized under the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The account was frozen pursuant to an executive order during the Bosnian War. Yugoimport, a Serbian entity, claimed full ownership of the funds as successor-in-interest to the FDSP. The Republics of Croatia and Slovenia contend that the funds should be divided among the states succeeding the SFRY under a multilateral treaty, the Succession Agreement. The court held that interpretation of the Succession Agreement was governed by the Vienna Convention and that the FSPA was an agency of the SFRY. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Republics. View "Yugoimport v. Republic of Croatia, Republic of Slovenia" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against his former business associates, alleging that they directed a paramilitary unit of the Bangladeshi national police to detain and torture him in order to force him to turn over his ownership interest in a telecommunications company. Defendants were found liable for violations under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), 28 U.S.C. 1350, and the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106 Stat. 73, note following 28 U.S.C. 1350. The court held that the conduct giving rise to this action occurred within the territory of another sovereign and, therefore, under Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Co., could not form the basis of an action under the ATS; the general verdict rule did not require that the judgment against defendants be vacated with respect to plaintiff's claim under the TVPA because the jury necessarily found Defendant Khan liable under that statute in returning a general verdict in favor of plaintiff; plaintiff's claim under the TVPA was based on actionable torture, and permissibly predicated on agency theories of liability; and the district court did not err in allowing plaintiff to testify regarding certain statements made to him by foreign police agents, who were agents or coconspirators. Accordingly, the court reversed in part and affirmed in part, remanding for further proceedings. View "Chowdhury v. Worldtel Bangladesh Holding, Ltd." on Justia Law

EnOcean owns a patent application that claims a self-powered switch, which can be used to turn on and off lights, appliances, and other devices without a battery or connection to an electrical outlet. The named inventors originally filed a patent application disclosing the switch in Germany in 2000; in 2001 they filed a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international application with a similar disclosure. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences declared an interference in 2010 between EnOcean and Face, the real party of interest in a U.S. Patent that also claims a self-powered switch. The Board found the Face claims were unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103 based on prior art. Face did not appeal. The Board then applied a presumption that EnOcean’s claims were unpatentable for the same reasons. EnOcean’s argument for rebutting the presumption required determination that EnOcean’s claims could benefit from the filing dates of its German and PCT applications, eliminating a reference from prior art. The Board accorded no benefit of priority to the claims and found all of EnOcean’s claims unpatentable under section 103. The Federal Circuit vacated in part, finding that the Board erred in treating certain EnOcean claims as means-plus-function claims and in finding that certain EnOcean claim limitations lack support in its priority German and PCT applications.View "EnOcean GmbH v. Face Int'l Corp." on Justia Law

A number of suits have challenged the accuracy of the warning label on Pradaxa, a prescription blood-thinning drug manufactured by Boehringer. The litigation is in the discovery stage. The district judge presiding over the litigation imposed sanctions on Boehringer for discovery abuse. Boehringer sought a writ of mandamus quashing the sanctions, which included fines, totaling almost $1 million and also ordered that plaintiffs’ depositions of 13 Boehringer employees, all of whom work in Germany be conducted at “a place convenient to the [plaintiffs] and [to] the defendants’ [Boehringer’s] United States counsel,” presumably in the United States. The parties had previously agreed to Amsterdam as the location. The Seventh Circuit rescinded the order with respect to the depositions but otherwise denied mandamus. View "Boehringer Ingelheim Pharm. v. Herndon" on Justia Law