Another term of the U.S. Supreme Court has come and gone and, as is usually the case, I will say something about it in this blog. This is the first of four posts devoted to that end. I'm not going to have anything to say about the abortion case that came down on the final day of the term. It is politically consequential, but there isn't a lot to be said about it from a legal point of view except that it is a re-affirmation of what has been the law since Casey . And I've just said that. I'm also not going to discuss the public corruption case the Court decided on the last day of its session, effectively granting Robert McDonnell a new trial. It does involve an intellectually interesting issue of statutory interpretation, and it may be said to involve a deserved rebuke to prosecutorial overreach, but I find the blatancy of the cronyism involved there too depressing, wish to avoid slitting my wrists today. What's left? A heck of a lot. I'll start in a way t...
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On April 3, plaintiffs withdrew a lawsuit against Google in a federal court in northern California, a lawsuit in which they had contended that Google was illegally tying its licensing of the Android operating system to the favorable treatment of Google apps. They didn't withdraw their complaint because they had a change of heart. They did so because an earlier ruling by this court had pulled their ladder out from under them. It was jump to the ground or take a nasty fall. Here's a link to a news story on the subject. What is striking about this lawsuit is how much it resembles similar lawsuits brought against Microsoft back when it was the great digital boogeyman. Then, too, the central argument was a tying theory. [Sometimes that is written "tie-in." Fortunately, the two phrases sound the same, so when people speak to one another about these matters, there's no real chance for confusion. One creates a tie-in by tying one product or service to another, ...
Argentina isn't having any luck at all in the U.S. courts of late. On June 17th, the Supreme Court upheld a discovery order, that will make life easier for holdout bondholder NML as it searches the world for attachable Argentine assets. The money quote is as follows: “The prospect that NML’s general request for information about Argentina’s worldwide assets may turn up information about property that Argentina regards as immune does not mean that NML cannot pursue discovery of it.” Meanwhile, the court denied review of two other cases that went to the issue of interpreting the language of the issuing documents, the pari passu clause. Here is coverage from the fine folks at SCOTUSblog . The gist of it is that the New York district court, which has been working very hard to make it impossible for Argentina to distribute money with any assistance from US based financial institutions unless the holdout creditors share in those disbursements, has gotten its way. ...
Indian tribes have a monopoly on running casinos in the State of Connecticut. The following comes from memory: I'm way too lazy to look it up. Anyway, the monopoly came about several years ago [;ate 1980s?], and almost accidentally. The state legislature passed a bill that was designed to give non-profit organizations the opportunity to use "Vegas nights" as a fund-raising ploy. The bill was universally understood as referring to transitory activities, not a permanent year-round activity. But after that bill became law, a federal judge interpreted it -- apparently in conjunction with a federal statute -- as giving the tribes a right to open year-round casinos, so long as the casinos didn't include slot machines (the one game of chance that hadn't been included in the original state law). The Mashantucket Pequots (whose tribal symbol is shown above) created their no-slots casino at once. It was Foxwoods, a reference to said tribal iconology: and a big hit:...