Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/supreme-court-cases/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 17:05:50+00:00

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This case concerns the requirements applicable to a particular method of serving civil process on a foreign state. Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), a foreign state may be served by means of a mailing that is “addressed and dispatched . . . to the head of the ministry of foreign affairs of the foreign state concerned.” 28 U. S. C. §1608(a)(3). The question now before us is whether this provision is satisfied when a service packet that names the foreign minister is mailed to the foreign state’s embassy in the United States. We hold that it is not. Most naturally read, §1608(a)(3) requires that a mailing be sent directly to the foreign minister’s office in the minister’s home country.
Now on the Courts Law section of JOTWELL is my essay, When American Pipe Met Erie. I review a recent article by Steve Burbank and Tobias Wolff, Class Actions, Statutes of Limitations and Repose, and Federal Common Law, 167 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (2018).
Today the Supreme Court issued its decision in Frank v. Gaos (covered earlier here). The Court had initially granted certiorari to decide “[w]hether, or in what circumstances, a cy pres award of class action proceeds that provides no direct relief to class members supports class certification and comports with the requirement that a settlement binding class members must be ‘fair, reasonable, and adequate.’” Following oral argument, however, the Court ordered supplemental briefing on whether any plaintiff had Article III standing under the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Spokeo v. Robins.
After reviewing the supplemental briefs, we conclude that the case should be remanded for the courts below to address the plaintiffs’ standing in light of Spokeo. The supplemental briefs filed in response to our order raise a wide variety of legal and factual issues not addressed in the merits briefing before us or at oral argument. We “are a court of review, not of first view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). Resolution of the standing question should take place in the District Court or the Ninth Circuit in the first instance. We therefore vacate and remand for further proceedings. Nothing in our opinion should be interpreted as expressing a view on any particular resolution of the standing question.
You can find all the details – and register for the symposium (it’s free) – here. Come join us!
An esteemed group of experts, including the lawyers who argued both sides of the Iqbal case, and leading legal scholars, will examine the decision’s influence on both procedural and substantive law. The conference will examine pleading doctrine, pleading practice, approaches to federal rulemaking and substantive areas of law including national security and civil rights.
The symposium keynote will be given by Arthur R. Miller, Professor at NYU Law, former Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard Law, and the nation's leading scholar in the field of civil procedure.
In this Article we develop a comprehensive theoretical and doctrinal framework for the American Pipe doctrine. Building on earlier work, we demonstrate that American Pipe tolling is a federal common-law rule that aims to carry into effect the provisions and policies of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, the federal class action device. Contrary to the Court’s assertion in CalPERS, American Pipe is not an “equitable tolling doctrine.” Neither is it the product of a direct mandate in Rule 23, which is the source of authority, not the source of the rule. Having clarified the status of American Pipe tolling as federal common law, we explain the basis on which the doctrine operates across jurisdictions, binding subsequent actions in both federal and state court. We argue that the doctrine applies whether the initial action in federal court was based on a federal or state cause of action—a question that has produced disagreement among the lower federal courts. And we situate American Pipe within the framework of the Court’s Erie jurisprudence, explaining how the doctrine should operate when the putative class action was in federal court based on diversity jurisdiction and the courts of the state in which it was filed would apply a different rule. Finally, we discuss how CalPERS should have been decided if the Court had recognized the true nature of the American Pipe rule and if it had engaged the legislative history of the Securities Act rather than relying on labels.
Today the Supreme Court issued an 8-0 decision in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira. Justice Gorsuch authors the opinion (Justice Kavanaugh did not participate).
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., requires plaintiffs to exhaust claims of employment discrimination with the EEOC before filing suit in federal court. Id. § 2000e-5(b), (f)(1).
The question presented is: Whether Title VII’s administrative exhaustion requirement is a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit, as three Circuits have held, or a waivable claim-processing rule, as eight Circuits have held.
Today’s SCOTUS Decision on Arbitration: Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc.
Under the Federal Arbitration Act, parties to a contract may agree that an arbitrator rather than a court will resolve disputes arising out of the contract. When a dispute arises, the parties sometimes may disagree not only about the merits of the dispute but also about the threshold arbitrability question—that is, whether their arbitration agreement applies to the particular dispute. Who decides that threshold arbitrability question? Under the Act and this Court’s cases, the question of who decides arbitrability is itself a question of contract. The Act allows parties to agree by contract that an arbitrator, rather than a court, will resolve threshold arbitrability questions as well as underlying merits disputes. Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U. S. 63, 68−70 (2010); First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U. S. 938, 943−944 (1995).
Even when a contract delegates the arbitrability question to an arbitrator, some federal courts nonetheless will short-circuit the process and decide the arbitrability question themselves if the argument that the arbitration agreement applies to the particular dispute is “wholly groundless.” The question presented in this case is whether the “wholly groundless” exception is consistent with the Federal Arbitration Act. We conclude that it is not. The Act does not contain a “wholly groundless” exception, and we are not at liberty to rewrite the statute passed by Congress and signed by the President. When the parties’ contract delegates the arbitrability question to an arbitrator, the courts must respect the parties’ decision as embodied in the contract.
This Essay exposes connections between two controversial cases that unsettled two ostensibly distinct areas of constitutional law. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair held that the Commerce Clause permits enforcement of sales taxes against online retailers with no physical presence in the taxing state. In contrast, the Court’s 2011 decision in J. McIntyre Machinery v. Nicastro held that the Due Process Clause prevents states from exercising personal jurisdiction over nonresident manufacturers who did not target the forum. Wayfair and Nicastro address conceptually similar questions about extraterritorial enforcement of state law yet rely on inconsistent assumptions. A close reading of Wayfair illuminates normative and practical insights that warrant narrowing or overruling Nicastro. More generally, this Essay highlights how situating doctrinal problems in the broader context of horizontal federalism can improve constitutional analysis.
One might assume that the issue in question was a complex constitutional provision, or a dense, technical federal code section. Far from it. The sole issue in Artis was the interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1367(d), an obscure tolling provision dealing with the time period allowed for plaintiffs who filed their claims in federal court and were dismissed to refile their claims in state court.
The petition for a writ of mandamus is treated as a petition for a writ of certiorari. The petition for certiorari is granted. Petitioners' brief on the merits is to be filed on or before Monday, December 17, 2018. Respondents' brief on the merits is to be filed on or before Thursday, January 17, 2019. The reply brief is to be filed on or before Monday, February 4, 2019. The case is set for oral argument on Tuesday, February 19, 2019.
Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq., a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker—including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking Executive Branch officials—when there is no evidence that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
You can find all the briefing—and follow the merits briefs as they come in—at SCOTUSblog and at the Supreme Court website.
There’s been a flurry of recent Supreme Court activity involving Juliana v. United States, a case pending in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon (covered earlier here and here). Twenty-one young plaintiffs are suing the federal government alleging that it has contributed to climate change in violation of the their constitutional rights.
On October 18, the Solicitor General applied for a stay of discovery and trial. The Supreme Court granted the stay on October 19, “pending receipt of a response, due on or before Wednesday, October 24, 2018, by 3 p.m., and further order of the undersigned or of the Court.” The plaintiffs filed their response on October 22, and the Solicitor General file a reply on October 24.
At this point, there’s been no further ruling from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court proceedings are captioned In re United States and the docket is here.
This action was commenced when Citibank, N.A. filed a routine state-court collection action against respondent George W. Jackson. Petitioner Home Depot U. S. A., Inc. was not a party to that action and never became a party to that collection dispute. Jackson then filed a counterclaim against Citibank asserting class-action consumer-protection claims. In addition to naming Citibank, Jackson named Home Depot and another company as original defendant to that counterclaim class action. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-2, 119 Stat. 4, permits "any defendant in a state-court class action to remove the action to federal court if it satisfies certain jurisdictional requirements. Petitioner Home Depot is an original defendant in the class action at issue here and was never a plaintiff in any claim associated with this case.
The question presented is: Whether an original defendant to a class-action claim can remove the class action if it otherwise satisfies the jurisdictional requirements of the Class Action Fairness Act when the class action was originally asserted as a counterclaim against a co-defendant.
Should this court’s holding in Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets, 313 U.S. 100 (1941)—that an original plaintiff may not remove a counterclaim against it—extend to third-party counterclaim defendants?
This is the case’s third trip to the Supreme Court.
You can follow the merits briefs as they come in at SCOTUSblog and at the Supreme Court’s website.
Whether the Second Circuit erred by holding — in direct conflict with the D.C., Fifth, and Seventh Circuits and in the face of an amicus brief from the United States — that plaintiffs suing a foreign state under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act may serve the foreign state under 28 U.S.C § 1608(a)(3) by mail addressed and dispatched to the head of the foreign state’s ministry of foreign affairs “via” or in “care of” the foreign state’s diplomatic mission in the United States, despite U.S. obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to preserve mission inviolability.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) establishes a fourteen-day deadline to file a petition for permission to appeal an order granting or denying class-action certification. On numerous occasions, this Court left undecided whether mandatory claim-processing rules, like Rule 23(f), are subject to equitable exceptions, because the issue was not raised below. See, e.g., Hamer v. Neighborhood Hous. Serv. of Chicago, 138 S. Ct. 13, 18 n.3, 22 (2017). That obstacle is not present here. The question presented is: did the Ninth Circuit err by holding that equitable exceptions apply to mandatory claim-processing rules and excusing a party’s failure to timely file a petition for permission to appeal, or a motion for reconsideration, within the Rule 23(f) deadline? As the Ninth Circuit acknowledged below, its decision conflicts with other United States Circuit Courts of Appeals that have considered this issue (the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits).
The question presented is: did the Ninth Circuit err by holding that equitable exceptions apply to mandatory claim-processing rules and excusing a party’s failure to timely file a petition for permission to appeal, or a motion for reconsideration, within the Rule 23(f) deadline?
This case concerns the tolling rule first stated in American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538 (1974). The Court held in American Pipe that the timely filing of a class action tolls the applicable statute of limitations for all persons encompassed by the class complaint. Where class-action status has been denied, the Court further ruled, members of the failed class could timely intervene as individual plaintiffs in the still-pending action, shorn of its class character. See id., at 544, 552–553. Later, in Crown, Cork & Seal Co. v. Parker, 462 U. S. 345 (1983), the Court clarified American Pipe’s tolling rule: The rule is not dependent on intervening in or joining an existing suit; it applies as well to putative class members who, after denial of class certification, “prefer to bring an individual suit rather than intervene . . . once the economies of a class action [are] no longer available.” 462 U. S., at 350, 353–354 * * * .
The question presented in the case now before us: Upon denial of class certification, may a putative class member, in lieu of promptly joining an existing suit or promptly filing an individual action, commence a class action anew beyond the time allowed by the applicable statute of limi­tations? Our answer is no. American Pipe tolls the stat­ute of limitations during the pendency of a putative class action, allowing unnamed class members to join the action individually or file individual claims if the class fails. But American Pipe does not permit the maintenance of a follow-on class action past expiration of the statute of limitations.
The watchwords of American Pipe are efficiency and economy of litigation, a principal purpose of Rule 23 as well. Extending American Pipe tolling to successive class actions does not serve that purpose. The contrary rule, allowing no tolling for out-of-time class actions, will propel putative class representatives to file suit well within the limitation period and seek certification promptly. For all the above-stated reasons, it is the rule we adopt today: Time to file a class action falls outside the bounds of Amer­ican Pipe.
I agree with the Court that in cases governed by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA),15 U. S. C. §78u–4, like this one, a plaintiff who seeks to bring a successive class action may not rely on the tolling rule established by American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538 (1974). I cannot, however, join the majority in going further by holding that the same is true for class actions not subject to the PSLRA.

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