This case concerns a constitutional challenge by Amnesty International USA and other advocacy groups, attorneys, and journalists to the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which expanded government authority to conduct surveillance of overseas communications without individualized warrants. A Second Circuit panel held that the plaintiffs had Article III standing, based on evidence that they had incurred costs to protect the confidentiality of their communications with foreign contacts who might be targeted. After the defendants sought rehearing en banc, the active members of the court conducted a poll and, finding no majority in favor, denied the petition, leaving the panel decision intact. Concurring and dissenting opinions debated whether the panel’s standing analysis was fact-specific and consistent with precedent or instead represented an unwarranted expansion of standing doctrine in a matter of exceptional importance.
The case involves David Krasner suing his former employer HSH Nordbank AG and supervisor Roland Kiser for sexual discrimination and retaliation under Title VII and related state and city human rights laws, as well as state claims for breach of implied employment contract and withholding of a bonus. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss all claims for failure to state a claim. The core reasoning was that the alleged favoritism toward a paramour reflected consensual relationships similar to nepotism rather than discrimination on the basis of gender, the single strip club incident was not severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment, the plaintiff's internal complaints did not constitute protected activity under Title VII, and the contract and related claims were insufficiently supported.
In Shah v. Kuwait Airways Corp., a pro se plaintiff sued the airline for theft of valuables from her luggage during an international flight from India to New York via Kuwait, claiming $25,000 in damages after her carry-on bag was checked against her wishes. The airline moved for partial summary judgment to cap liability at $460 under the Warsaw Convention's limits for checked baggage on international routes. The court granted the motion, holding that the Convention's liability caps applied to the checked bag despite the plaintiff's intent to carry it on and her allegations of a broader airline practice of theft, as the treaty governs such claims without exception for those circumstances. However, the court noted unresolved factual questions about whether the Warsaw or Montreal Convention's limits controlled and denied full summary judgment on that point.
The case concerns claims brought by the trustee of a Refco-related trust on behalf of foreign-exchange customers who allegedly lost over $500 million when Refco insiders misappropriated customer assets at Refco Capital Markets to support a broader fraud involving concealed debt and round-trip loans. The trustee asserted New York state-law claims including breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, conversion, and aiding and abetting against accounting firms and law firms that advised Refco. The court granted the professional defendants' motions to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), finding that the aiding-and-abetting claims failed to plead actual knowledge or substantial assistance with particularity, that no fiduciary duty ran from the professionals to the customers, and that the conversion claim did not meet the elements of wrongful taking under New York law.
This SEC enforcement action alleged that Universal Express, its officers, and associated resellers disseminated false information to investors to facilitate the illegal unregistered distribution of hundreds of millions of shares of company stock in violation of federal securities registration and antifraud provisions. After the court granted summary judgment against some defendants and Neuhaus and Sandhu entered bifurcated consent agreements acknowledging liability without admitting or denying the allegations, the SEC moved for disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against the two resellers. The court ordered Neuhaus to pay $14,221,508 (comprising $9,786,589 disgorgement, $3,434,919 interest, and $1,000,000 penalty) and Sandhu to pay $6,036,117 (comprising $4,064,058 disgorgement, $1,472,059 interest, and $500,000 penalty), calculating the amounts based on the complaint allegations deemed true under the consent agreements, evidence of ill-gotten gains from stock sales, and statutory factors for penalties.
This case centers on SimplexGrinnell LP's claims that Integrated Systems & Power, Inc. infringed its copyrights in fire alarm system panel programming software by using the programs without authorization beyond a limited license from a bankruptcy stipulation. After a bench trial, the court granted a partial permanent injunction against infringement but restricted it to the four registered versions of the software, citing lack of jurisdiction over unregistered derivative works under the Copyright Act. On SimplexGrinnell's motion for reconsideration, which argued that version registrations covered entire revisions or that shared code made unregistered versions actionable, the court denied the request in substantial part due to insufficient factual evidence while amending its prior conclusion to state that each version may constitute a separate derivative work.
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