An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers." A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court.
Forum shopping is a colloquial term for the practice of litigants having their legal case heard in the court thought most likely to provide a favorable judgment. Some jurisdictions have, for example, become known as "plaintiff-friendly" and so have attracted litigation even when there is little or no connection between the legal issues and the jurisdiction in which they are to be litigated.
Forum non conveniens (FNC) is a mostly common law legal doctrine through which a court acknowledges that another forum or court where the case might have been brought is a more appropriate venue for a legal case, and transfers the case to such a forum. A change of venue might be ordered, for example, to transfer a case to a jurisdiction within which an accident or incident underlying the litigation occurred and where all the witnesses reside.
In United States law, inherent powers are the powers that a state officer or entity purports to hold under a general vesting of authority, even though they are neither enumerated nor implied.
The Rooker–Feldman doctrine is a doctrine of civil procedure enunciated by the United States Supreme Court in two cases, Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923) and District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983). The doctrine holds that lower United States federal courts—i.e., federal courts other than the Supreme Court—should not sit in direct review of state court decisions unless Congress has specifically authorized such relief. In short, federal courts below the Supreme Court must not become a court of appeals for state court decisions. The state court appellant has to find a state court remedy, or obtain relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.
A forum selection clause in a contract with a conflict of laws element allows the parties to agree that any disputes relating to that contract will be resolved in a specific forum. They usually operate in conjunction with a choice of law clause which determines the proper law of the relevant contract.
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to which the United States is a party. It thus extends the jurisdiction of United States courts to tortious acts committed around the world. The case was decided by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit consisting of judges Wilfred Feinberg, Irving Kaufman, and Amalya Lyle Kearse.
Ligue contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme et Union des étudiants juifs de France c. Yahoo! Inc. et Société Yahoo! France is a French court case decided by the Tribunal de grande instance of Paris in 2000. The case concerned the sale of memorabilia from the Nazi period by Internet auction and the application of national laws to the Internet. Some observers have claimed that the judgement creates a universal competence for French courts to decide Internet cases.
Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544 U.S. 280 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and its relation to preclusion and concurrent jurisdiction.
Amchem Products Inc v British Columbia (Workers' Compensation Board), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 897 is a leading decision on forum non conveniens by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court overturned an anti-suit injunction issued by the British Columbia Supreme Court against the courts in Texas on the basis that the British Columbia (BC) court was not necessarily the better forum for the case.
Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Thompson, 478 U.S. 804 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court decision involving the original jurisdiction of the federal district courts under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
The Kano trovafloxacin trial litigation arose out of a clinical trial conducted by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in 1996 in Kano, Nigeria, during an epidemic of meningococcal meningitis. To test its new antibiotic, trovafloxacin (Trovan), Pfizer gave 100 children trovafloxacin, while another 100 received the gold-standard anti-meningitis treatment, ceftriaxone, a cephalosporin antibiotic. Pfizer gave the children a substantially reduced dose of the ceftriaxone relative to that described on the US FDA-approved prescribing information. The allegation is that this was done to skew the test in favor of its own drug. Pfizer claimed that the dose used was sufficient even though a clinical trial performed by Médecins Sans Frontières recommends a dose of 50–100 mg/kg.
Piper Aircraft Co. v. Reyno, 454 U.S. 235 (1981), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which the court considered the lower court's application of its power of forum non conveniens, a common law legal doctrine whereby courts may refuse to take jurisdiction over matters where there is a more appropriate forum available to the parties.
Schillinger v. United States, 155 U.S. 163 (1894), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, holding that a suit for patent infringement cannot be entertained against the United States, because patent infringement is a tort and the United States has not waived sovereign immunity for intentional torts.
Facebook, Inc. v. StudiVZ Ltd. was a federal lawsuit filed on July 18, 2008, by Facebook, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against StudiVZ Ltd., a UK company with its principal place of business in Germany. StudiVZ had launched a website which was alleged to be visually and functionally similar to Facebook's site. Facebook filed a similar lawsuit the same day in the German regional court of Stuttgart and an additional related lawsuit on November 19, 2008, in the German regional court of Cologne. In May 2009 the District Court in California issued an order indicating its view that Germany was the more appropriate forum for the dispute, but withheld issuing a final order on the question until further review of the issues of personal jurisdiction could be addressed. The parties subsequently settled the California case, but continued the litigation in Germany in which the regional court of Cologne held that StudiVZ did not violate any intellectual property rights held by Facebook.
American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, 564 U.S. 410 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–0 decision, held that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under federal common law, primarily because the Clean Air Act (CAA) delegates the management of carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Brought to court in July 2004 in the Southern District of New York, this was the first global warming case based on a public nuisance claim.
The Anti-Injunction Act, is a United States federal statute that restricts a federal court's authority to issue an injunction against ongoing state court proceedings, subject to three enumerated exceptions. It states:
Atlantic Marine Construction Co., Inc. v. United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, 571 U.S. 49 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court decision dealing with the enforcement of forum selection clauses.
Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v Lee Kui Jak[1987] UKPC 12, [1987] AC 871 is a judicial decision of Privy Council on appeal from Brunei which was for many years, and arguably still is, the leading authority in relation to anti-suit injunctions under the English common law.
Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, 595 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case brought by Texas abortion providers and abortion rights advocates that challenged the constitutionality of the Texas Heartbeat Act, a law that outlaws abortions after six weeks. The Texas Heartbeat Act prohibits state officials from enforcing the ban but authorizes private individuals to enforce the law by suing anyone who performs, aids, or abets an abortion after six weeks. The law was structured this way to evade pre-enforcement judicial review because lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state statutes are typically brought against state officials who are charged with enforcing the law, as the state itself cannot be sued under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
