Petitions of the week
on Apr 5, 2019 at 11:09 am
This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, the ability of a court to exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant when the defendant knew its conduct would have in-state effects but the conduct occurred outside the state, the possibility of the Federal Aviation Act’s pre-empting state-law design-defect claims, and whether the Portal-to-Portal Act modified the definition of “work” in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The petitions of the week are:
Issue: Whether the Federal Aviation Act pre-empts state-law design-defect claims.
Issues: (1) Whether the Portal-to-Portal Act modified the Fair Labor Standards Act’s broad, pre-1947 definition of “work”; and (2) whether the FLSA’s definition of “work” requires exertion beyond the minimal effort involved in passing through a security screening.
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred by holding that marks of religious organizations, like “The Universal Church” and “Universal Church,” may be generic as a matter of law regardless of evidence that the relevant public does not primarily understand them as generic.
Issues: (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in conflict with Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. and RJR Nabisco Inc. v. European Community, correctly concluded that holding Teck liable for its discharges in Canada was not an impermissible extraterritorial application of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act; (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit—in conflict with the Supreme Court’s decision in Walden v. Fiore, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 5th and 7th Circuits—correctly held that a state may exercise specific personal jurisdiction over a defendant because the defendant knew its conduct would have in-state effects, when the defendant’s relevant conduct occurred elsewhere; and (3) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit—in conflict with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, and in tension with the opinions of the Supreme Court and several other circuits—correctly held that a defendant can be an “arranger” under CERCLA even if the defendant did not arrange for anyone else to dispose of or treat the waste.
