Williams & Connolly: Appellate

Representative Supreme Court and Appellate Matters

Smith v. Cain, S. Ct. No. 10-8145 (Jan. 10, 2012) - Whether the prosecution violated the defendant’s right to due process by failing to disclose favorable statements made by several eyewitnesses before trial.
Merck v. Reynolds, 130 S. Ct. 1784 (2010) - What a plaintiff must know in order to trigger the running of the statute of limitations for federal securities-fraud claims.
Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 556 U.S. 163 (2009) - Whether a state court validly enjoined the State of Hawaii from selling public lands held in trust for Native Hawaiians.
Rick v. Wyeth, 662 F.3d 1067 (8th Cir. 2011) - Whether a state court’s prior grant of summary judgment dismissing a plaintiff’s claims under the law of that state as time-barred precluded the assertion of the same claims in federal diversity actions.
Diaz v. Palakovich, 2011 WL 4867549 (3d Cir. Oct. 14, 2011) - Whether the district court erred by granting summary judgment on an inmate’s claim that the defendants had opened legal mail outside of the inmate's presence.
Fidelity Warranty Services v. Firstate Insurance Holdings, ___ So. 3d ___ (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. Oct. 5, 2011) - Whether a jury verdict for tortious interference and defamation could stand where damages were based on speculative testimony of the business’s owner and where the alleged defamatory statement constituted pure opinion.
Mamani v. Berzain, 654 F.3d 1148 (11th Cir. 2011) - Whether the plaintiffs alleged valid claims against the former president of Bolivia under the Alien Tort Statute.
United States v. Ferguson, 653 F.3d 61 (2d Cir. 2011) - Whether the defendants’ convictions for securities fraud should be vacated because the district court improperly admitted evidence concerning stock-price data and improperly instructed the jury on causation.
Central Mortgage Co. v. Morgan Stanley Mortgage Capital Holdings, 27 A.3d 531 (Del. 2011) - Whether the plaintiff sufficiently alleged breach-of-contract and other claims arising from the defendant’s failure to repurchase securitized loans.
Hologic v. SenoRx, 639 F.3d 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2011) - Whether it is proper to import a limitation into a patent claim that is contained in other claims but not the claim at issue, based on embodiments in the specification.
United States v. Ford, 639 F.3d 718 (6th Cir. 2011) - Whether the failure to disclose financial interests related to the functions of state government satisfied the jurisdictional requirement of the federal false-statements statute.
Huffington v. T.C. Group, 637 F.3d 18 (1st Cir. 2011) - Whether a forum-selection clause in the parties’ agreement was enforceable and covered the claims at issue.
Scott v. Roberts, 612 F.3d 1279 (11th Cir. 2010) - Whether a provision of Florida’s campaign-finance laws that provided subsidies to opponents of self-financed candidates violated the First Amendment.
Rocky Mountain Christian Church v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, 613 F.3d 1229 (10th Cir. 2010) - Whether a county commission’s denial of a church’s special-use application violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).
Pacific Investment Management Co. v. RH Capital Associates, 603 F.3d 144 (2d Cir. 2010) - Whether a law firm can be held liable in a private securities-fraud action based on statements that were not attributed to the firm.
In re Sprint Nextel Corp., 593 F.3d 669 (7th Cir. 2010) - What a plaintiff must show in order to invoke the “home-state exception” to federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act.
Saleh v. Titan Corp., 580 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009) - Whether a government contractor may be liable for the alleged torts of its employees committed while they were working under the control of the military in Iraq.
Dreiling v. AOL, 578 F.3d 995 (9th Cir. 2009) - Whether a company may be liable for short-swing trading of the shares of another company under Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, on the theory that it is deemed to be the beneficial owner of the shares of the company’s chief executive officer, absent evidence that they engaged in coordinated purchases or sales.
Little v. KPMG, 575 F.3d 533 (5th Cir. 2009) - Whether competitors of an accounting firm had standing to challenge the firm’s alleged failure to obtain a valid license.
University of Pittsburgh v. Hedrick, 573 F.3d 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2009) - Whether researchers completed conception of the claimed invention before other named inventors contributed their efforts.
In re Fannie Mae Securities Litigation, 552 F.3d 814 (D.C. Cir. 2009) - Whether federal agency was correctly held in contempt for failing to comply with the deadline in a stipulated discovery order for records collected in its investigation of the Federal National Mortgage Association.
United States v. Tobin, 552 F.3d 29 (1st Cir. 2009) - Whether a judgment of acquittal was proper on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to establish the intent to harass necessary for a conviction under federal telephone-harassment statute.