We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

The last week brought losses for antitrust enforcers (“Apple’s concerns over app security” and “Laches and Trinko kill”), for a man who sued to get “co-inventor” status (“Adding option to patent”), for distributors invoking franchise-law protections (“State franchise statute didn’t apply”), for plaintiffs wishing to toll limitations under an 1841 statute (“Defendant’s ‘absence from state”), for some contract deadline enforcers (“Time ‘from’ or ‘after'”), and for some avoiders of collateral estoppel (“Ruling on question of issue preclusion”).

Have a terrific week–Commercial Roundup will see you again next Wednesday morning.

Barry Barnett

Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – May 3, 2023
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

Commercial Roundup offers a double feature this week–two weeks in one.

We lead off with a memory (“The biggest surprise?”), proceed through a slew of IP rulings, pause on my colleagues’ big win against Fox News (“All it took”), note the Supreme Court has cleared the way for constitutional attacks on the SEC and FTC (“How about now?”) and the Fifth Circuit almost immediately expedited one such attack (“Fifth Circuit looks anxious”), and highlight rulings on choice of law clauses and class certification before ending on a high note (“Need a lift”).

Have a terrific rest of the week.

Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – April 27, 2023
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.



Welcome to this week’s Commercial Roundup—in which you’ll find links to the most significant rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the 13 Courts of Appeals plus the highest courts in Delaware, New York, and Texas. You’ll also see other matters of interest to commercial trial lawyers and the firms and business people they represent.

This week a couple of Latin phrases we learned in the first year of law school headline the list. The first—res ipsa loquitur—means something like “the thing (res) speaks (loquitur) for itself (ipsa)” and provides a shortcut for a party wishing to prove a claim of negligence. The other Latin phrase—forum non conveniens—suggests the plaintiff brought a case in a place (forum) whose remoteness to the parties, witnesses, and sources of proof and lack of expertise in governing law (among other factors) render it sufficiently inconvenient (non conveniens) as to justify dismissing the case in favor of, or transferring it to, a much more convenient forum.

We also have an important First Circuit ruling on a pair of issues that arise often in efforts to enforce arbitration clauses and confirm awards, a “tacking” question regarding priority of trademarks, and decisions on when limitations starts to run in securities fraud cases, insurance coverage for COVID-19 losses, damages remedy for fraudulent transfer, and when prior art “anticipates” a claim limitation without mentioning it.

So here we go—Commercial Roundup for the week of April 5-12.

Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – April 12, 2023
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

This week’s Commercial Roundup follows three days of all antitrust, all the time at the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s annual Spring Meeting in our nation’s capital. More than 3,700 government enforcers, private lawyers, judges, economists, econometricians, academics, students, and others assembled to talk about the recent past and future of antitrust in the U.S. and around the world.

The Roundup includes but one post about the Spring Meeting—BIG meets ABA—but it will give you a good sense of the combat that flickered into view amid the nerdy bonhomie. You can find other posts on the Spring Meeting here, here, and here.

Now, let’s get to the Roundup!

Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – April 5, 2023
Enforcers Roundtable

Like 3,700 or so other folks, I spent a few days last week at a world-class nerdfest—the Spring Meeting of the Antitrust Law Section. You can see my notes from a couple of the half-dozen sessions I attended here and here. You can also see the insights of Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and publisher of BIG on Substack, on his experience as a panelist here.

The four days in D.C. again reminded me of the strongly pro-defense orientation of Section members. Many of them spend their days pushing mergers through the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act process. Many others litigate civil and criminal lawsuits charging their clients with price-fixing, abuse of market power, and other violations of antitrust law.

No wonder they believe Robert Bork—the patron saint of trusting in the beneficence of behemoths—hung the antitrust moon.

Continue Reading Antitrust Enforcers Must Do More with Less

This week the ABA Antitrust Law Section’ holds its Spring Meeting. The program offers dozens of sessions, each of which features debate by a panel of experts from government, academia, or private firms on a topic of current interest.

This post reflects my notes from a talk about how well the administration of President Biden has done in making its high hopes for reviving antitrust enforcement, both in the two agencies that have enforcement as a primary mandate—the Antitrust Division in the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Competition in the Federal Trade Commission—and in other parts of the executive branch.

Continue Reading Notes on “All Bark, No Bite? Antitrust Under Biden.”
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

Welcome to the spring break edition of Commercial Roundup. This week’s highlights include a fantastic round-robin interview of six women lawyers who’ve made their way to the top of antitrust-world and the end of a saga about a non-lawyer who helped mass-tort firms “sign up clients” for money.

This week you’ll find me at the Spring Meeting of the ABA’s Antitrust Law Section in Washington, DC. Send me an email (bbarnett@susmangodfrey.com) if you’ve also come to the this year’s antitrust nerd-fest and either see an especially recondite, funny, or otherwise notable presentation or would like to say hello.

Barry Barnett
Continue Reading Commercial Roundup – March 29, 2023
We round up the most significant appellate decisions relevant to commercial litigation each week.

Welcome to this week’s Commercial Roundup.

Below you will find headlines and links to appellate decisions and other items of particular interest to business people and lawyers dealing with complex disputes.

If you haven’t already subscribed to The Contingency, I invite you to do it now. Just enter your email address in the box to the right, hit the return button, and click the “Yes, subscribe me to this list” rectangle in the confirmation email you’ll receive.

Now let’s get to the Roundup!

Barry

Continue Reading Commercial Roundup–March 23, 2023