Tagged: Hague Convention

Wrap Up of United States Supreme Court’s 2016-17 Term

With the close of the United States Supreme Court’s 2016-17 term, we offer this wrap up of the term’s most important business and commercial cases (excluding patent cases): Kindred Nursing Ctrs, L.P. v. Clark: The Supreme Court continued its full-throated support of arbitration agreements, again rejecting a state supreme court’s effort to apply an ostensibly arbitration-neutral rule of law to invalidate an arbitration agreement. In Kindred, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that an arbitration agreement signed by an attorney-in-fact under a broad power of attorney was invalid because the power of attorney did not expressly give the attorney-in-fact the right to waive the principal’s right to a jury trial. According to the Kentucky Supreme Court, to grant an attorney-in-fact the authority to waive a “fundamental constitutional right,” a power of attorney must grant that authority expressly and unambiguously. Because the right to access the courts and the right to a jury trial are such “fundamental constitutional rights” and because the power of attorney did not expressly and unambiguously waive them, the attorney-in-fact was not authorized to agree to arbitrate the principal’s claims, and no enforceable arbitration agreement was created. The Supreme Court found that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s facially arbitration-neutral rule—that the authority to waive “fundamental constitutional rights” must be expressed unambiguously in a power...

New York Court Upholds Separate Entity Rule, Quashes Non-Party Subpoenas Seeking Information on Overseas Bank Accounts

In Ayyash v. Koleilat, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, upheld and arguably extended the New York “separate entity” rule, which provides that each branch of a bank is treated as a separate entity, in no way concerned with accounts maintained by depositors in other branches or at a home office. Under this rule, a New York branch cannot be compelled to turn over assets maintained at another branch of the same bank. The Court’s decision appears to extend this rule to hold that — at least in circumstances where international comity considerations support broad application of the separate entity rule — a New York branch cannot be compelled to provide information or discovery concerning assets maintained at a foreign branch.