Law Commons^™

The Lost Lessons Of Shareholder Derivative Suits, Jessica Erickson

Washington and Lee Law Review

Merger litigation has changed dramatically. Today, nearly every announcement of a significant merger sparks litigation, and these cases look quite different from merger cases in the past. These cases are now filed primarily outside of Delaware, they typically settle without shareholders receiving any financial consideration, and corporate boards now have far more ex ante power to shape these cases. Although these changes are often heralded as unprecedented, they are not. Over the past several decades, derivative suits experienced many of the same changes. This Article explores the similarities between the recent changes in merger litigation and the longer history of …

No Injury? No Class: Proof Of Injury In Federal Antitrust Class Actions Post-Wal-Mart, Rami Abdallah Elias Rashmawi

Washington and Lee Law Review

Over the past twenty years the Supreme Court of the United States has systematically limited the scope of federal class actions brought under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Importantly, in two landmark decisions, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, the Supreme Court cemented a heightened level of inquiry demanded by Rule 23, a stringent, “rigorous analysis.”

This Note analyses the effects of this heightened inquiry on federal antitrust class actions, particularly in situations where the plaintiffs’ method of proving antitrust injury fails to do so for some of the putative class …

Ebay, Permanent Injunctions, And Trade Secrets, Elizabeth A. Rowe

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article presents the first qualitative empirical review of permanent injunctions in trade secret cases. In addition, it explores the extent to which the Supreme Court’s patent decision in eBay v. MercExchange has influenced the analysis of equitable principles in federal trade secret litigation. Among the more notable findings are that while equitable principles are generally applied in determining whether to grant a permanent injunction to a prevailing party after trial, the courts are not necessarily strictly applying the four factors from eBay. The award of monetary relief does not preclude equitable injunctive relief, and courts can find irreparable harm …

Personal Jurisdiction And National Sovereignty, Ray Worthy Campbell

Washington and Lee Law Review

State sovereignty, once seemingly sidelined in personal jurisdiction analysis, has returned with a vengeance. Driven by the idea that states must not offend rival states in their jurisdictional reach, some justices have looked for specific targeting of individual states as individual states by the defendant in order to justify an assertion of personal jurisdiction. To allow cases to proceed based on national targeting alone, they argue, would diminish the sovereignty of any state that the defendant had specifically targeted.

This Article looks for the first time at how this emphasis on state sovereignty limits national sovereignty, especially where alien defendants …

The Dilemma Of Interstatutory Interpretation, Anuj C. Desai

Washington and Lee Law Review

Courts engage in interstatutory cross-referencing all the time, relying on one statute to help interpret another. Yet, neither courts nor scholars have ever had a satisfactory theory for determining when it is appropriate. Is it okay to rely on any other statute as an interpretive aid? Or, are there limits to the practice? If so, what are they? To assess when interstatutory cross-referencing is appropriate, I focus on one common form of the technique, the in pari materia doctrine. When a court concludes that two statutes are in pari materia or (translating the Latin) “on the same subject,” the court …