North America: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration

For hundreds of years, the world’s sovereign nations refused to allow any other foreign sovereign to be sued in their courts without the sovereign’s consent. The guiding principle was “absolute sovereign immunity,” an outgrowth of the ancient legal precept rex non potest peccare, understood to mean “the king can do no wrong.” The principle also was recognized as wise foreign policy because it extended "grace and comity" to other sovereigns.

The State of Texas signed a ten-year lease for office space. When the State later terminated the lease and stopped paying rent, the landlord sued for breach of contract. In an ordinary commercial dispute, that would be an obvious claim. But in State v. Broadmoor Austin Associates,[1] the Fifteenth Court of Appeals held that sovereign immunity barred it.

Recent federal court decisions are reshaping the landscape of personal jurisdiction and enforcement of international arbitration awards following the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization. The DC and Ninth Circuits have issued critical opinions clarifying how Fifth Amendment due process standards apply differently than traditional Fourteenth Amendment minimum contacts analysis, particularly in cases involving foreign sovereigns and international arbitration. These deve

Division I schools spent nearly $2 billion in direct compensation and benefits for college athletes during the first year of the House v. NCAA settlement, with 307 schools (85% of Division I) participating in the new compensation system. The data reveals thousands of new athletic scholarships and a fundamental transformation in how college sports revenue is shared with athletes.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's unpatentability finding for a patent related to selectively enabling data paths in memory systems. The court addressed challenges to the Board's reliance on prior art references and claim mapping, while rejecting procedural arguments about the adequacy of the Board's reasoning.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario’s decision in Heegsma v. Hamilton (City)[1] is the latest in a series of cases considering the legality of municipal bylaws and their enforcement in relation to encampments by unhoused individuals.

On October 13, 2026, in Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood Corporation of America, Inc., No. 24-10084, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned its longstanding practice of requiring benefit plan participants to exhaust administrative remedies before filing statutory claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Administrative exhaustion requirements compel potential litigants to satisfy any plan-required internal appeals process with the plan sponsor or the plan administrator to resolve a dispute before a suit may be filed in court.

The court will look at each parent’s income to determine issues such as child support or post-secondary support. Imputed income is an estimate by the court of an individual’s income, even if they are not actually earning that amount.

The Federal Court's recent decision in Millennium Funding, Inc. v. Bell Canada marks a pivotal moment in Canadian copyright law, as it allows the novel defence of "copyright misuse" to proceed to trial rather than being struck at the pleadings stage. This case examines whether film production companies misused Canada's notice and notice regime by sending automated, non-compliant notices to intimidate alleged infringers into disproportionate settlements and make exorbitant claims against Internet Service Pro

Neutral evaluation is an invaluable tool, particularly in patent litigation. I speak with authority, having spent 20 years on the federal bench in Delaware, seven of them as chief judge. Delaware is one of the busiest patent venues in the country.

On the morning of July 4, 2025, catastrophic flooding on the Guadalupe River took 135 lives across the Texas Hill Country. Twenty-eight of them—25 school-aged campers, two young counselors and the camp's co-executive director—were at Camp Mystic, a century-old girls' camp near Hunt.

In this episode of the JAMS podcast, JAMS neutrals Hon. Karen Brown Willcutts (Former), FCIArb, Hugh E. Hackney, Esq., and Zela "Zee" G. Claiborne, Esq. examine the commercial and contractual fallout of disruptions to global energy transportation and how mediation and arbitration can keep energy moving while the larger disputes are resolved.