Internet Library of Law
and Court Decisions

Choice of Law - Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions - Updated December 15, 2007

Court holds Bahamian law governs Illinois resident's negligence action arising out of personal injuries sustained in a jet ski accident at a Bahamian resort, notwithstanding fact that plaintiff booked his trip by accessing resort's website via a computer in Illinois.  This result is mandated by Illinois' conflict of law principles, which require a dispute to be governed by the law of the jurisdiction that has the "most significant relationship" to the events out of which the suit arose.

Court holds that defendants, individual officers of co-defendant Search Cactus LLC (“Search Cactus”) can be held personally liable for violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act (“OCSPA”) arising out of the transmission by Search Cactus of allegedly misleading and deceptive promotional emails, if “the officer took part in the act, specifically directed the act, or participated or cooperated in the act.”  Because the complaint alleged that the individual defendants approved the content of the promotional emails in question, the Court denied the individual defendants’ motion to dismiss, and allowed plaintiff, a recipient of such emails, to pursue his OCSPA claim against them.

Court dismisses defamation claims advanced against defendant, operator of the website ripoffreport.com, arising out of defendants’ publication of statements authored by a third party that were critical of plaintiffs.  The Court held such claims barred by application of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), 47 U.S.C. Section 230.  Notably, the court refused to issue plaintiff relief notwithstanding the fact that the author of the statements at issue allegedly requested without success that defendants remove them from ripoffreport.com.

The Court also declined to enforce a preliminary injunction issued on default by a Canadian court, directing defendants to remove the statements at issue from their website, on the ground that United States courts will not enforce injunctions issued by foreign courts.

United States District Court issues a declaratory judgment declaring unenforceable in the United States an order of a French Court which, inter alia, directs that Yahoo Inc., under threat of continuing penalties, prevent French citizens from accessing Nazi items offered for sale by third parties on Yahoo.com's auction site, and "to take all necessary measures to dissuade and render impossible any access via Yahoo.com to the Nazi artifact auction service and to any other site or service that may be construed as constituting an apology for Nazism or a contesting of Nazi crimes." Court issues such relief because of its determination that enforcement of this order would violate Yahoo's First Amendment rights.

Court holds that the prerequisite for the issuance of declaratory relief, the existence of an actual case or controversy, have been met as a result of the threat of enforcement of the French Court's order, and the ongoing penalties associates therewith. The Court also rejects defendants' contention that appropriate application of the abstention doctrine obligated the Court to refrain from resolving the instant litigation. Because the action seeks to litigate a question most properly decided by a United States court - namely the enforceability of the French Court's order in the United States - and not to relitigate the issue before the French court (whether Yahoo's site runs afoul of French law) the court declined to abstain from resolving it. Nor did principles of comity require the enforcement of the French Court's order, because to do so would run afoul of the United States' policies embodied in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.