MMM’s Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge and Hillary K. Lukacs are among the counsel representing amici in a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court case concerning Devas Multimedia Private Ltd., an Indian satellite communications company, and its ability to enforce a $1.3 billion arbitral award against Antrix Corp. Ltd., a state-owned Indian company.
Representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, Rutledge and Lukacs filed an amicus brief arguing that foreign states are not “persons” entitled to the protections of the Due Process Clause under the Fifth Amendment. Their brief aligns with Devas’ argument that the Ninth Circuit misinterpreted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (the FSIA) by applying the “minimum contacts” test to determine whether the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the alter ego of a foreign sovereign was proper.
Other amici filing briefs in support of Devas include the United States Department of Justice; the U.S. Council for International Business; Andrea Bjorklund, the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law at the McGill University Faculty of Law; Franco Ferrari, the director of the Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law at New York University School of Law; George A. Bermann, the Walter Gellhorn professor of law and Jean Monnet professor of European Union law at Columbia Law School; and Mark B. Feldman, former legal advisor at the U.S. State Department and one of the principal drafters of the FSIA.
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