• CRIMINAL

United States v. Stevens, Us Supreme Court, (Decided on 20.04.2010)

Criminal - Depiction of animal cruelty - Validity of Section 48 - Respondent charged under Section 48 for selling videos depicting dog fighting - He moved District Court challenging validity of Section 48 under first amendment - District Court convicted him - On appeal, Third Circuit Court reversed conviction order and declared Section 48 as facially unconstitutional.- Whether Section 48 is substantially overbroad, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment? - 18 U.S.C. Section 48.

Held, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. §48 to criminalize the commercial creation, sale, or possession of certain depictions of animal cruelty. The statute addresses only portrayals of harmful acts, not the underlying conduct. The legislative background of §48 focused primarily on the interstate market for "crush videos."

Limiting §48's reach to crush videos and depictions of animal fighting or other extreme cruelty, as the Government suggests, requires an unrealistically broad reading of the statute's exceptions clause.

The Government makes no effort to defend §48 as applied beyond crush videos and depictions of animal fighting. It argues that those particular depictions are intrinsically related to criminal conduct or are analogous to obscenity (if not themselves obscene), and that the ban on such speech would satisfy the proper level of scrutiny. But the Government nowhere extends these arguments to other depictions, such as hunting magazines and videos, that are presumptively protected by the First Amendment but that remain subject to §48. Nor does the Government seriously contest that these presumptively impermissible applications of §48 far outnumber any permissible ones. The Court therefore does not decide whether a statute limited to crush videos or other depictions of extreme animal cruelty would be constitutional. Section 48 is not so limited but is instead substantially overbroad, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment.

• LIMITATION

Merck & Co., Inc., Et Al. V. Reynolds Et Al., U.S. Supreme Court, (Decided on: 04/27/10)

Limitation - Fraud - Discover of - Respondent filed a securities fraud action, alleging petitioner knowingly misrepresented the heart-attack risks associated with its drug - District Court dismissed complaint being barred by limitation -  Third Circuit Court reversed finding, stating that from the facts it was clear that the pre-November 2001 events did not suggested that Petitioner acted with scienter, an element of a §10(b) violation, and consequently did not commence the running of the limitations period. - 28 U.S.C. §1658(b) and §10(b), Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Held, the limitations period in §1658(b)(1) begins to run once the plaintiff actually discovered or a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have "discover[ed] the facts constituting the violation"--whichever comes first. In the statute of limitations context, "discovery" is often used as a term of art in connection with the "discovery rule," a doctrine that delays accrual of a cause of action until the plaintiff has "discovered" it.

In determining the time at which "discovery" occurs, terms such as "inquiry notice" and "storm warnings" may be useful insofar as they identify a time when the facts would have prompted a reasonably diligent plaintiff to begin investigating. But the limitations period does not begin to run until the plaintiff thereafter discovers or a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have discovered "the facts constituting the violation," including scienter--irrespective of whether the actual plaintiff undertook a reasonably diligent investigation. Thus none of the circumstances alleged reveal "facts" indicating the relevant scienter. Therefore holding of Third Circuit Court affirmed.