• CRIMINAL LAW

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Humberto Leal Garcia, Aka Humberto leal 11-5001 (11a1) Vs. Texas (Decided on 07.07.2011)

Conviction - Challenge against thereto - Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Vienna Convention) - Petitioner a Mexican national living in United States was convicted for murder and sentenced to death by Court of Texas - Petitioner has seeked stay of execution on ground that his conviction was obtained in violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Vienna Convention)

Held, Petitioner contends that the Due Process Clause prohibits Texas from executing him while such legislation is under consideration. This argument is merit less. The Due Process Clause does not prohibit a State from carrying out a lawful judgment in light of unenacted legislation that might someday authorize a collateral attack on that judgment. The United States does not endorse Petitioner's due process claim. Instead, it asks court to stay the execution until January 2012 in support of our "future jurisdiction to review the judgment in a proceeding" under this yet-to-be enacted legislation. Even if there were circumstances under which a stay could issue in light of proposed legislation, this case would not present them. United States studiously refuses to argue that petitioner was prejudiced by the Vienna Convention violation, contending instead that the Court should issue a stay simply in light of the possibility that Petitioner might be able to bring a Vienna Convention claim in federal court, regardless of whether his conviction will be found to be invalid. United States' suggestion of granting a stay to allow Petitioner to bring a claim based on hypothetical legislation when it cannot even bring itself to say that his attempt to overturn his conviction has any prospect of success declined. The applications for stay of execution are denied.

• LAW OF TORTS

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, s. A., et al. V. Brown et ux., co-administrators of (Decided on 27.06.2011)

Claim of wrongful death damages - Jurisdiction - Respondents son died in a bus accident filed a suit for wrongful-death damages alleging that the accident was caused by tire failure - Trial Court denied dismissed the claims against them for want of personal jurisdiction subsequently North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that the North Carolina courts had general jurisdiction over Petitioners, whose tires had reached the State through "the stream of commerce." - Hence this appeal - Whether Petitioners herein were liable for death damages as claimed by the Respondents

Held, the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause sets the outer boundaries of a state tribunal's authority to proceed against a defendant. The state courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant who has "certain minimum contacts with [the State] such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend 'traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.' Petitioners lack "the kind of continuous and systematic general business contacts" necessary to allow North Carolina to entertain a suit against them unrelated to anything that connects them to the State. The stream-of-commerce cases on which the North Carolina court relied relate to exercises of specific jurisdiction in products liability actions, in which a nonresident defendant, acting outside the forum, places in the stream of commerce a product that ultimately causes harm inside the forum. Many state long arm statutes authorize courts to exercise specific jurisdiction over manufacturers when the events in suit, or some of them, occurred within the forum State. The North Carolina court's stream-of-commerce analysis elided the essential difference between case-specific and general jurisdiction. Neither below nor in their brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari did Respondents urge disregard of Petitioners' discrete status as subsidiaries and treatment of all Goodyear entities as a "unitary business," so that jurisdiction over the parent would draw in the subsidiaries as well. Respondents have therefore forfeited this contention. Order of the Court below reversed.