• DIRECT TAXATION

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit

Maine Medical Center Vs. United States (Decided on 30.03.2012)

Jurisdiction - Challenge thereto - Present Petition filed against the order passed by the District Court wherein Petitioner's tax refund suit was stalled when the district Court found that jurisdiction discovery was not warranted and that without such discovery, Petitioner could not meet its burden of demonstrating jurisdiction

Held, In the instant case, the district Court found that Petitioner was not entitled to jurisdictional discovery because it had failed to make a prima facie showing of proof of timely filing. The district Court based this finding on Petitioner's inability either to show the actual delivery required by § 7502(a)(1) or to provide the level of evidence necessary under a Wood-type analysis. The district Court noted that discovery would help Petitioner overcome these obstacles only if the IRS actually came across its return and outer envelope. This determination was not in any way "plainly wrong" and was not an abuse of the district court's broad discretion. Further, the IRS need do nothing more than assert that it had no record of receipt of a tax document in order to dispose of a refund suit. This Court empshasizes that the law encouraged parties seeking jurisdictional discovery to exercise more diligence than that shown by Petitioner. Where a taxpayer had not been diligent in preserving a claim and had presented no evidence of mailing or postmark, this Court saw no error in denying jurisdictional discovery.

• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Viacom International Inc LLC Vs. Youtube Inc LLC (Decided on 05.04.2012)

Limited Liability for copyright infringement - Present Appeal filed seeking to clarify the contours of the "safe harbour" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that limits the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement that occurs "by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider."

Held, The District Court correctly determined that a finding of safe harbor Application necessarily protected a Defendant from all affirmative claims for monetary relief. For the reasons previously stated, further fact-finding was required to determine whether Plaintiff was ultimately entitled to safe harbor protection in this case. Accordingly, this Court vacated the order denying summary judgment to the Plaintiffs and remanded the cause without expressing a view on the merits of the Plaintiffs' affirmative claims.

• CRIMINAL LAWS

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

United States of America Vs. Shakira Williams (Decided on 03.04.2012)

Revocation of release - Challenge thereto - Present Appeal filed against the order passed by District Court whereby it revoked the supervised release of Appellant imposing a 24 month prison sentence

Held, The provision in question was independent of the concluding clause of sub-section (e)(3), which was amended in 2003 to plainly establish "a per revocation limit on revocation imprisonment." Considered in light of the "legislative history and the atmosphere in which the statute was enacted," it was evident that Congress did not intend to set an aggregate cap on successive revocation imprisonment in subsection (e)(3) when it added language that authorized Courts to impose a term of revocation imprisonment that exceeded the supervised release term originally imposed. Finally, maintaining that § 3583 was ambiguous, Appellant argued that the rule of lenity supported her interpretation. Since this Court concluded that subsection (e)(3) was unambiguous, the rule of lenity was inapplicable in this case.