News & Publications

Houston, Texas (April 18, 2023) – This week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that sets up a split in authority over whether freight broker tort claims are preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) (40 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1), and whether those claims are excluded from preemption under the "safety exception" found in 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(2)(A). Essentially, the court held that the construction of the statute's exception used specific and [...]

On April 14, the Supreme Court decided Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission et al. — along with its companion case, Securities and Exchange Commission et al. v. Cochran. In these two cases, the court held that federal district courts have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the enforcement proceedings against the regulated parties after balancing certain factors. In these cases, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were pursuing certain entities for [...]

In Cerame v. Lamont, answering a question of law certified by the District of Connecticut, the Connecticut Supreme Court construed Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53-37—colloquially called the "racial ridicule" law—to apply exclusively to commercial advertisements and not to other noncommercial speech. This case both offers a lesson in using the state's certification procedure (as outlined in Conn. Gen. Stat. § 51-199b(d)) to streamline federal litigation and underscores the wisdom of advocating textually plausible statutory interpretations, even [...]