Federal Judiciary

Recent Invitation Briefs

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Continuing our coverage of the invitation briefs filed by the United States in the past few weeks, the Solicitor General’s office has filed briefs recommending that certiorari be denied in the following cases:

• No. 08-448, CNN v. CSC Holdings:  potential infringement of copyright holder’s reproduction rights by remote-storage digital video recorder.
• No. 08-576, Fin-Ag, Inc. v. Pipestone Livestock Auction Market:  scope of the Food Security Act of 1985
• No. 08-603, Vos v. Barg:  scope of recovery of Medicaid benefits from estate of recipient’s surviving spouse.
• Nos. 08-626 and -759, Level 3 Communications v. City of St. Louis and Sprint Telephony v. San Diego County:  preemption of local regulations under Telecommunications Act (disclosure:  Akin Gump represents the petitioner in No. 08-626).
• No. 08-661, American Needle, Inc. v. NFL:  whether the NFL, its teams, and their common licensing agent functioned as a single entity for purposes of the Sherman Act.

By our calculations, all of these cases will be considered at the Court’s June 25 conference.

Based on the briefs that we have reviewed, this means that the SG’s office has recommended three grants:  No. 08-240 & -372, Mac’s Shell Service, Inc. v. Shell Oil Prods. Co. & Shell Oil Prods. Co. v. Mac’s Shell Service, Inc, which will be on the June 11 conference; No. 08-304, Graham County Soil & Water Conservation Dist. v. U.S. ex rel. Wilson , which will likely be on the June 18 conference; and No. 08-645, Abbott v. Abbott.  There is one invitation brief that we expect to be filed - in No. 08-6261, Robertson v. US ex rel. Watson - but have not yet seen.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).