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ABA Litigation Section - FREE Roundtable on Cotenancy Clauses in Retail Leases

The ABA Section of Litigation announced a free roundtable to discuss Cotenancy clauses after a recent decision by a California appeals court, Grand Prospect Partners, LP v. Ross Dress for Less.  You can find the link for registration here.

Cotenancy clauses in retail leases are common provisions that allow a tenant to abate rent and/or terminate the lease if the landlord fails to meet a cotenancy requirement under the lease.  In a case of first  impression, in Grand Prospect Partners, LP v. Ross Dress for Less,  although the California  Court  of Appeal upheld the termination right, it struck down the rent abatement remedy as an unenforceable penalty.  Does the case have a sweeping impact for negotiated retail leases in shopping centers across the country?  Panelists will explore the implications of the case for retail landlords and tenants and its impact on the drafting of cotenancy clauses and the enforceability of the remedies negotiated by the landlords and tenants.

The program will be moderated by Howard K. Jeruchimowitz of Greenberg Traurig and will include speakers addressing what this decision means to commercial landlords and tenants.  The panelists will be Rosie Rees of Pircher, Nichols & Meeks who will discuss the the landlord's perspective and Ellen Sinreich of the Sinreich Group who will discuss the tenant's perspective.

Sign up and join us.  No CLE credit but this is a burning issue in retail leases and is causing some disruption in the industry.

On Citizenship and Nationality - DC Circuit Revisits Insular Cases

Geography matters, but so do governments.  If you live in a place that flies the American flag, should you be entitled to all of the privileges that are shared by all the residents of lands where that flag is flown?

No, says the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  Citizenship belongs to those persons whose populace and locally elected government opt to incorporate as a territory or be accepted as a state.  

The American Samoa people and government have not opted for that aspect of governance and therefore its residents, though "nationals" of the United States are not "citizens" of the United States.  

The case is Tuaua v. United States of America and the opinion can be found here.

In Tuaua, a resident of American Samoa challenged his status as a national of the United States under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  That clause provides:

“[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

So, if the resident of American Samoa is "in" the United States, it follows that he should be a citizen of the United States.

Not so, says the court.  Hearkening back to, and ultimately being bound by, the Insular Cases, citizenship is reserved to those persons whose neighbors and governments have opted to incorporate their territory into the national franchise.  Short of that, the courts are not going to force the benefits, and obligations, of citizenship on a people.

I posted on Hawaii's history of statehood following the Insular Cases here.

DC Showdown Over Fisheries Law Amendments

Ah, the bloggers's dream:  juxtaposing DC Showdown with Fisheries Law in the title of your post.

On a more serious note, domestic fisheries are a $5B component of our national economy with certainly more impact locally in those ports where fish are landed.

The governing statute which sets out federal regulation of fisheries is the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, codified at 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.

Congressman Young (AK) introduced a bill updating the Magnuson-Stevens Act in ways that trouble the White House.  The bill, H.R. 1335, contains some interesting provisions: 1) exempting fishery management actions from the National Environmental Policy Act and replacing it with a different type of study; 2) changing the types of fish counted towards the sustainable stock figures (red snapper killed during oil drill platform removal are not counted, nor fish seized from foreign fishers violating U.S. EEZ); and 3) extending State jurisdiction over recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf Coast.

The White House says that President Obama will veto the bill if it gets passed by the Congress. Per Congressman Young's website, the House is set to vote on the bill today.

Stay tuned.