Month: March 2026

A short excerpt from from today’s long opinion by Judge John Tigar (N.D. Cal.) in Stanford Univ. v. Yuzhen; I am an employee of Hoover and Stanford, but I haven’t been involved in the lawsuit, and wasn’t prompted by anyone to write bout it:

Plaintiff Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University seeks to quiet title in certain materials denominated the Li Materials, which consist of original materials written by Chinese political figure Li Rui [and by people connected to him] …. Stanford and Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, contend that: (1) during his lifetime, Li Rui gave the Li Materials to Li Nanyang and instructed her to make a permanent gift of the Li Materials to Stanford, to be preserved by and made freely available for scholarly research and public review at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University (“Hoover”); and (2) in accordance with Li Rui’s instructions, the original Li Materials were donated to and delivered to Hoover by Li Nanyang prior to Li Rui’s death.

Defendant and Counterclaimant Zhang Yuzhen, who was Li Rui’s second wife, contends that Li Rui did not transfer ownership of his original manuscripts to Li Nanyang, and that Li Nanyang did not have the legal right to donate any of Li Rui’s original materials to Hoover prior to Li Rui’s death. Zhang Yuzhen further contends that pursuant to the Chinese court’s judgment in a proceeding called the Zhang Action, she is the sole owner of the original manuscripts contained in the Li Materials, and that this Court should recognize and enforce the Chinese judgment and order Stanford to return to Zhang Yuzhen the original manuscripts that were improperly transferred to Stanford by Li Nanyang….

Li Rui held various government positions in the People’s Republic of China during the 1950s. He became Chairman Mao’s personal secretary in 1958, placing him at the center of political activity in China.

Li Rui was a person of strong opinions who spoke out against the CCP during his lifetime and who “ha[d] a lot of guts.” In 1959, Li Rui attended a leadership meeting of the CCP called the Lushan Conference. At the conference, Li made comments critical of Mao Zedong and the CCP. Because of these criticisms, Li Rui was exiled and transferred between jail and work camps for approximately 20 years….

In 1979, two-and-a-half years after Chairman Mao’s death, Li was released from prison, his membership in the Communist Party was restored, and he was reinstated to his prior position as Deputy Minister of the Electric Power Ministry. Also in 1979, Li Rui married Zhang Yuzhen, and they remained married until Li Rui’s death on February 16, 2019.

In 1982, Li became the Deputy Director of the Organization Department of the CCP. During this time, Li also became a member of the Central Committee of the CCP, and then the Advisory Committee.

In February 1989, Li Rui visited the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was “amazed” by the collection at Hoover because it contained writings about historical events that were not available in China, including extensive materials about the Cultural Revolution.

Li Rui witnessed the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 from the balcony of his apartment. He wrote an open letter critical of the CCP’s decision to send in soldiers to crack down on the protesting students. He also took notes of the event in his diary.

On August 28, 1999, Li Rui executed a “Testament” noting how fortunate he was to marry Zhang Yuzhen and giving the following “instruction” to his children:

1. The copyrights to all my written works (including those already published and those not yet published) shall all belong to Yuzhen after my demise.
2. All my deposits and household items shall belong to Yuzhen after my demise.
3. My collection of calligraphy and painting works shall all be managed and handled by Yuzhen after my demise.
4. All books shall be donated to Pingjiang Library on my behalf by Yuzhen after my demise.

The testament did not address the disposition of the Li Materials….

There are a lot of further factual findings and legal conclusions in the opinion, but here’s an interesting passage on the non-enforceability of a Chinese court judgment:

“There is currently no federal statute governing recognition of foreign judgments in the federal courts.” “Generally, the recognition of foreign judgments is an issue of state law.” “In matters not involving money judgments, California courts “look to general principles of comity followed by the California courts[.]”

“Comity is ‘the recognition which one nation allows within its territory to the legislative, executive or judicial acts of another nation.'” “Extension of comity to a foreign judgment is neither a matter of absolute obligation, on the one hand, nor of mere courtesy and good will, upon the other.” A federal court should generally give preclusive effect to a foreign court’s finding as a matter of comity.” However, “[c]omity is not an inexorable command, and a request for recognition of a foreign judgment may be rebuffed on any number of grounds.” …

Applying [generally recognized comity] principles, the Court concludes that the Zhang Judgment is not enforceable, for the following reasons.

First, the Beijing Court lacked jurisdiction over Stanford because it was not originally named as a party in Zhang Yuzhen’s civil complaint. [Details omitted. -EV] …

Second, even if the Beijing Court had personal jurisdiction over Stanford, Stanford was denied an opportunity to appear and defend itself in the Zhang Action because the Beijing Court would not allow Stanford’s lawyers to appear, despite their substantial efforts to do so. A well-established principle of comity is that “it would be unjust to [a sovereign’s] own citizens to give effect to the judgments of a foreign tribunal against them when they had no opportunity of being heard.” Such was the case here.

DeJoria v. Maghreb Petroleum (W.D. Tex. 2018) is instructive. In that case, Plaintiff DeJoria sought a declaration that a judgment of the court in Morocco was invalid because, among other reasons, DeJoria had not been able to participate in the litigation leading to the judgment. The Court found that DeJoria had a legitimate fear of traveling to Morocco based on threats made against him by persons connected with his litigation opponents, who were also members of the royal family. He also was not able to retain counsel, “due to the fact that he was a defendant in a case that was of great political interest to the King of Morocco, and his interests were adverse to the King’s.” These facts and others compelled the DeJoria court to find that “the specific proceeding in the foreign court leading to the judgment was not compatible with the requirements of due process of law.”

Here, although Stanford was able to retain counsel, that counsel was not able to participate in the litigation and its views were not considered by the court. This meant that Stanford did not receive due process.

Third, the Beijing Court failed to keep the “clear and formal record” of the proceedings that would allow this Court to find that the proceedings were fair…. [And i]n at least one respect, the judgment is at odds with the facts, stating that Hoover, Stanford, and Li Nanyang were “summoned by the court and did not appear, with no justified reason” and “did not present any statements, either.” In actual fact, however, Hoover had attempted to appear through Stanford’s counsel and to present evidence and argument and Li Nanyang had presented jurisdictional objections. Because there is no “clear and formal record,” the Court cannot determine whether the proceedings afforded Stanford the due process to which it was entitled, or satisfied the other Hilton factors.

Fourth, there is evidence that this particular proceeding before the Beijing Court was dominated by the CCP, as summarized by Professor Kellogg. [American law] permit[s] denial of enforcement of a foreign judgment when the foreign judicial system from which the judgment originated did not provide an impartial tribunal or due process of law in a particular case. Evidence “that the judiciary was dominated by the political branches of government or by an opposing litigant, or that a party was unable to obtain counsel, to secure documents or attendance of witnesses, or to have access to appeal or review, would support a conclusion that the legal system was one whose judgments are not entitled to recognition.”

The State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices “ha[ve] been described as the most appropriate and perhaps the best resource for information on political situations in foreign nations.” The U.S. State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices in China for 2019 states:

Although the law states the courts shall exercise judicial power independently, without interference from administrative organs, social organizations, and individuals, the judiciary did not exercise judicial power independently. Judges regularly received political guidance on pending cases, including instructions on how to rule, from both the government and the CCP, particularly in politically sensitive cases.

Professor Kellogg’s expert report notes that “[p]arty control over the judiciary is well-documented …. The State Department’s findings on judicial independence remain unchanged: its reports on China have continued to note the judiciary’s lack of judicial independence on an annual basis each year, including 2023, the most recent report currently available.”

And the court finds “that Li Rui gave the Li Rui materials to Li Nanyang for the purpose of removing them from China and donating them to the Hoover Center at Stanford”:

Thus, when Li Nanyang donated the materials to the Hoover Institute, she was acting in accordance with and pursuant to Li Rui’s expressed wishes. Accordingly, Stanford now holds good title to the Li Rui Materials.

Li Rui knew that Stanford would preserve the Li Materials and make them available to the public. He also believed that the CCP was likely to secrete, censor, redact, or destroy the Li Materials. His desire that his writings be made available to the public in perpetuity and not be censored in any way was the primary motivation for giving the materials to Li Nanyang so she could deposit them at Stanford/Hoover. Li Rui’s fears that his writings would be banned, burned, or otherwise made unavailable were reasonable and consistent with other evidence received in the case as set forth above.

Because Li Rui gave the materials to Li Nanyang for this purpose prior to his death, the materials were not part of his estate at the time of his death and therefore were not subject to the law of inheritance….

Jeffrey David Wexler, Mark Davis Litvack, and Ryan Adelsperger (Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP) represent Stanford.

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From Doe v. Life Time, Inc., decided today (correctly, I think) by Judge Dora Irizarry (E.D.N.Y.):

The Complaint alleges that Plaintiff attended Life Time Fitness from 2018 to 2024, and in 2023 his local gym hired Defendant Ahmed to “man the front desk in the evenings.” Ahmed is alleged to be a member of the Muslim faith who “flaunts his religion” The Complaint alleges that, as an employee, Ahmed discriminated against Jewish members, such as Plaintiff [in violation of federal and state antidiscrimination law], by prohibiting Plaintiff from entering the gym after 8:00 PM on weekends, while allowing members of the Muslim faith to enter.

Plaintiff recounts a specific encounter on October 26, 2024, in which Plaintiff arrived with a guest wearing a yarmulke (a small round head covering worn by male practitioners of the Orthodox Jewish faith) and requested late entry. Ahmed is alleged to have denied entry and then admitted to selectively enforcing policies when pressed by Plaintiff. The situation escalated and Plaintiff’s membership to the gym was suspended. Plaintiff alleges that his membership was reinstated the next day; however, on December 14, 2024, three Life Time employees, including Ahmed, assaulted him in the gym locker room.

Plaintiff attests that he raised Ahmed’s discriminatory actions to his gym’s general manager, but nothing was ever done. After lodging a number of complaints, Plaintiff alleges that the general manager banned him from the gym. Plaintiff further alleges he never was given a reason from Life Time as to why he was banned….

Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(a) provides that the “title of [a] complaint must name all the parties.” This requirement serves “the vital purpose of facilitating public scrutiny of judicial proceedings and … cannot be set aside lightly.” … The [Second C]ircuit has cautioned that there are “a limited number of exceptions” to the general rule, which includes the privacy of minors… [Plaintiff] does not fall into one of the previously recognized exceptions and the public’s interest in the litigation is furthered by identification because the public has a presumptive “right to know who is using their courts.” …

[C]ourts [should] consider whether disclosure of a plaintiff’s identity would subject them, or non-parties, to possible harm. Speculative or “generalized harm” is not sufficient to establish a likelihood of harm following identification. Here, Plaintiff argues that he is in “real danger” of physical harm and that the harm is not speculative because he previously was assaulted by Ahmed and that the rising wave of antisemitism across the nation subjects him to harm upon being identified as a member of the Jewish faith.

Plaintiff’s argument is unavailing because his basis for “likely” harm is entirely speculative. Whether Plaintiff was assaulted by Ahmed at the gym in the past does not establish that it will occur again, especially considering that Plaintiff was banned from returning to the gym. Notably, the Complaint is devoid of allegations suggesting that he will be unduly targeted at large because of his Jewish Faith.

[Courts should also consider] whether “the litigation involves matters that are highly sensitive and of a personal nature.” Courts have found birth control, abortion, homosexuality, welfare rights of illegitimate children, abandoned families, and sexual assault and harassment to be highly sensitive matters. While conceding that his “status as a Jewish individual is not inherently sensitive information,” nonetheless, Plaintiff contends that this action involves highly sensitive matters because of the social stigma attendant to his private Jewish beliefs. Plaintiff relies on the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in Doe v. Stegall (5th Cir. 1981), which involved religious freedom pursuant to the First Amendment.

However, Stegall is distinguishable from the instant action for three reasons: (1) Stegall involved children; (2) Stegall was brought against the county government; and (3) the plaintiffs in Stegall had evidence indicating a likelihood of “extensive harassment” from the county community. Plaintiff’s reliance on the rise of antisemitism here amounts to nothing more than speculation. Significantly, he does not distinguish the unique characteristics of his case that mandate departure from the preference for public disclosure as in the litany of other religion-based cases on this issue. Therefore, factor one also weighs against Plaintiff….

For a somewhat different approach to such cases (though the facts there are somewhat different as well), see Pseudonymity Allowed (for Now) in Lawsuit Against Palestinian Student Groups.

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Today the Fifth Circuit denied my Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) challenges to the Justice Department’s 2021 deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) and 2025 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with Boeing. VC readers will recall this case, as I have blogged about it many times over the years, including here, here, and here. In today’s ruling, the Circuit said that the families’ victims rights challenges to these agreements came too late to allow any remedy. But earlier, in 2023, the Circuit had said that the families’ challenges were “premature.” The fact that the families now will seemingly never receive any remedy is a cruel judicial bait-and-switch, revealing how much work remains to be done to create truly enforcable crime victims’ rights in the criminal justice system.

Here’s the case in a nutshell: In and around 2016 to 2019, Boeing lied to the FAA about the safety of its new 737 MAX aircraft. When two MAX aircraft crashed in late 2018 and then again in early 2019, the Justice Department investigated. And, in 2021, the Department charged Boeing with criminal conspiracy to defraud the FAA through its lies. But the Department immediately entered into a DPA in the Northern District of Texas to resolve the criminal case.

In subsequent litigation, the families proved that the 346 passengers and crew on board the two doomed 737 MAX flights were “crime victims” under the CVRA—they had been directly and proximately harmed by Boeing lies. If Boeing had revealed the safety issues surrounding the MAX to the FAA, the result would have been training of pilots that would have prevented the two crashes. This makes Boeing’s conspiracy crime the “deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history,” as Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas later described it.

In their litigation, the victims’ families challenged the sweetheart DPA, which allowed Boeing to avoid a criminal conviction in exchange for payment of penalties and compensation to the families, along with Boeing’s promises to improve safety in its manufacturing processes. The families explained–and proved–that the Justice Department  had concealed the DPA from the victims’ families, violating the CVRA which required the Justice Department to confer with the prosecutors. In October 2022, Judge O’Connor concluded that the Justice Department had violated the families’ CVRA rights connected to the DPA by failing to confer. But later, in January 2023, Judge O’Connor ruled, quite reluctantly, that he was powerless to provide the victims’ families with any remedy.

In February 2023, I filed a petition with the Fifth Circuit asking it to overturn Judge O’Connor’s ruling that he could not award any remedy for the CVRA violation. After oral argument, in December 2023, the Fifth Circuit ruled that any relief was “premature” because it was confident that the district court would uphold the families’ CVRA “rights at every stage of the court’s criminal proceedings.” In re Ryan, 88 F.4th 614, 627 (5th Cir. 2023). Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit denied the petition to allow proceedings to continue in the district court.

Less than a month later, the DPA’s three-year term was set to expire on January 7, 2024. But two days before that expiration, on January 5, 2024, a mid-cabin door plug on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suddenly detached from a Boeing 737 MAX, exposing Boeing’s failure to follow its DPA safety obligations. In light of these and numerous other dangerous failures by Boeing, in May 2024, the Justice Department determined that Boeing had breached its obligations under various DPA provisions. Further negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing produced a proposed guilty plea arrangement between Boeing and the Justice Department—and objections to the plea from the victims’ families. And in December 2024, the district court rejected the proposed guilty plea. The district held that, for various reasons, the agreement was not in the public interest.

In the most recent proceedings, the Justice Department moved to dismiss its earlier-filed charge against Boeing in favor of resolution through a non-prosecution agreement (NPA).  The Department and Boeing entered into a binding NPA, and then afterwards the Department moved to dismiss the pending charged under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

I filed objections for the families to the dismissal motion, arguing that it was (finally) time to award a remedy for the Department’s CVRA violations all the way back in 2021, when it entered into the DPA and concealled what it was doing from the victims’ families. And I also argued that the Department had failed to properly confer about its new NPA.

Following oral argument, in November 2025, Judge O’Connor granted the Justice Department’s dismissal motion. In his order, Judge O’Connor essentially agreed with many of the factual objections that I have made for the families who lost loved ones because of Boeing’s crime. Indeed, he even stated that the NPA was not consistent with the public interest. But, reluctantly, Judge O’Connor granted the Department’s motion to dismiss the charge, concluding that he lacked a legal basis for blocking the  Department’s ill-conceived non-prosecution plan.

In December, I filed two CVRA petitions for review with the Fifth Circuit. The first petition challenged Judge O’Connor’s failure to award any remedy for the violation of the families’ CVRA rights when the DPA was negotiated and consumated. The second petition challenged Judge O’Connor’s decision to approve dismissal of the charge against Boeing based on the new NPA.

Today, the Fifth Circuit rejected both of my petitions in a ten-page per curiam order.

With regard to my first petition arguing that the Judge O’Connor should have remedied the CVRA violations connected to the DPA, the Circuit concluded that the petition was moot:

Agreements not to prosecute are “contractual in nature, and are therefore interpreted in accordance with general principles of contract law.” United States v. Castaneda, 162 F.3d 832, 835 (5th Cir. 1998). Under those principles, a third-party’s challenge to a contract that no longer binds a contracting party is moot. Bender v. Donoghue, 70 F.2d 723, 724 (5th Cir. 1934). When Boeing violated the DPA, the agreement’s express terms made Boeing “subject to prosecution for any federal criminal violation,” thus relieving the Department of its obligations under the agreement. At that point, the agreement no longer bound the contracting parties and any challenge based on its terms became moot.

With regard to my second petition arguing that Judge O’Connor should have rejected the NPA, the Circuit rejected my argument that the Department had deceived the families by failing to tell them that it planned to entered in a binding NPA with Boeing before presenting a motion to dismiss to the district court. In my brief, I explained that in the more than 70-year history of Rule 48(a) dismissals, the Justice Department had never before entered into a binding agreement not to prosecute before presenting its dismissal motion to the district court. Nonetheless, the Circuit concluded:

The families were entitled to a “reasonable right to confer” with the prosecution. 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a)(5). They were afforded this right when the prosecution met with them via video call in May 2025. During that call, the prosecution  compare[d] [its] views” with those of the families, thereby conferring with them as the CVRA requires. Even assuming the prosecution could have been clearer about its intention to enter an NPA before the district court ruled on a motion to dismiss, the families cite no authority for the proposition that this means the Department failed to “confer” with them as the CVRA demands. See 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a)(5).

It should come as no surprise that, as counsel for the victims’ families, I find today’s ruling to be not only legally incorrect but fundamentally offensive. Regarding the 2021 DPA, today’s ruling is an absurd bait-and-switch. Back in 2023, the victims’ families asked the Fifth Circuit to set aside the DPA so that they would have their promised CVRA right to confer with prosecutors before the Justice Department reached any agreement with Boeing. The Circuit agreed that the Justice Department had violated families’ CVRA right to confer. But it denied relief at that time as “premature”–and promised the families that the district court would “uphold crime victims’ statutory rights at every stage of the court’s criminal proceedings.” Ryan, 88 F.4th at 627 (emphasis added). Indeed, the Circuit stressed that the district court must “uphold victims’ CVRA rights throughout the instant criminal proceedings.” Id. at 629 (emphasis added). These earlier promises from the Fifth Circuit’s earlier (2023) decision were the centerpiece of my arguments to the Circuit this year. I cited the italicized language above repeatedly–yes, repeatedly–in my briefs and oral argument.

And yet, in today’s decision, the Court simply ignored its earlier promises. It did not cite, much less discuss, the language above. Whatever else can be said about today’s decision, it is clear that the result is that the victims’ families rights were not upheld at “every stage” of the proceedings below. Indeed, the Justice Department violated families’ CVRA rights at the critical first stage of the proceedings, when it entered into the sweetheart DPA that set the unfortunate trajectory for the rest of the case.

Regarding the 2025 NPA, the Circuit briefly acknowledged that the Department “could have been clearer” about its plan to enter into an NPA before presenting its motion to dismiss to the district court. But the Circuit skips over the families’ argument the NPA provision promising no-further-prosecution of Boeing had already gone into effect before the victims’ families knew about it, effectively rendering meaningless the families’ later objections to the motion to dismiss.

The Department’s concealment was particularly misleading against the backdrop of the  Department’s decades-long practice of presenting a motion to dismiss to the district court before consummating a formal agreement not to prosecute. As I stated in an uncontested affidavit, based on extensive experience with the federal criminal justice system, “it was a clear and substantial deviation from normal criminal justice processes” for the Justice Department to take such a step.”

In the proceedings in the district court, the victims’ families repeatedly called the Government’s approach “unprecedented.” See NPA Pet. at 18 (collecting record
citations). Neither the Government nor Boeing offered any precedent below.

In today’s ruling, however, the Circuit seems to have bizarrely flipped things around. Without questioning my argument for the families that the Department’s approach was unprecedented, the Circuit rejected my claim the Department deceived the families because “the families cite no authority for the proposition that this [failure to disclose what the Department was doing] means the Department failed to ‘confer’ with them as the CVRA demands.” So the families lose because the Department employed an unprecedented manuever–and then the families have no legal authority they can cite about why that manuever was deceptive?!

More broadly, today’s ruling demonstrates how much work remains to be done to enforce Congress’ promises in the CVRA to crime victims and their families. In this very high-profile case involving the deaths of hundreds, the Department violated the CVRA by failing to confer with the families–and then, according to the Fifth Circuit, the courts are powerless to do anything about it. I know my families’ are furious about today’s ruling. Crime victims’ rights advocates feared that then Congress passed the CVRA, the courts would undercut its effective enforcement through unwarranted and chary readings of its provisions. Sadly, today’s ruling proves that those fears were well-founded.

And ominously, today’s ruling leaves in place a NPA with the Boeing that does not properly protect public safety. In reviewing the NPA, Judge O’Connor ruled that the families were “correct that this agreement fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public.” That chilling conclusion—standing alone—should have led to a different outcome. Time will tell whether today’s ruling leaving the NPA in place will have fatal consequences.

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