garyp
08-23-2004, 08:05 PM
Tough for Courts to Intervene in Auction
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040823/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_nazi_auctions_1
Yahoo Inc. will likely have a tough time getting U.S. courts to intervene in a dispute over the sale of Nazi memorabilia in France after a federal appeals court ruling Monday.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a U.S. district court judge did not have the authority to hear a case or make a decision that could affect two French human rights groups trying to ban the sale of Nazi-related items on Yahoo's popular auction site.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo stripped Nazi memorabilia — including flags emblazoned with swastikas and excerpts from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" — from its French subsidiary, yahoo.fr.
To the anger of French Jews, Holocaust survivors, their descendants and other activists, Yahoo kept such items on its vastly more popular site, yahoo.com, which is based in the United States but accessible to Web surfers anywhere in the world.
Yahoo filed a lawsuit in San Jose in 2002, asking the U.S. District Court to rule that the French order was invalid because it violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose concluded that he had jurisdiction over French defendants, but Monday's ruling reversed that. In a 2-1 decision, Ninth Circuit Judge Warren Ferguson emphasized that the French groups had not sued Yahoo in U.S. courts, so the case was "not ripe."
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040823/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_nazi_auctions_1
Yahoo Inc. will likely have a tough time getting U.S. courts to intervene in a dispute over the sale of Nazi memorabilia in France after a federal appeals court ruling Monday.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a U.S. district court judge did not have the authority to hear a case or make a decision that could affect two French human rights groups trying to ban the sale of Nazi-related items on Yahoo's popular auction site.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo stripped Nazi memorabilia — including flags emblazoned with swastikas and excerpts from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" — from its French subsidiary, yahoo.fr.
To the anger of French Jews, Holocaust survivors, their descendants and other activists, Yahoo kept such items on its vastly more popular site, yahoo.com, which is based in the United States but accessible to Web surfers anywhere in the world.
Yahoo filed a lawsuit in San Jose in 2002, asking the U.S. District Court to rule that the French order was invalid because it violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose concluded that he had jurisdiction over French defendants, but Monday's ruling reversed that. In a 2-1 decision, Ninth Circuit Judge Warren Ferguson emphasized that the French groups had not sued Yahoo in U.S. courts, so the case was "not ripe."