The US Supreme Court Tuesday agreed to add three cases to its 2023 docket addressing issues of securities law, the Confrontation Clause of the US Constitution and procedural remedies. The court has not yet announced when oral arguments will be heard.
The first of the three cases is Slack Technologies, LLC v. Pirani. The case is an appeals from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and asks the court to consider what a plaintiff bringing suit under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 for misrepresentation in a registration statement must show. Fiyyaz Pirani brought suit against Slack, a software and communications company, alleging that he purchased 250,000 shares of Slack in 2019 based on a misleading registration statement from Slack. As a result, Pirani claims he is entitled to bring suit under Section 11.
The second case, Samia v. United States, comes from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The case asks whether admitting an incriminating, out-of-court statement from a codefendant against a criminal defendant violates that defendant’s rights under the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. The Confrontation Clause provides that criminal defendants are able to confront the witnesses offered against him. However, because the statement was from a redacted, out-of court statement, Adam Samia–the criminal defendant–alleges that he had no opportunity to do so. Samia was convicted and sentenced to life in prison as a result of the court admitting the allegedly violative statements.
Smith v. United States, the final case, asks the court to determine what the proper remedy is when the government fails to bring a case in the proper venue. The case comes from the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and seeks to remedy a circuit split on the issue. So far, the Fifth and Eighth Circuits have held that an acquittal is warranted in such circumstances. Meanwhile, the Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits have held that, under such circumstances, the government is entitled to re-try the defendant in a different venue. In the case, Timothy Smith was indicted by the government for hacking a Florida company. Smith was tried in Florida, but he argued that the venue was improper because he lives in Alabama. Even if he could correctly be tried in Florida, Smith argued he was tried in the wrong district court.
The court also agreed to add four cases to its docket on Friday. Those cases include a First Amendment challenge to an immigration law, a procedural question about IRS records requests, a challenge to New York criminal sentencing laws and a question about arbitration proceedings.
