New York, N.Y. (June 18, 2008) — New York Law School Professor Tai-Heng Cheng’s book State Succession and Commercial Obligations (Transnational Publishers, 2006) was recently cited by the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York as the sole authority for a holding in its decision in the case of Mortimer Off Shore Services, Ltd. v. Federal Republic of Germany prohibiting Mortimer leave to amend its dismissed complaint.

 

In the original complaint, Mortimer claimed that Germany owed principal and interest on bearer bonds issued by several Prussian banks in 1928, with the total amount owed at more than $400,000,000. The Court dismissed the case.

 

Mortimer then filed a motion requesting the Court revise its decision to prohibit Mortimer from filing an amended complaint. In its amended complaint, Mortimer alleged, among other things, that Germany was the successor government to Prussia, the Reich, and East Germany and should be responsible for bonds issued by Prussia under the law of government succession.

 

United States District Judge Gerard E. Lynch denied the motion to amend his decision prohibiting leave to file the amended complaint. He found that Germany was not a successor government but a successor state. The Court held, quoting from Professor Cheng’s book: “State succession is not limited to changes in the international legal personality of a state, but includes any fundamental reorganization of a state that triggers international claims concerning preexisting commercial obligations and requires an international response.”

 

Judge Lynch applied this definition of state succession to Germany, and concluded: “The overwhelming disruption caused by the Nazi regime and its fall is not a ‘shift in power and authority without fundamental or radical changes,’ such as ‘the Labor Party defeating the Conservative Party in U.K. elections.’ See Tai-Heng Cheng, State Succession and Commercial Obligations 51.”

 

Professor Tai-Heng Cheng, Associate Director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School, is an expert in public and private international law, especially state succession and regime change, international trade and investment, and international dispute resolution. He has given presentations at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, the United Nations, and Yale Law School. He is Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association. He holds a Doctor of the Science of Law degree and a Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School, where he was Howard M. Holtzman Fellow for International Law. He also holds a Master of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree with first class honors in law from Oxford University, where he was Oxford University Scholar. His next book, The Revival of International Law, is forthcoming in 2009 by Oxford University Press.