SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) 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 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.
France's Union of Jewish Students and the International
Anti-Racism and Anti-Semitism League sued the world's leading Web
portal in 2000 and won a French court order requiring Yahoo to
block Internet surfers in France from auctions selling Nazi
memorabilia. French law bars the display or sale of racist
material.
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 December 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 decision. 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.''
``The district court should have abstained from hearing the
case,'' Ferguson wrote.
Although Monday's ruling doesn't require Yahoo to change the way
it operates yahoo.com or any other site, it will likely make it
tougher for Yahoo to argue its case in U.S. courts.
Ferguson said if Yahoo wants to continue selling items on a site
that can be accessed around the world, the company must assume the
risk that it could violate laws of other countries and be subject
to more lawsuits.
``Yahoo cannot expect both to benefit from the fact that its
content may be viewed around the world and to be shielded from the
resulting costs,'' Ferguson wrote in the 35-page decision, Judge
Melvin Brunetti, dissented, saying because French groups
specifically ``targeted'' Yahoo in California, U.S. courts should
have jurisdiction in the case.
The opinion is a small but important victory for French human
rights groups, said attorney Richard Jones, who represented the
Union of Jewish Students and the International Anti-Racism and
Anti-Semitism League.
``Yahoo would like the world to be covered by America's First
Amendment because that would make it easier for Yahoo to do
business around the world,'' said Jones, of the San Francisco
office of Covington & Burling. ``But that puts Yahoo in the ironic
position of trying to impose American values on the rest of the
world.''
Attorney Robert Vanderet, who represented Yahoo for Los
Angeles-based O'Melveny & Myers, said the opinion ``really doesn't
mean much.'' The ruling may make it tougher for Yahoo to get this
case heard in U.S. courts but the French groups must first sue
Yahoo in the United States for breaking the French court order.
``This means that Yahoo would have to wait until they tried to
enforce the French order in the United States to have it declared
unconstitutional,'' Vanderet said. ``It doesn't disturb the court's
ruling it just says that you have to wait until they come into
this country to try to enforce it.''
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)