In a pair of opinions handed down on March 24, the U.S. Supreme Court relied on ALI Restatements of the Law for guidance in deciding some of the central questions in the cases.
In B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Industries, Inc., the justices tackled a trademark dispute that turned on whether a decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board should have preclusive effect. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., cited the Restatement Second of Judgments throughout the opinion. “Although the idea of issue preclusion is straightforward,” Justice Alito wrote, “it can be challenging to implement. The Court, therefore, regularly turns to the Restatement (Second) of Judgments for a statement of the ordinary elements of issue preclusion.”
In Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers Dist. Council Constr. Industry Pension Fund, the Court reviewed a securities fraud claim and took up the question of whether a statement of opinion may be treated as “an untrue statement of … fact” if it is ultimately proven to be incorrect. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan turned to the Restatements of Contracts on the issue of when an opinion itself constitutes a factual misstatement. She also cited the Restatement of Torts in deciding the related question of “when an opinion may be rendered misleading by the omission of discrete factual representations.”