Around the Nation

• 

  Nevada Inventor's Tax Dispute Tests Power of State Courts

  By Mike Sacks

  Two veterans of the U.S. Supreme Court bar sparred on Monday over the validity of a 36-year-old precedent that allows states to be sued in other states' courts. Las Vegas-based inventor Gilbert Hyatt, represented by Farr & Taranto's H. Bartow Farr, is fighting to hold onto a million-dollar judgment he won in Nevada state courts against the Franchise Tax Board of California. Bancroft's Paul Clement, representing the board, spent the bulk of his oral argument saying Nevada should not have been able to haul another state's agency into its courts in the first place.

• 

  Thomas Objects as Justices Turn Away Challenge to Assault-Weapon Ban

  By Marcia Coyle and Tony Mauro

  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied review of a closely watched gun rights case over the strong objection of Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. In a rare dissent from denial of review in Friedman v. City of Highland Park, Illinois, Thomas scolded lower federal courts—including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which ruled in the case—for misinterpreting the high court's 2008 decision that declared an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.