You have to give points for creativity to lawyers representing a restaurant entrepreneur who was ordered to pay nearly $7 million to Pizza Hut after a 2022 trial before a federal judge in Texas. The entrepreneur, Jignesh “Jay” Pandya, asked the 5th Circuit to erase that judgment, arguing that the judge wrongly enforced a contract provision in which he agreed to waive the right to try the dispute before a jury. His primary argument: Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in a landmark Second Amendment challenge to New York’s handgun restrictions, the trial judge should have looked back to the historical context of the Seventh Amendment, which guarantees a sweeping right to trial by jury. Alison Frankel explains why the 5th Circuit refused to extend the reasoning of the gun case to a different constitutional right.
Check out other recent pieces from all our columnists: Alison Frankel, Jenna Greene and Hassan Kanu
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