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Extracted Text (OCR)
Case 22-1426, Document 59, 02/28/2023, 3475902, Page41 of 113
improper because it conflicted with both federal and New York choice-of-law rules
and unfair because it unsettled the parties’ reasonable expectations.
As a threshold matter, none of this Court’s precedents require applying
Annabi to agreements formed outside of this Circuit. Although this Court has done
so in a few unpublished decisions, these mostly involved unambiguous agreements
which made resort to the Annabi canon unnecessary in the first place. See Prisco,
391 F. App’x at 921; Ashraf, 320 F. App’x at 28; Gonzalez, 93 F. App’x at 270;
but see Brown, 2002 WL 34244994, at *2. None of these decisions discussed the
threshold question of which circuit’s law applied, and at least one magistrate judge,
the Honorable Vera M. Scanlon, has openly questioned this line of cases. See U.S.
v. Bruno, Case No. 14-cr-556, 2015 WL 13731357, at *16 n.11 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 15,
2015) (noting that there was “a compelling argument” against applying Annabi to a
plea agreement from outside of this Circuit), report and recommendation adopted
in part, rejected on other grounds in part, 159 F.Supp.3d 311 (E.D.N.Y. 2016).
Courts have held that federal plea and immunity agreements are analyzed
under the same choice-of-law principles that apply to contracts generally. See U.S.
v. Lindemuth, Case No. 16-40047-01-DDC, 2017 WL 3593226, at *3 (D. Kan.
Aug. 21, 2017) (applying Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws
(“Restatement §188 to determine which jurisdiction’s law governed federal plea
agreement); Kaplan v. C.ILR., Case No. 25652-12, 2014 WL 988456, at *8 n.14
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00021088.jpg |
| File Size | 704.8 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.1% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 1,649 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 20:07:04.381174 |