nemine contradicente

Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School. Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961. At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free. The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception. Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship. A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy. The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.

Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., a Florida corporation, sold passage tickets for a seven-day cruise aboard its ship the Tropicale to Eulala and Russel Shute, who resided in Washington. The Shutes purchased the tickets through a travel agent in Arlington, Washington. The agent forwarded the payment to Carnival's headquarters in Miami, Florida. Carnival then prepared the tickets and mailed them to the Shutes in Washington. The face of each ticket directed passengers to read the terms and conditions on the last pages. Contract page 1 stated that acceptance of the ticket constituted agreement to all terms and conditions. This included a provision that all disputes arising under or in connection with the contract would be litigated, if at all, in a court located in the State of Florida to the exclusion of the courts of any other state or country. The Shutes boarded the Tropicale in Los Angeles, California. The ship sailed to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and then returned to Los Angeles. While the vessel was in international waters off the Mexican coast, Eulala Shute slipped on a deck mat during a guided tour of the ship's galley and was injured. The Shutes filed a negligence suit against Carnival in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Carnival moved for summary judgment. It contended that the forum-selection clause required the suit to be brought in Florida or, alternatively, that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction because Carnival's contacts with Washington were insubstantial. The district court granted the motion on personal jurisdiction grounds. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. It first concluded that Carnival's solicitation of business in Washington established sufficient contacts for personal jurisdiction. It then held that the forum-selection clause was unenforceable because it was not freely bargained for and because the Shutes were physically and financially incapable of litigating in Florida. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In 1967 the Atomic Energy Commission granted Vermont Yankee a construction permit for a nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vermont, after the required adjudicatory hearing and reviews. Vermont Yankee later applied for an operating license; NRDC intervened and objected to exclusion of fuel-reprocessing and waste-disposal impacts from the hearing. In November 1972 the Commission opened a separate rulemaking proceeding on those fuel-cycle issues, noticed two alternative approaches based on its Environmental Survey, and conducted a February 1973 hearing at which more than forty participants submitted comments but no discovery or cross-examination occurred. In April 1974 the Commission adopted a rule assigning numerical values to fuel-cycle impacts and applied it prospectively. In January 1969 Consumers Power applied for permits to build two nuclear reactors in Midland, Michigan. After staff and ACRS review, Saginaw and Mapleton intervened and raised 119 environmental contentions, including seventeen on energy conservation. The Licensing Board held hearings on radiological issues, the staff issued a final environmental impact statement in March 1972, and further hearings occurred in May and June 1972; Saginaw declined to participate in the later hearings or submit proposed findings. The Licensing Board granted the construction permit, the Appeal Board affirmed, and the Commission declined further review. In November 1973 the Commission ruled in another case that energy-conservation evidence meeting threshold tests could be considered, but it later refused Saginaw's motion to reopen the Consumers Power record. NRDC appealed the Vermont Yankee license and rule to the D.C. Circuit; Saginaw and others appealed the Consumers Power permit. In 1976 the Court of Appeals remanded both matters, holding the fuel-cycle rulemaking procedures inadequate, the Consumers Power environmental impact statement defective for omitting energy conservation, and the ACRS report insufficiently explained. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1977. The Commission is the successor agency to the Atomic Energy Commission under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. All licensing proceedings followed the two-stage process of construction permit followed by operating license under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with NEPA environmental reviews added after 1969.

In 1970, Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. obtained a permit from New York City to operate a cable television system in Manhattan. It entered into an agreement with the prior owner of a five-story apartment building at 303 West 105th Street to install cables on the roof in exchange for a flat fee of $50 per year. The installation included a cable slightly less than one-half inch in diameter and approximately 30 feet in length running along the roof about 18 inches above the surface. It also included directional taps measuring approximately 4 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches on the front and rear of the roof. Two large silver boxes were placed along the roof cables. Additional cable was extended another 4 to 6 feet. All components were attached by screws or nails penetrating the masonry at approximately two-foot intervals. In 1971, Jean Loretto purchased the building. At the time of purchase the cable installation was already in place as part of a larger network serving adjacent buildings, though Loretto did not discover its existence until after she took possession. Two years later Teleprompter connected a noncrossover line by dropping a cable down the front of the building to serve Loretto's own tenants. In 1973 the New York Legislature enacted section 828 of the Executive Law, effective January 1, 1973, which prohibited landlords from interfering with cable television installations on their property, barred landlords from demanding payment from tenants for permitting service, and limited any payment from a cable company to an amount the State Commission on Cable Television determined to be reasonable; the Commission later set the presumptive fee at a one-time $1 payment. In 1976 Loretto filed a class action against Teleprompter in New York Supreme Court on behalf of all owners of real property in the state on which Teleprompter had placed cable components, alleging trespass and a taking without just compensation and seeking damages and injunctive relief; the City of New York, which had granted Teleprompter an exclusive franchise for parts of Manhattan, intervened as a defendant. The Supreme Court, Special Term, granted summary judgment to Teleprompter and the city. The Appellate Division affirmed without opinion. The New York Court of Appeals upheld the statute. The Supreme Court of the United States noted probable jurisdiction.