Articles Posted in Court Decisions

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May 31 – June 4, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 01, 2010 Carr v. US, No. 08–1301 The Seventh Circuit’s affirmance of defendant’s conviction for failure to register as a sex offender in Indiana under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act is reversed where 18 U.S.C. section 2250 did not apply to sex offenders whose interstate travel occurred before SORNA’s effective date.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 01, 2010 Berghuis v. Thompkins, No. 08–1470 In a murder prosecution, the Sixth Circuit’s reversal of the district court’s denial of petitioner’s habeas petition is reversed where the state court’s decision rejecting petitioner’s Miranda claim was correct under de novo review and therefore necessarily reasonable under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s more deferential standard of review because petitioner’s silence during his interrogation did not invoke his right to remain silent.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, June 02, 2010 US v. Roa-Medina, No. 08-2490 District court’s denial of defendant’s motion to modify his sentence of 72-months for crack and other drug related offenses is affirmed where: 1) defendant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment that was “based on a sentencing range” of 120 months to 135 months, and his reduced sentence represented a 40% deviation from the bottom of that range; and 2) defendant’s sentencing range has not been “lowered” within the meaning of section 3582(c)(2).
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May 31 – June 4, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 01, 2010 Levin v. Commerce Energy, Inc., No. 09–223 In an action by independent natural gas marketers (IMs) who offered to sell natural gas to Ohio consumers against the Ohio Tax Commissioner (Commissioner), alleging discriminatory taxation of IMs and their patrons in violation of the Commerce and Equal Protection Clauses, the Sixth Circuit’s reversal of the district court’s dismissal of the action is reversed where, under the comity doctrine, a taxpayer’s complaint of allegedly discriminatory state taxation, even when framed as a request to increase a competitor’s tax burden, must proceed originally in state court.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, June 03, 2010 Chaparro v. Ruiz-Hernandez, No. 08-1989 In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit brought by a group of twenty-two contract employees against a Puerto Rican municipality and its officers, a grant of plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded where: 1) plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of continued employment; 2) a one-year term of employment with Puerto Rican government bodies is generally considered a protected property interest for procedural due process purposes; and 3) defendants’ claim that plaintiffs were not deprived of protected property interests without due process of law because the process Puerto Rico provided was adequate is rejected.

U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, June 04, 2010 Harrington v. Cty. of Suffolk, No. 09-3911 In an action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. section 1983 asserting that defendants deprived plaintiffs of a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause by conducting an inadequate investigation into their son’s fatal traffic accident, the dismissal of the action is affirmed where plaintiffs had no property interest in an adequate police investigation.
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In an earlier posting on this blog we reported that on February 23, 2010 a divided Panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, New York Supreme Court ruled in People v. Correa (2010 NY Slip Op. 01533) that the 2004 merger of the criminal courts in the Bronx into a single court with jurisdiction to handle both felonies and misdemeanors is unconstitutional. That Appellate Division ruling has now been overturned by the New York Court of Appeals in a single 6-0 opinion on June 3, 2010 that decided three cases–People v. Correa, People v. Fernandez, and People v. Mack, upholding administrative experiments that have New York State Supreme Court judges presiding over misdemeanor cases as well as felonies within a merged Bronx Supreme Court Criminal Division and an Integrated Domestic Violence (IDV) Court in Brooklyn.

The high court’s ruling regarding IDV Courts also applies to 44 other IDV Courts throught the State of New York. that centralizes the handling of all aspects of domestic disputes, including criminal charges, in one court. The judges noted that neither the New York Constitution nor its statutes call into question the legality of either court addressed in this opinion.

See also the following articles which discuss this New York Court of Appeals opinion and its implications:

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United States v. Marcus, No. 08-1341, 130 S.Ct. ___(may 24, 2010).

A Service from the ABA Criminal Justice Section, http://www.abanet.org/crimjust

This summary has been created by Professor Rory K. Little (littler@uchastings.edu), U.C. Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, who has long presented “Annual Review of the Supreme Court’s Term” program at the ABA’s Annual Meetings. It represents his personal, unofficial views of the Justices’ opinions. The original opinions should be consulted for their authoritative content.

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May 24, 2010.

ANTITRUST & TRADE REGULATION, COMMERCIAL LAW, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, SPORTS LAW, TRADEMARK American Needle, Inc. v. Nat’l Football League, No. 08–661 In an antitrust action challenging the NFL’s grant to Reebok of an exclusive license to create apparel incorporating the NFL’s intellectual property, the Seventh Circuit’s affirmance of summary judgment for defendants is reversed where the alleged conduct related to licensing of intellectual property constituted concerted action that was not categorically beyond the coverage of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. ..

ATTORNEY’S FEES, CIVIL PROCEDURE, ERISA, HEALTH LAW, INSURANCE LAW, LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW Hardt v. Reliance Std. Life Ins. Co., No. 09–448 In an action alleging that defendant violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) by wrongfully denying her benefits claim, the Fourth Circuit’s order vacating the district court’s award of attorney’s fees to plaintiff is reversed where: 1) a fee claimant need not be a “prevailing party” to be eligible for an attorney’s fees award under 29 U.S.C. section 1132(g)(1); and 2) a court may award fees and costs under section 1132(g)(1), as long as the fee claimant has achieved some degree of success on the merits.
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May 17-21, 2010
U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, May 17, 2010 Coggeshall v. Massachusetts Bd. of Registration of Psychologists, No. 09-1111 In plaintiffs’ 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Psychologists, claiming multiple challenges to the constitutionality of the Board’s actions and the regulations involving plaintiff-psychologist’s evaluation of a seven-year-old boy, district court’s dismissal of the action is affirmed where: 1) the members of the Board, individually, are shielded from the damages claims by reason of quasi-judicial immunity; 2) district court’s dismissal on abstention ground is affirmed as this case is a paradigm for Younger abstention; and 3) third party lacks standing to pursue his nonmonetary claims as he suffered no legally cognizable injury in fact as a result of the Board’s actions.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, May 20, 2010 Gorelik v. Costin , No. 09-1192 In plaintiff’s 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against the president of the New Hampshire State Board of Medicine, arising from the Board’s mischaracterization of plaintiff’s temporary license as disciplinary action rather than as “Board action” and posted on the Board’s website and in newsletters, judgment of the district court is affirmed where: 1) the issuance of plaintiff’s temporary license and the posting of the newsletter labeling it a “disciplinary action” occurred eleven years before filing of the complaint, which is well outside the limitations period; and 2) plaintiff has failed to identify any retaliatory decision or action by the Board in response to her attempts to avail herself of administrative remedies.

U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 18, 2010 Adams v. Zelotes, No. 07-1853 In an action challenging the constitutionality of a Bankruptcy Code provision, 11 U.S.C. section 526(a)(4), alleging that the provision’s prohibition on debt relief agencies advising clients to incur additional debt in contemplation of bankruptcy violated plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, an injunction in favor of plaintiff is reversed where the Supreme Court’s decision in Milavetz directly foreclosed plaintiff’s as-applied challenge by narrowly construing the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act to avoid his First Amendment complaint.
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May 17-21, 2010
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U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, May 17, 2010 Parsley v. US, No. 09-1690 District court’s denial of defendant’s motion under 28 U.S.C. section 2255 motion to vacate his sentence for his drug related conviction is affirmed as the district court’s conclusion that trial counsel did not render ineffective assistance are largely uncontested and not clearly erroneous. .

U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 21, 2010 US v. Oluwanisola, No. 08-4442 Defendant’s convictions for conspiring to import heroin into the U.S., conspiring to possess with intent to distribute heroin, and possessing heroin with intent to distribute are vacated where the district court erred in applying United States v. Barrow, 400 F.3d 109 (2d Cir. 2005), to whether certain evidence elicited at trial would open the door to the admission of proffer statements.

U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, May 21, 2010 Johnston v. Maha, No. 08-6048 In a civil rights action regarding the conditions of plaintiff-inmate’s confinement, plaintiff’s motion for appointment of counsel in his appeal of a grant of defendants’ motion for summary judgment is granted where plaintiff’s claims met the threshold standard of likely merit and presented issues of substantial complexity such that appointment of counsel would be of significant benefit to the court.
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