Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The Eleventh Circuit granted Drummond's motion to amend this court's judgment and vacated its prior opinion, substituting it for this opinion. The court denied as moot Southern Coal's petition for rehearing en banc.In this appeal, the court affirmed the district court's judgment against Southern Coal in the amount of $6,860,000 plus $1,473,699.87 in prejudgment interest for a total of $8,333,699.87. The court concluded that the district court correctly found that Southern Coal was not excused from performing under the contract. Furthermore, the court concluded that the district court correctly found the price escalation clause unenforceable. However, the court reversed as to the issue of attorneys' fees, remanding to the district court to award a reasonable sum to the prevailing party, Drummond. View "Southern Coal Corp. v. Drummond Coal Sales, Inc." on Justia Law

Secure intending to open an Illinois coal gasification plant, contracted with Siemens. Secure would buy gasification equipment on a payment plan; Siemens would provide updates and repairs to the equipment. The price of natural gas fell in 2009. Secure had to change its business plan and could not keep up with its payments to Siemens. In 2010, other clients discovered problems with Siemens’s gasification equipment. Siemens began implementing substantial modifications to its gasifiers. Because Secure's plant was not operational, Siemens left Secure out of the loop. In 2015, Siemens decided to exit the gasification market but promised to continue supporting its existing projects, including Secure’s, which had never been opened or used.In 2016, Secure sued Siemens, alleging fraud- and contract-based claims. Siemens, which was still owed 13 million dollars under the contract, filed a breach of contract counterclaim. Years into the litigation, the court denied Secure leave to amend its complaint, then excluded Secure’s expert witness for relying on an unreliable methodology, and granted Siemens summary judgment on Secure’s claims. Before trial on Siemens’s counterclaim, the court excluded Secure's evidence in support of its breach-of-contract affirmative defense. The jury returned a full verdict in Siemens’s favor. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding Secure’s expert witness and its trial evidence and did not err in granting Siemens summary judgment. View "MidAmerica C2L Inc. v. Siemens Energy, Inc." on Justia Law

The district court found that Southern Coal had breached a contract with Drummond to transfer and store coal and awarded Drummond $6,860,000. Drummond appealed, arguing that the district court erred in finding a price escalation clause in the contract unenforceable. Southern Coal argued that Drummond’s actions excused Southern Coal’s obligation to pay Drummond under the contract. Both parties challenged the district’s court determination not to award attorneys’ fees to either party.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the judgment of $6,860,000. The district court correctly found that Southern Coal was not excused from performing under the contract and that the price escalation clause was unenforceable. Southern’s anticipatory repudiation argument lacked merit. The “root” of the Agreement was that Drummond would provide throughput services to Southern Coal. At no point did Drummond indicate that it would not perform that obligation. The district court correctly found the Agreement ambiguous and declined to reform the contract with respect to the price benchmarking clause. The court remanded for the award of reasonable attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party, Drummond. View "Southern Coal Corp. v. Drummond Coal Sales, Inc." on Justia Law

Couch falsely represented that he was not HIV positive. Jackson issued Couch a $500,000 life insurance policy. At the time, HIV-positive individuals had a greatly diminished life expectancy, resulting in high demand for HIV-positive insureds willing to engage in viatical settlements. Couch worked with a brokerage, which, months later, found a purchaser, Crum. The premiums were paid through the broker's premium reserve fund until after the two-year contestability period policy expired. Crum paid the premium for eight more years, letting the policy lapse in 2009. In 2016, Crum learned that Couch had died in 2005 and made a claim.Jackson sought a declaration that, under Georgia law, the policy was void as an illegal human life wagering contract. The district court found that Couch took out the policy with the intent to sell it to one without an insurable interest and that the policy was unenforceable as an illegal human life wagering contract under Georgia law. Crum argued that an illegal human life wagering contract involves the knowing, direct involvement of an identified third-party beneficiary at the time of its procurement. The Eleventh Circuit certified, to the Georgia Supreme Court, the question: whether a life insurance policy is void if it is procured by an individual on his own life for the sole purpose of selling the policy to a third party without an insurable interest in the insured, but without the complicity of the ultimate purchaser at the time of procurement. View "Jackson National Life Insurance Co. v. Crum" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs purchased tickets for Defendant’s commercial flights from Miami to Venezuela. Plaintiffs allege that their ticket prices reflected the “fully-paid contract” and that Defendant failed to sufficiently disclose any other fees required for passage. When checking in for their flights at the airport, however, Defendant informed Plaintiffs that they had to pay an additional $80 “Exit Fee” before being allowed to board their flights. Plaintiffs filed a breach of contract putative class action.The district court dismissed the suit, concluding that the Airline Deregulation Act preempted Plaintiffs’ breach of contract claim because it related to the price of the airline ticket and the Act’s preemption provision identifies actions relating to price as preempted. The Eleventh Circuit reversed, first holding that the Plaintiffs plausibly alleged facts that would establish diversity jurisdiction. Plaintiffs’ breach of contract claim seeks merely to enforce the parties’ private agreements regarding the cost of passage and does not invoke state laws or regulations to alter the agreed-upon price. The statute, 49 U.S.C. 41713(b)(1), provides: “[A] State . . . may not enact or enforce a law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service of an air carrier..” The suit falls within the category of cases protected from preemption by Supreme Court precedent. View "Cavalieri v. Avior Airlines C.A." on Justia Law

Vital produces and sells energy-drink products. In 2019, Vital hired Alfieri, Perry, LaRocca, and Maros. All four signed employment agreements containing restrictive covenants, including an agreement not to work for a competing company and not to solicit Vital employees while employed by and for one year after leaving Vital and “never to disclose” or utilize any of Vital’s confidential information. All four left Vital in 2020. Vital sued, alleging that they violated their non-compete covenants by working for Elegance, which sells a cannabidiol-infused caffeinated drink, within a year after leaving Vital; that Alfieri violated the employee non-solicitation covenant by encouraging the others to join Elegance; and that Elegance and Alfieri engaged in tortious interference with Vital’s contractual relationships with the other former employees.The district court determined that the restrictive covenants were enforceable under Florida law, rejecting an argument that Vital was required to “identify specific customers” to establish a legitimate business interest in its customer relationships. The court entered a preliminary injunction. The two time-limited provisions in the preliminary injunction had expired; the prohibition against using Vital’s confidential information had no time limit. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed as moot the portions of the appeal that concerned the expired provisions. The court vacated with respect to the unexpired provisions because Vital failed to prove its entitlement to preliminary relief. View "Vital Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Alfieri" on Justia Law

Anderson, the lead plaintiff in a putative class action against her life insurance provider, Wilco, alleged that in 2011-2016, the company breached the terms of her universal life insurance policy by increasing her monthly rate for impermissible reasons. Her policy provides for a “guaranteed maximum monthly cost of insurance rate” and a “current monthly cost of insurance rate.” The guaranteed rate is calculated “based on” Anderson’s “age, sex, and premium class.” The current rate, by contrast, “will be determined by the Company” but cannot exceed the guaranteed rate. As a typical universal life insurance policy, Anderson’s policy was a hybrid investment vehicle and life insurance policy. As her policy aged, Wilco began to increase Anderson’s current rate sharply; her policy’s accumulation value (essentially the investment earnings from which Anderson could cover her monthly payments) was wiped out, and Anderson failed to make the monthly payments out-of-pocket. Her policy lapsed, and Anderson sued.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of her complaint. The policy gave Wilco discretion to set Anderson’s current rate as long as that rate was less than the guaranteed rate and unambiguously gave Wilco discretion to set Anderson’s current monthly rate. View "Anderson v. Wilco Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

After a jury found that the manufacturer breached its duty to sell its products to certain customers exclusively through the distributor, the manufacturer appealed the denial of a directed verdict as to the status of two customers under the contract. The distributor cross-appealed a ruling that invalidated the contract's liquidated-damages clause and a ruling that prevented it from pursuing lost-profit damages.The Eleventh Circuit concluded that, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6, the closure of the clerk's office renders the office inaccessible and tolls the filing deadline, which makes the motion timely. Therefore, the district court did not err in denying the manufacturer's Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 motions. The court also concluded that the district court did not err when it ruled that the liquidated-damages clause was unenforceable because $2 million a breach was grossly disproportionate to the foreseeable actual damages, and the disproportionality amounts to an unenforceable penalty. The court further concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by excluding lost-profit damages because Circuitronix failed to disclose its computation of those damages. View "Circuitronix, LLC v. Kinwong Electronic (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against ATS, a red light camera vendor, alleging three counts of unjust enrichment after ATS charged plaintiff a fee for processing his payment of a traffic ticket issued through an ATS red light photo enforcement system used in the City of North Miami Beach.The Eleventh Circuit certified the following questions to the Supreme Court of Florida: (1) Did ATS violate Florida law when it imposed a five percent fee on individuals who chose to pay their red light traffic ticket with a credit card? In particular: a. Does the challenged fee constitute a "commission from any revenue collected from violations detected through the use of a traffic infraction detector" under Fla. Stat. 316.0083(1)(b)(4)? b. Was the fee assessed under Chapter 318 and therefore subject to section 318.121's surcharge prohibition? c. Was ATS a "money transmitter" that was required to be licensed under Fla. Stat. 560.204(1)? (2) If there was a violation of a Florida statute, can that violation support a claim for unjust enrichment? In particular: a. Does plaintiff's unjust enrichment claim fail because the statutes at issue provide no private right of action? b. Does plaintiff's unjust enrichment claim fail because he received adequate consideration in exchange for the challenged fee when he took advantage of the privilege of using his credit card to pay the penalty? View "Pincus v. American Traffic Solutions, Inc." on Justia Law

This appeal involves AC-USA's and Silikal's dispute over a shared trade secret consisting of the formula for 1061 SW, a flooring resin Silikal manufactured and sold (along with other flooring resins). AC-USA filed suit alleging that Silikal breached the agreement by selling 1061 SW without its written permission. A jury awarded AC-USA damages on each of its claims for common law breach of contract and for violation of the Georgia Trade Secrets Act of 1990 (GTSA) for misappropriation of the shared trade secret. The district court also awarded punitive damages on the misappropriation claim. The district court then denied Silikal's post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law on the misappropriation and contract claims, entering a final judgment for AC-USA for $5,861,415.The Eleventh Circuit rejected Silikal's argument that the district court lacked jurisdiction over its person, and thus affirmed the district court's denial of Silikal's motion to dismiss. However, the court concluded that AC-USA failed to prove its misappropriation claim because the evidence that Silikal misappropriated the trade secret is insufficient as a matter of law. Furthermore, AC-USA failed to prove that it sustained cognizable damages on its contract claim. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's judgment on the misappropriation claim and vacated the damages awarded on the contract claim. Finally, the court held that AC-USA is entitled to nominal damages and attorney's fees on its contract claim in a sum to be determined by the district court on remand. View "Acrylicon USA, LLC v. Silikal GMBH" on Justia Law