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

After defendant murdered a police officer in a Florida cemetery, he was convicted under the federal witness-tampering statute and convicted of a firearm during the commission of a federal crime of violence. On appeal, defendant challenged his life sentence, contending that the district court had no authority to resentence him on the remaining firearm count and, even if it did, the imposition of an enhanced sentence on that count violated his due process rights. The court affirmed defendant's life sentence because the district court had the authority to resentence defendant on Count 2 following the reversal of his conviction on Count 1 and because the life sentence imposed on the sole surviving count was neither more severe than defendant's total original sentence nor the product of vindictiveness. View "United States v. Fowler" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell crack cocaine. On appeal, defendant challenged the denial of his 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2) motion to reduce his sentence based on Amendment 750 of the Sentencing Guidelines. Because defendant's Amendment 706 modification properly resulted from his career offender status, the district court did not err in denying his motion to modify his sentence under Amendment 750. In light of defendant's status as a career offender, Amendment 750 did not lower his offense level after the Amendment 706 modification, and thus did not alter the guideline range. Therefore, the district court correctly concluded that it had no discretion to lower his sentence. The court rejected defendant's argument that Freeman v. United States overruled United States v. Moore. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order. View "United States v. Tellis" on Justia Law

The United States investigated Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minors, but failed to confer with the victims before entering a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein. Two victims filed suit under the Crime Victims' Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. 3771, to enforce their rights and sought to discover the correspondence between Epstein's attorneys and the United States regarding the non-prosecution agreement. Epstein and his attorneys intervened to object to that discovery as privileged. The district court overruled the objection and ordered disclosure. Intervenors appealed and the victims moved to dismiss. The court concluded that it had jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal and that the plea negotiations were not privileged from disclosure where Federal Rule of Evidence 410 provided no privilege for plea negotiations, the intervenors waived any work-product privilege, and the court declined to recognize a common-law privilege for plea negotiations. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Doe v. Black" on Justia Law

Amendments to the Commodity Exchange Act, Pub. L. No. 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376, made by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 purported to expand the enforcement authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Dodd-Frank amendments authorize the Commission to regulate retail commodity transactions offered "on a leveraged or margined basis, or financed by the offeror, the counterparty, or a person acting in concert with the officer or counterparty on a similar basis." In light of the district court's factual findings and legal conclusions with which the court agreed, the court held that the Commission has enforcement authority over these transactions, and no exception applied. The court affirmed the district court's grant of the preliminary injunction because the Commission had pleaded a prima facie case of a violation of the Act. View "U.S. Commodity Futures v. Martin, Jr., et al." on Justia Law

Interline purchased a series of commercial liability policies from Chartis. The policies contained an exclusion for violations of any statute that addresses transmitting any material or information (the "Exclusion"). Interline was sued for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. 227 et seq., and Chartis denied coverage based on the Exclusion. The court affirmed the district court's grant of Chartis's motion for judgment on the pleadings where the Exclusion was no ambiguous and the Exclusion was not against public policy. View "Interline Brands, Inc., et al. v. Chartis Specialty Ins. Co." on Justia Law

David Knowlton, a property owner at the Abaco Club, fell to his death from a rocky cliff (the Point) adjacent to defendant's Abaco Club property on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. Plaintiff filed suit alleging that defendants breached their duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the safety of Knowlton as an invitee while on defendants' property. The district court granted defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law and denied defendants' motion for a new trial. The court concluded that the district court failed to consider defendants' separate duty to use ordinary care to maintain the Abaco Club property in a reasonably safe manner to protect against foreseeable dangers on the Point by means other than posting a warning. Therefore, the district court erred in granting judgment as a matter of law to defendants on the duty owed to Knowlton as an invitee. The district court's instructions to the jury were also erroneous in a similar respect. The court also concluded that the district court erred in granting defendants judgment as a matter of law following trial; admitting toxicology evidence was not error; the district court abused its discretion in not finding that the verdict was the result of an impermissible compromise; and plaintiff was entitled to a new trial on both liability and damages. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Collins v. Marriott Int'l, Inc., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against BHDR under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., alleging that by failing to remedy certain flaws in the design and construction of the District Universal Boulevard Apartments (the District), BHDR discriminated against people with handicaps in violation of 42 U.S.C. 3604(f)(1)-(2). The court held that the FHA's design-and-construction guidelines do not provide a standard for determining whether discrimination under section 3604(f)(1) and (f)(2) exists outside of the design and construction contexts. Despite the fact that BHDR was not involved in the design or construction of the District, all of plaintiff's claims that BHDR violated subsections (f)(1) and (f)(2) were alleged through the lens of the design-and-construction guidelines in subsection (f)(3). The court held that an FHA plaintiff cannot establish the discrimination of a defendant who was uninvolved in the design or construction of a dwelling by reference to the guidelines at section 3604(f)(3)(C). Therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to BHDR. View "Harding v. Orlando Apartments, LLC, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff (the customer) filed suit against State Street (the custodian bank), alleging in essence that it had a duty to notify him that the securities in his account were worthless. The district court granted State Street's motion to dismiss the contract claims on the ground that State Street had a merely administrative role in managing plaintiff's accounts and thus owed him no duty to guard against his investment advisor's misconduct. The district court concluded that plaintiff's negligence claims were barred by Florida's economic loss rule and plaintiff had not sufficiently alleged knowledge on the part of State Street in regards to the aiding and abetting claims. The court affirmed, holding that, under these facts, the custodian bank breached no duty, contractual or otherwise, by accepting on behalf of its customer securities that later turn out to be fraudulent and listing those securities on monthly account statements issued to the customer. Plaintiff's allegations failed to state claims for breach of contract; plaintiff failed to establish that State Street owed him an independent duty to monitor the investments in his account, verify their market value, or ensure they were in valid form; therefore, he failed to state valid negligence claims; plaintiff's allegations were insufficient to state a claim for aiding and abetting; and plaintiff's claims for breach of fiduciary duty and negligent misrepresentation also failed. View "Lamm v. State Street Bank and Trust" on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the denial of his motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, filed under 28 U.S.C. 2255. The court granted a certificate of appealability concerning whether defendant's trial counsel was ineffective for failing to advise him during plea negotiations that a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1591(b) carried a statutory mandatory minimum sentence as well as potential life term of supervised release; and for failing to object that impermissible double counting occurred at sentencing. The court concluded that petitioner failed to establish that counsel's performance prejudiced him. The court also concluded that the record undeniably established that petitioner refused to accept a plea deal that could have resulted in fewer than five years in prison. The record unambiguously established that petitioner was entitled to no relief and the district court was not required to conduct an evidentiary hearing. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Orley v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against her former employer, Hartford, alleging claims of interference and retaliation under the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), 29 U.S.C. 2601, et seq. The court rejected plaintiff's interpretation of "prospective" FMLA rights and concluded that section 825.220(d)'s prohibition of "prospective" waiver means only that an employee may not waive FMLA rights, in advance, for violations of the statute that have yet to occur. Here, the conduct plaintiff complained about all happened before she signed the Severance Agreement. In signing the agreement and accepting her severance benefits, plaintiff settled claims based on past employer conduct, and so the district court did not err in concluding that the agreement was valid and that it entitled Hartford to judgment as a matter of law. The court also concluded that the district court did not err in concluding that plaintiff executed the Severance Agreement knowingly and voluntarily. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Paylor v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co." on Justia Law