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

Plaintiff filed suit against Tugalo, his cousin and Tugalo President Thomas Gilmer, and Tugalo's directors in a 17-count complaint, alleging that Gilmer misappropriated corporate funds and that the company's board let it happen. The district court rejected plaintiff's substantive claims and declined to adjudicate three equitable claims.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decisions to grant summary judgment to Tugalo on plaintiff's fraud claim for lack of evidence of justifiable reliance (and, separately, to deny plaintiff's motion to defer ruling on the fraud claim). The court also affirmed the district court's decision to deny plaintiff's request to amend his complaint after the pleading-amendment deadline. However, the court reversed the district court's decision to abstain under the Burford abstention doctrine from adjudicating plaintiff's judicial-dissolution count. In this case, there was, and is, no ongoing state administrative proceeding or, for that matter, even any preexisting action by a Georgia state court or executive official to dissolve Tugalo. The court remanded for consideration of that count along with his other two equitable counts. View "Deal v. Tugalo Gas Company, Inc." on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit held that evidence that an employee makes three to five phone calls per week to out-of-state customers and vendors provides a legally sufficient basis for a reasonable jury to find that the employee falls within the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The court vacated the district court's judgment concluding otherwise and remanded for further proceedings. In this case, there is no contention that plaintiff produced goods for commerce and a rational jury could have found that plaintiff was engaged in commerce. Therefore, plaintiff was covered under the FLSA. View "St. Elien v. All County Environmental Services, Inc." on Justia Law

In a case involving an alleged multi-billion-dollar conspiracy to defraud the Venezuelan state-owned oil company known as PDVSA, the Trust filed suit alleging that it had authority to do so as an assignee of PDVSA pursuant to a trust agreement which, through a choice-of-law clause, is governed by New York law. The district court adopted in part the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge and dismissed the action without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of Article III standing. The district court determined that the Trust did not properly authenticate the trust agreement and, even if the trust agreement were authenticated and admissible, it was void as champertous under New York law.The Eleventh Circuit assumed without deciding that the Trust made out a prima facie case of authenticity for the trust agreement at the Rule 12(b)(1) proceedings and that the district court erred by ruling that the trust agreement was inadmissible. The court concluded that, based on its review of the record, the district court may have erred procedurally in definitively resolving the question of champerty at the Rule 12(b)(1) stage because that question likely implicated the merits of the Trust's claims. However, the court concluded that the Trust does not make this procedural argument on appeal and therefore has abandoned any procedural obligations to the champerty ruling. On the merits, the court applied the champerty bar to the trust agreement under New York law in light of Justinian Capital SPC v. WestLB AG, 65 N.E.3d 1253, 1255 (N.Y. 2016), and concluded that the Trust's primary purpose in acquiring PDVSA's claims was to bring this action. Accordingly, the court affirmed the dismissal of the complaint. View "PDVSA US Litigation Trust v. Lukoil Pan Americas, LLC" on Justia Law

Defendants Mayweather, Fluelllen, Williams, and Tucker appealed their convictions for Hobbs Act extortion and attempted distribution of cocaine and methamphetamine. Defendants were corrections officers caught in an FBI sting operation for accepting bribes to smuggle contraband into prison.The Eleventh Circuit concluded that Williams and Fluellen were entitled to an entrapment defense jury instruction, the omission of which was reversible error. Therefore, the court reversed Williams and Fluellen's convictions and remanded for a new trial. The court also concluded that Tucker and Mayweather were not entitled to an entrapment instruction, and thus affirmed their respective attempted drug distribution convictions. Finally, the court concluded that it was reversible error not to provide the jury with any definition of "official act" for purposes of the Hobbs Act extortion counts. Accordingly, the court reversed the Hobbs Act extortion convictions as to all four defendants and remand for a new trial as to those counts. View "United States v. Mayweather" on Justia Law

After taxpayers filed suit challenging the IRS's deficiency findings and penalties, the tax court sustained the deficiency determinations but rejected the accuracy-related penalties. In this case, the Miccosukee Tribe shared profits from its casino with Tribe members and encouraged its members to hide their payments from the IRS. The taxpayers here followed the Tribe's advice, and they are now subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax deficiencies.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the tax court's judgment and rejected taxpayers' assertion that any taxes are barred by the Miccosukee Settlement Act that exempted an earlier land transfer from taxation. Even if the court interpreted the Act as providing an indefinite tax exemption for the "lands" conveyed under it or the agreement, the casino revenues still do not fit the bill because the casino's land was not conveyed under either the Act or the agreement. Furthermore, an exemption for "lands" only exempts income "derived directly" from those lands, and this court has already held that casino revenues do "not derive directly from the land." The court also rejected taxpayers' assertion that the payments are merely nontaxable lease payments from the casino, citing factual and legal problems. Rather, the court concluded that the payments are taxable income. View "Clay v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue" on Justia Law

Three plaintiffs, seeking to represent a putative class of 3,000 nursing facility residents, filed a class action complaint against (MMI) and its president in Florida state court. After defendants removed to the district court, the district court removed back to state court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA).The Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded for further proceedings, concluding that the district court erred in finding that the evidence was sufficient to establish that two-thirds of the putative class were Florida citizens. The court explained that the studies, surveys, and census data that plaintiffs provided, which do not directly involve plaintiffs in this case, are not sufficient to establish that a certain percentage of the plaintiff class are citizens of Florida. The court agreed with the district court's conclusion that plaintiffs satisfied the "significant defendant" requirement in 28 U.S.C. 1332(d)(4)(A)(i)(II)(aa). Because the court found that plaintiffs failed to meet the local controversy exception's state citizenship requirement, however, the district court erred in remanding this matter to state court. Finally, to the extent that the remand order was based on the discretionary exception, the district court erred in failing to find that MMI is a primary defendant and not a Florida citizen. View "Smith v. Bokor" on Justia Law

On its own motion, the Eleventh Circuit vacated its previously issued opinion and substituted the following opinion in its place.Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against two police officers, alleging that the officers used excessive force when apprehending him. After a jury returned a verdict for the officers, the district court entered judgment in favor of them. Although represented by counsel, plaintiff, acting pro se, filed a motion for new trial pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59 on January 26, 2018. The district court struck plaintiff's motion as an unauthorized pro se filing by a represented party on February 27, 2018, and subsequently denied a motion for reconsideration filed by plaintiff's counsel.The court held that a pro se motion for a new trial that is stricken because the movant is represented by counsel tolls the time for filing a notice of appeal of the judgment under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4)(A). In this case, the court concluded that plaintiff's Rule 59 motion for a new trial tolled the time for him to file a notice of appeal, his notice of appeal was therefore timely, and the court has jurisdiction over his appeal. However, because plaintiff's claims are meritless, the court affirmed the judgment.The court joined its fellow circuits in finding that Ohler v. United States, 529 U.S. 753, 755 (2000), applies to civil cases and concluded that plaintiff waived his objection to the admissibility of the Hotel Video by preemptively agreeing to play the video at the outset of the trial as a joint exhibit and referring to the video throughout trial. The court also concluded that the admission of comments made by the officers' counsel during trial do not warrant a new trial; concluded that plaintiff failed to show plain error in the district court's questioning and commentary; concluded that the district court's summary denial did not warrant a new trial; and concluded that the district court did not err in striking plaintiff's pro se motion for new trial. View "Ruiz v. Wing" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 petition collaterally attacking his conviction for conspiracy to possess a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence or drug-trafficking crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. 924(o). Defendant argued that conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery no longer qualifies as a valid crime-of-violence predicate after United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 2336 (2019), and Brown v. United States, 942 F.3d 1069, 1075 (11th Cir. 2019), and that his conviction must be vacated based on the possibility that the jury relied on an invalid predicate and thus convicted him of a non-existent crime.The court concluded that defendant cannot overcome the procedural default of his claim (which he raises for the first time on collateral attack), nor could he otherwise prevail on the merits. The court explained that all of the section 924(o) predicates are inextricably intertwined, arising out of the same cocaine robbery scheme. On this record, the jury could not have found that defendant conspired to possess a firearm in furtherance of a Hobbs Act conspiracy without also finding that he conspired to possess a firearm in furtherance of his attempted Hobbs Act robbery, as well as in furtherance of conspiring and attempting to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and in furtherance of attempting a carjacking. Each of these crimes remains a lawful predicate for the section 924(o) conviction. Therefore, the court concluded that defendant cannot show actual prejudice or actual innocence to excuse his procedural default. Furthermore, the overlapping factual relationship between the alternative predicate offenses renders any error in the jury instructions harmless. View "Granda v. United States" on Justia Law

After debtor voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court determined that he was transferring assets and defrauding creditors. The bankruptcy court removed him as the debtor-in-possession and appointed a trustee to administer the estate. Debtor appealed, arguing that the trustee's appointment violated his Thirteenth Amendment right to be free from "involuntary servitude"—because, he said, under the trustee's direction, all of his post-petition earnings would be put into the bankruptcy estate for the benefit of his creditors. The bankruptcy court dismissed debtor's Thirteenth Amendment claim as unripe, and the district court similarly held that debtor could not show an injury-in-fact sufficient to confer Article III standing.The Eleventh Circuit reversed and held that debtor's loss of authority and control over his estate, which he suffered as a result of his removal as the debtor-in-possession, constitutes an Article III-qualifying injury-in-fact that is both traceable to the bankruptcy court's appointment of the trustee and redressable by an order vacating that appointment. Therefore, debtor has standing to pursue his Thirteenth Amendment claim. The court left it to the district court on remand to consider the merits of debtor's arguments. View "Breland v. United States" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit granted defendant's motion for panel rehearing, vacated the original opinion in this appeal, and substituted in its place the following opinion.The court affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress the evidence officers found in an investigatory stop and the statements he made to the officers. In this case, the officers saw defendant and another individual at 1:00 a.m. in a car that was parked in the front yard of a home; suspecting that the men might be trying to steal the car, the officers parked near it and approached defendant, who was in the driver's seat; when defendant opened the door, an officer immediately smelled marijuana; and an ensuing search of the car revealed ammunition and firearms.The court held that the officers did not violate defendant's right to be free from unreasonable seizures because defendant's interactions with the officers was an initially consensual encounter that did not implicate the Fourth Amendment. The court explained that a reasonable person in defendant's position would have felt free to leave. Here, the officers parked alongside the car with enough space for him to drive away. When the officers approached defendant to speak to him, they did not convey that defendant was required to comply. Defendant's other arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. The court clarified that race may not be a factor in the threshold seizure inquiry. View "United States v. Knights" on Justia Law