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

Plaintiff appealed from her $330,000 jury verdict against Krispy Creme after an employee of Krispy Kreme rear-ended plaintiff while she was stopped at a red light. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in not providing a curative instruction regarding defendants' opening statements because the statements did not refer to evidence of any specific offers to settle or compromise. Furthermore, defendants were properly allowed to argue that medical charges were unreasonably high, and the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting testimony of defendants' medical-rate experts.The court declined to resolve the medical records dispute. The court held that the district court's statement that plaintiff's unit-of-time argument was "not allowable under the law" was incorrect because the district court has complete discretion to disallow the argument or to allow it subject to safeguards. The court affirmed the district court's grant of judgment as a matter of law regarding the claim for lost future wages. Finally, the court found no conflict between Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and O.C.G.A. 9-11-68(e), and held that plaintiff was entitled to a bifurcated hearing. View "Showan v. Pressdee" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of correctional officers in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action brought by plaintiff, alleging excessive force and deliberate indifference claims. Plaintiff, a Florida inmate, alleged that the officers physically assaulted him and that one of them sprayed a chemical agent on him for 16 minutes after he was handcuffed and compliant. Plaintiff also alleged that three supervisory officers watched the attack without doing anything to intervene.The court held that the district court may have mistakenly relied on O'Bryant v. Finch, 637 F.3d 1207 (11th Cir. 2011), to exclude plaintiff's statements from consideration, or it may have viewed the evidence submitted by the officers as establishing the kind of record that no reasonable jury could disbelieve regardless of sworn statements to the contrary. Regardless, the district court erred in not accepting plaintiff's version of events as true for purposes of summary judgment. View "Sears v. Roberts" on Justia Law

After a government contractor, Security Walls, terminated two employees, the Board determined that the contractor violated the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed and held that the Board did not abuse its discretion by declining to reopen the administrative record to allow the contractor to establish that its contract with the IRS required it to fire the guards. In this case, the contractor did not dispute the Board's finding that no one at the IRS ordered the guards' removal; so the contractor's argument that the IRS would have required as much was beside the point; and thus the contractor's affidavit was irrelevant. View "Security Walls, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of Hard Candy's request for a jury trial in an action under the Lanham Act. In this case, Hardy Candy sought every remedy permitted by the Act besides actual damages: an injunction to prevent future infringement, an accounting and the disgorgement of profits that the defendant made from the allegedly infringing goods, and declaratory relief, along with fees and costs.The court held that the remedy of an accounting and disgorgement of profits for trademark infringement is equitable in nature and has long been considered that way, and thus a plaintiff seeking the defendant's profits in lieu of actual damages is not entitled to a jury trial. The panel also held that the district court did not err in its merits determinations on infringement and fair use. View "Hard Candy, LLC v. Anastasia Beverly Hills, Inc." on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's orders denying INPROTSA's petition to vacate and confirming an international arbitral award issued for Del Monte. The court had subject matter jurisdiction over the petition to vacate because Congress intended 9 U.S.C. 203 to be read consistently with section 205 as conferring subject-matter jurisdiction over actions or proceedings sufficiently related to agreements or awards subject to the Convention.The court held that the district court did not err by dismissing the petition to vacate, because INPROTSA did not assert a valid defense under the Convention in light of Industrial Risk Insurers v. M.A.N. Gutehoffnungshütte GmbH, 141 F.3d 1434, 1446 (11th Cir. 1998). Even if the district court were not bound by Industrial Risk, the petition to vacate would warrant denial, because the district court did not exceed its power by reasonably construing its own rules as barring substantive reconsideration of the merits of its damages award. Finally, the court held that the district court did in fact rule on the merits of INPROTSA's public policy defenses and held that enforcing the arbitral award did not offend public policy. View "Inversiones Y Procesadora Tropical Inprotsa, S.A. v. Del Monte International GMBH" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit sua sponte vacated its previous opinion and publish this opinion in its place.This appeal involved the approval of a class action settlement against Godiva for violating the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) by printing more digits of his credit card number than the Act allowed. Objectors challenged the class settlement reached by plaintiff and Godiva, but the district court approved the settlement, class counsel's request for attorney's fees, and an incentive award for plaintiff. The court affirmed.The court held that Congress judged the risk of identity theft plaintiff suffered to be sufficiently concrete to confer standing, and the risk of identity theft bears a close enough relationship to the common law tort of breach of confidence to make plaintiff's injury concrete. In this case, plaintiff alleged he suffered a heightened risk of identity theft as a result of a FACTA violation and his allegation was sufficient under Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016). The court declined to follow the Third Circuit's rule that actual identity theft was required to bring a FACTA claim. Rather, the court held that Congress conferred the procedural right in FACTA to reduce the risk of identity theft. View "Muransky v. Godiva Chocolatier, Inc." on Justia Law

Fresh Results, an American company, filed suit against ASF Holland, a Dutch company, in the Southern District of Florida, alleging that ASF Holland had falsified inspection reports and fraudulently deflated the price of the shipment of blueberries. The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court's grant of ASF Holland's motion to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the Netherlands was a more convenient forum.The court held that the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the complaint for forum non conveniens because it failed to consider all relevant public factors for each forum after determining that the private factors for the litigants were not in equipoise. Furthermore, the district court must correct two errors when it reweighs the private factors on remand. First, the district court must reconsider the factor of relative ease of access to sources of proof; and second, the district court was distracted by a red herring when it reasoned that the enforceability of a possible judgment favored dismissal because no treaty exists between the United States and the Netherlands that governs the reciprocal enforcement of judgments. View "Fresh Results, LLC v. ASF Holland, B.V." on Justia Law

After defendant was charged with 23 counts arising from a fraudulent scheme, he agreed to return to Russia pursuant to a settlement agreement with the government and to abandon his lawful permanent resident status in the United States. The day after defendant boarded a flight to Russia, the government moved to dismiss the indictment.The Eleventh Circuit dismissed defendant's appeal of the district court's grant of the government's motion to dismiss the indictment. The court held that the order did nothing more than dismiss the indictment against defendant and he lacked standing to complain about it. In this case, defendant presented no case or controversy and the dismissal caused him no injury. View "United States v. Pavlenko" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit dismissed this insurance dispute case, holding that Gerber, as assignee of the insured, did not have standing to bring a declaratory judgment class action against GEICO. In this case, the action did not assert any claims for money damages and there was no substantial likelihood that the insured would suffer a future injury. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing. View "A&M Gerber Chiropractic LLC v. Geico General Insurance Co." on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to a single count charging him with possession of a firearm and ammunition by a prohibited person: an alien unlawfully in the United States. The district court did not err by applying a base offense level of 20, because defendant was a prohibited person at the time of the offense and the offense involved a semiautomatic firearm in "close proximity" to a high-capacity magazine under USSG 2K2.1, App. Notes 2. In this case, defendant's locked Colt AR-15 was in a gun case in his bedroom, and high-capacity magazines were in a gun-range bag no more than ten feet away. View "United States v. Gordillo" on Justia Law