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

Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence for one count of conspiracy to dispense controlled substances, 49 counts of unlawful dispensation of controlled substances, and one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. The convictions stemmed from defendant and codefendants' participation in a pill-mill scheme in Garden City. The court rejected defendant's claim that even if he wrote prescriptions for illegal purposes, he did not “dispense” controlled substances or conspire to “dispense” controlled substances, as provided in 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1); the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of the charges; the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting an expert's testimony and, in the alternative, any allegedly objectionable portion of the expert's conclusions did not prejudice defendant and was harmless error; even if the prosecutor’s comments were improper, there was no prejudice in light of the entire record; and there is no cumulative error. Finally, in regard to defendant's sentence, the court rejected defendant's claim that the district court clearly erred in calculating the drug quantity attributable to him; his sentence was substantively unreasonable, and the district court erred in sentencing him more severely for exercising his Sixth Amendment right to trial. The court affirmed the convictions and sentence. View "United States v. Azmat" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against Defendants Fabec and Lalo Scrolling Media for breach of contract, conversion, unjust enrichment, and related claims. On appeal, defendants challenged the district court's grant of default judgment against them. The court concluded that the district court had subject matter jurisdiction where plaintiffs satisfied the amount in controversy requirement; the district court acted well within its discretion in concluding that Fabec’s noncompliance with the district court’s pretrial instructions justified the entry of a default judgment; but because Fabec was denied the opportunity to cross-examine plaintiffs' counsel, the court reversed that portion of the default judgment awarding plaintiffs $43,500 in attorney’s fees and remanded the case to the district court to hold a hearing on the amount and reasonableness of the fees. The court otherwise affirmed the judgment. View "Giovanno v. Fabec" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit challenging the facial validity of Florida's no-surcharge law under the First Amendment. Florida makes it a second-degree misdemeanor for “[a] sellor or lessor in a sales or lease transaction” to “impose a surcharge on the buyer or lessee for electing to use a credit card,” Fla. Stat. 501.0117(1)–(2), while the State expressly allows “the offering of a discount for the purpose of inducing payment by cash.” The court concluded that it must strike down section 501.0117 as an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech. The court concluded that Florida’s no-surcharge law directly targets speech to indirectly affect commercial behavior. It does so by discriminating on the basis of the speech’s content, the identity of the speaker, and the message being expressed. Because the at-best plausible justifications on which the no-surcharge law rest provide no firm anchor, the law does not pass under any level of heightened First Amendment scrutiny View "Dana's Railroad Supply v. Attorney General" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a Florida death row inmate, appealed the denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner broke into a home and killed four people. A friend of the victims witnessed the murders but did not report the identity of the assailant until three years later. The witness testified that he had lied about not knowing the identity of the assailant because petitioner threatened to torture and kill his family should he talk. At trial, the state called a professor of sociology who testified that the witness's behavior was consistent with the behavior of someone who had received credible death threats. At issue is the admissibility of the professor's testimony. The Florida Supreme Court denied relief because it determined that it was not reasonably probable that the result of the proceeding would have been different even if the professor's testimony had been excluded. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the Florida Supreme Court's decision was reasonable. View "Williamson v. Florida Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Defendant, the CFO of Inno Vida, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to engage in financial transactions with criminally derived property, three counts of wire fraud, one count of major fraud against the United States, and three counts of making false statements to a federal agency. The government presented evidence that defendant maintained two sets of financial statements and used one set to mislead investors and the United States. The company's controller testified that, when the two sets of statements were prepared, he believed only the other set complied with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the controller's testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 701 because the testimony was rationally based on his own personal experiences. The court also concluded that the government presented sufficient evidence to convict defendant of each charge. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Toll" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against defendant in his individual capacity, alleging excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Defendant, a deputy with the sheriff's office, was providing back-up during a drug bust of a vehicle in which plaintiff was a passenger when he perceived that the vehicle was trying to run him down and fired shots at the car as he was falling to the ground. The district court denied defendant's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The court concluded that case law did not put defendant on notice that his use of deadly force violated any clearly established rights. Accordingly, the court concluded that defendant is entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law and reversed the district court's judgment. View "Singletary v. Vargas" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, five university employees, filed suit claiming that their grievance alleging mismanagement by their supervisor which preceded their termination is entitled to First Amendment protection. Plaintiffs claimed that they were terminated in retaliation for submitting a memorandum to university officials complaining about what they perceived to be poor leadership and mismanagement by the director of the Counseling and Testing Center of Georgia State University. The district court found that plaintiffs' memorandum constituted employee speech on an issue related to their professional duties, which is not subject to First Amendment protection. The court found that the district court correctly concluded that the speech for which plaintiffs seek First Amendment protection was made by them as employees and not as citizens, and on matters related to their employment and not public concern. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants. View "Alves v. Board of Regents" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that CashCall and Western Sky’s business practices exploit tribal sovereign immunity and illicitly avoid federal and state regulations. The district court denied CashCall's motion to compel arbitration. The Supreme Court has explained that where an arbitration agreement contains a delegation provision - committing to the arbitrator the threshold determination of whether the agreement to arbitrate is enforceable - the courts only retain jurisdiction to review a challenge to that specific provision. Absent such a challenge, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. 1 et seq., requires that the court treat a delegation provision as valid and permit the parties to proceed to arbitration. The court held that when a plaintiff seeks to challenge an arbitration agreement containing a delegation provision, he or she must challenge the delegation provision directly. Accordingly, the court concluded that the district court erred in neglecting to recognize the delegation provision in the agreement in this case. The court reversed and remanded. View "Parnell v. Cashcall, Inc." on Justia Law

Defendant, the Sheriff of Brooks County, appealed his convictions for federal-program embezzlement and for obstructing justice by hindering the communication of information about a potential federal offense to federal officials. The court concluded from the record that the government presented sufficient evidence to prove that Brooks County received more than $10,000 in federal funds during both 2007 and 2008 and therefore, the court affirmed defendant's conviction for federal-program embezzlement. However, the court vacated defendant's conviction for obstructing justice because the district court plainly erred in applying this circuit’s now-rejected possibility standard rather than the Supreme Court’s reasonable likelihood standard. Based on the trial evidence, the government did not meet its burden of proving that there was a reasonable likelihood that defendant’s misleading information about a potential federal offense would be communicated to federal authorities. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Chafin" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of two counts of sexual battery on a child, appealed the district court's dismissal of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus as untimely. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that because petitioner's petition for belated appeal did not involve collateral review of his conviction, it did not toll the one-year limitation period of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 28 U.S.C. 2244(d). View "Espinosa v. Secretary, Dep't of Corr." on Justia Law