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

A 2004 judgment entered against John Zelaya was rendered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and was registered in the Southern District of Florida. ZC was not party to the suit that led to the judgment and, instead, the prevailing parties assigned their interests in the judgment to ZC. ZC then sought a writ of execution against Zelaya from the Southern District of Florida. In 2010, Zelaya deposited the full amount of the judgment into the district court's registry where the district court then dissolved writs of garnishment against all of the banks at issue, granted Zelaya's motion for a satisfaction judgment, and awarded attorney fees and costs to Deutsche Bank. The court concluded that it had jurisdiction over the consolidated appeal; the district court did not err in allowing Zelaya to deposit the disputed funds into the court's registry; the district court did not err in granting Zelaya's motion for a satisfaction of the judgment; the district court did not err in its award of attorney fees and costs to Deutsche Bank; and, therefore, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Zelaya/Capital Int'l Judgment, LLC v. Zelaya, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a Florida resident, wanted to file suit against his doctor for medical negligence. Before filing suit, plaintiff had to comply with Florida's presuit requirements. At issue was whether the presuit authorizations in Fla. Stat. 766.1065, requiring that plaintiff execute a written authorization form for release from protected health information, is preempted by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 45 C.F.R. 164.508, 164.5. The court concluded that the written authorization form required in section 766.1065 fully complied with HIPAA and, therefore, there was no federal preemption of section 766.1065. The court reversed the judgment of the district court holding otherwise. View "Murphy v. Dulay, et al." on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Slovakia, sought review of the BIA's order denying her motion to reopen removal proceedings, and petitioned for review of the BIA's order denying her motion to reconsider and to reopen her removal proceedings. The court dismissed the petitions for review for lack of jurisdiction because the BIA's battered spouse determination under 8 U.S.C. 1154(a)(1)(A)(iii) was discretionary and the court similarly lacked jurisdiction to review the BIA's order denying petitioner's subsequent motion to reconsider and reopen. View "Butalova v. U.S. Attorney General" on Justia Law

Hundreds of property owners filed toxic tort suits against P&W, an aircraft and rocket engine manufacturer, for damages resulting from purported groundwater contamination. The district court granted P&W's motions for Lone Pine case management orders. The district court subsequently dismissed plaintiffs' second amended complaints with prejudice and plaintiffs appealed. The court concluded, as a general matter, that it is not legally appropriate for a district court to issue a Lone Pine order requiring factual support for the plaintiffs' claims before it has determined that those claims survive a motion to dismiss under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. Whatever the general propriety and/or utility of Lone Pine orders, they should not be used as (or become) the platforms for pseudo-summary judgment motions at a time when the case is not at issue and the parties have not engaged in reciprocal discovery. On the merits, the court held that the grounds for dismissal urged by P&W and relied upon the district court did not warrant dismissal of the second amended complaints. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Adinolfe, et al. v. United Technologies Corp." on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of malice murder and armed robbery, appealed the dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas petition as untimely. The court concluded that the district court correctly determined that the petition was untimely under section 2244(d)(1)(D), and that petitioner failed to show that learning of his Boykin rights from an overheard conversation of an inmate librarian was an extraordinary circumstance warranting equitable tolling for his delayed filing of his habeas petition for more than fifteen years from the expiration of his statute of limitations. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Cole v. Georgia SP Warden" on Justia Law

Petitioner sought review of the BIA's dismissal of his appeal from the IJ's order of removal under 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). Petitioner argued that his Florida state conviction for aggravated fleeing was not an aggravated felony. The court concluded that, under relevant Florida law and considering the factual circumstances of the proceedings related to petitioner's aggravated fleeing offense, the probation revocation and resentencing resulted in a prison term of at least one year, in satisfaction of the aggravated felony statute, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(F). Further, the Florida state conviction was a crime of violence where, by fleeing from law enforcement, defendant has already resorted to an extreme measure to avoid arrest, signaling that he is likely prepared to resort to the use of physical force. Accordingly, the court denied the petition. View "Dixon v. U.S. Attorney General" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against CashCall, which then sought to compel arbitration based on the parties' loan agreement. The district court refused to compel arbitration and CashCall appealed. The court held CashCall to the terms of the integral forum selection provision included in plaintiff's loan agreement. Because the selected forum - the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Nation - is unavailable, a substitute arbitrator under 9 U.S.C. 5 cannot be appointed under the terms of the contract. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order deciding not to compel arbitration. View "Inetianbor v. Cashcall, Inc., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, individually and on behalf of their deaf son and his deaf sister, filed a disability discrimination suit against defendants after the son was hospitalized and was not offered or provided with a trained sign language interpreter. The district court dismissed the individual claims asserted by plaintiffs and the sister for lack of standing, and granted summary judgment to defendants on the claims that plaintiffs brought on the son's behalf for damages and injunctive relief. The court concluded that the district court properly dismissed the claims that defendants denied benefits to, or discriminated against plaintiffs or the sister, because of their association with the son, where plaintiffs and the sister lacked standing under the Rehabilitation Act (RA), 29 U.S.C. 701 et seq., and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq.; the district court properly concluded that the son lacked standing to seek injunctive relief where there is no immediate threat of future injury; and the son has not presented sufficient evidence to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact about whether defendants acted with deliberate indifference. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "McCullum, et al. v. Orlando Regional Healthcare, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against defendant under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that defendant subjected her to an unreasonable seizure and for using excessive force in the course of the seizure in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. Plaintiff's claims arose from an incident where she was asked to remove her suit jacket at a security checkpoint in a courthouse. The district court granted summary judgment to defendant. The court concluded that the district court erred in applying the substantive due process/shock the conscience test rather than the well-established objective reasonableness standard under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the court reversed on this claim. The court concluded that the district court properly entered summary judgment in favor of defendant on plaintiff's state law claim on the ground of official immunity under the Georgia Constitution and affirmed on this claim. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "West v. Davis" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a death row inmate convicted of murder, was granted a certificate of appealability by this court on two grounds: first, petitioner contended that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to object to an opening prayer, which was delivered in the presence of the jury venire by a minister of the church where the victim's funeral service had been held; and second, petitioner contended that his due process rights were violated at his capital resentencing proceeding when the trial court refused to instruct the jury that he had agreed to waive his eligibility for parole, and that he had already been sentenced to two life terms plus fifteen years on his other counts of conviction, which would run consecutively to any sentence imposed for first-degree murder. The court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254 where the district court's decision was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law.View "Bates v. Secretary, FL DOC" on Justia Law