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

In 2021, Respondent-Appellant left Brazil with her daughter, Y.F.G., and eventually entered the United States. The child’s father, Petitioner-Appellee, shared custody of Y.F.G., and he petitioned for the child’s return to Brazil under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the International Child Abduction Remedies Act.Following a bench trial at which both parents testified, the district court ordered that Y.F.G. be returned to Brazil. The district court expressly found Father not to be credible, but because the district court concluded that Mother did not provide independent corroboration to support her own testimony, the district court found she had not established by clear and convincing evidence a “grave risk” of harm to Y.F.G. in Brazil.The Eleventh Circuit reversed. The court explained that when a factfinder does not believe an interested witness’s testimony, it may—but is not required to—consider that witness’s discredited testimony as corroborating substantive evidence that the opposite of the testimony is true. And when a single witness provides the only evidence on some point, that testimony, without corroboration, can still meet the standard of clear and convincing evidence if the factfinder concludes that it is credible. The district court failed to take these principles into account, requiring reversal. View "Wellekson Goncalves Silva v. Andriene Ferreira dos Santos" on Justia Law

Eight South Florida hospitals dutifully provided out-of-network emergency treatment to numerous Cigna customers. When Cigna reimbursed the hospitals just 15% of what they had charged, the hospitals sued, accusing Cigna of paying less than the “community” rate. As proof, the hospitals showed that they normally receive five times as much for the care they provided here. In response, Cigna asserted that the hospitals’ data proved nothing because, it insisted, the relevant “community” necessarily includes more than just the eight plaintiff hospitals. The district court agreed and granted Cigna summary judgment.   The Eleventh Circuit reversed. The court explained that even if the relevant “community” here extends beyond the eight plaintiff hospitals, their receipts alone are enough to create a genuine factual dispute about what the “community” rates are. The court reasoned that to survive summary judgment, a plaintiff needn’t present evidence that compels a single, airtight inference—just evidence that allows a reasonable one. The court explained that the way to rebut an inference allegedly skewed by limited data is to add data. And Cigna can do just that—at trial. If it can show there that most other providers in the “community” charge less than the plaintiff hospitals do, then it may well debunk the hospitals’ estimate. But unless and until that happens, it remains the case that a reasonable jury could conclude that the eight plaintiff hospitals’ rates reflect the prevailing community rate—and thus that Cigna shortchanged them. View "North Shore Medical Center, Inc., et al v. Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company" on Justia Law

Plaintiff is a deaf man who can understand only about 30% of verbal communication through lipreading. He communicates primarily through American Sign Language (ASL). Plaintiff worked for O’Reilly Auto Parts (O’Reilly) as an inbound materials handler. He claims that the company discriminated against him in violation of Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because it did not provide him with the reasonable accommodations that he requested for his disability. He alleged that he requested but did not receive an ASL interpreter for various meetings, training, and a company picnic. He also alleged that he asked for text messages summarizing nightly pre-shift meetings but did not receive them either. The district court, acting by consent through a magistrate judge, granted O’Reilly’s motion for summary judgment on Plaintiff’s ADA claim.   The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of O’Reilly. The court remanded for further proceedings involving Plaintiff’s claim that O’Reilly violated the ADA by failing to provide him with reasonable accommodations regarding the nightly pre-shift safety meetings and regarding his disciplinary proceedings involving attendance issues. The court concluded that genuine issues of material fact do exist about whether two of Plaintiff’s requested accommodations relate to his essential job functions and whether the failure to provide those two accommodations led to an “adverse employment decision.” If Plaintiff’s allegations turn out to be the actual facts, there was a violation of Title I of the ADA, and that means summary judgment against him was inappropriate. View "Teddy Beasley v. O'Reilly Auto Parts" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought a diversity suit against his former stepfather, Defendant, alleging that Defendant owed him a fiduciary duty to disclose the existence of certain Settlement Funds arising from the wrongful death of Plaintiff’s biological father. The Eleventh Circuit previously certified three questions to the Supreme Court of Georgia regarding breach of fiduciary duty for failure to disclose a claim.
The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Defendant on the failure to disclose claim and remanded the matter for further proceedings. The court explained that the district court should only have granted Defendant summary judgment if there was no genuine dispute as to any material fact regarding the tort claim and Defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law, viewing all evidence and making all inferences in the light most favorable to Plaintiff. Here, a reasonable jury could find the following facts at trial:4 (1) Plaintiff and Defendant were in a confidential or fiduciary relationship such that, under Georgia law, the statute of limitations could be tolled, and a claim for breach of fiduciary duty could be supported; (2) at the time Plaintiff turned 18, at least $50,000 of the Settlement Funds remained in the Charles Schwab account; (3) Plaintiff had a right to take control of the Settlement Funds when he turned 18; (4) Defendant had a duty to disclose the existence of the Settlement Funds and turn over control of those funds to Plaintiff when he turned 18; (5) Defendant failed to do so, and (6) Plaintiff would have taken control of the funds when he turned 18. View "Elkin King v. Forrest King, Jr." on Justia Law

Over a four-day stretch during his incarceration at Walker State Prison in Georgia, Plaintiff failed to receive his prescribed seizure medication. On the fourth night, Plaintiff had two seizures that he claimed caused permanent brain damage. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, Plaintiff sued five prison employees, alleging that they were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment to all five defendants on the ground that they were entitled to qualified immunity. Shortly thereafter, Plaintiff died from causes unrelated to the seizures that he suffered while in prison. His sister pursued his claims on appeal as the personal representative of his estate.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that none of them was deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s medical needs and, accordingly, that none of them violated the Eighth Amendment—and, accordingly, that the district court was correct to grant all of them summary judgment. The court held that a deliberate-indifference plaintiff must prove (among other things) that the defendant acted with “more than gross negligence.” The court wrote that it echoes the district court’s lament that Defendants’ “careless actions and their systemic communication failures caused Plaintiff serious suffering” and “irreparably altered his life.” And the court reiterated that “while engaged in the business of prison medicine”—no less so than on the outside, so to speak—“the essential command of the Hippocratic Oath is ‘first, do no harm.’” Even so, the bar to proving an Eighth Amendment deliberate-indifference claim is appropriately high, and the court concluded that Plaintiff hasn’t met it. View "Betty Wade v. Georgia Correctional Health, LLC, et al" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed (“Walmart”) in her “slip and fall” negligence suit under Georgia law. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that the district court erred in (1) analyzing her slip and fall claim under a premises liability theory instead of an active negligence theory and (2) denying her spoliation of evidence claim and related sanctions request.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court wrote that Plaintiff failed to cite any binding authority under Georgia law supporting an active negligence theory in a slip and fall case. And the persuasive value of the non-binding cases she cites is limited because they have either been rejected by the Georgia courts as a basis for active negligence in the slip and fall context or are fully distinguishable. More importantly, the allegations in her complaint clearly involve a condition of the premises. Plaintiff alleged that she was shopping at Walmart when “she slipped and fell from liquid that was on the floor” and that Walmart “had a duty to inspect the Premises to discover dangerous and hazardous conditions . . . and to either eliminate such . . . conditions or to warn its invitees.” Thus, the district court did not err in analyzing her claim under the framework of traditional premises liability. View "Adriana Mendez v. Wal-Mart Stores East, LP" on Justia Law

Defendant confessed to a murder, but he offered two conflicting versions of the crime. At first, he said that he watched the victim’s murder. Then, he said that he participated but that he didn’t intend to kill the victim. A grand jury in Mobile County eventually indicted Defendant for capital murder. The case went to trial, and the jury found Defendant guilty. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court found that Defendant is intellectually disabled and therefore granted his habeas petition. At issue on appeal is whether the district court clearly erred by finding that Defendant is intellectually disabled and, as a result, that his sentence violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.     The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment and held that the district court did not clearly err. The court explained that the district court did not err by turning to evidence of Defendant’s adaptive functioning after finding that his IQ score could be as low as 69. Further, the court reasoned that it cannot say that the district court clearly erred by finding that Defendan satisfied the adaptive-functioning prong. The record contains evidence “that would support a finding of fact that Defendant had significant limitations in at least two” domains. Further, the court wrote that the record supports the district court’s conclusion that Defendant’s deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning “were present at an early age.” As a result, the court wrote that it cannot say that the district court clearly erred by finding that Defendant satisfied the final prong of his Atkins claim. View "Joseph Clifton Smith v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Peru, appeals the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination that she is ineligible for relief under 8 U.S.C. Section 1229b(b)(2), a provision whose language was originally adopted as part of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 and that outlines the conditions under which certain “battered spouses or children” qualify for discretionary cancellation of removal. As relevant here, it requires a petitioning alien to show that she “has been battered or subjected to extreme cruelty” by her spouse or parent. Petitioner contends that the Immigration Judge and the BIA made two errors in refusing her cancellation request. First, she maintains that, as a matter of law, they misinterpreted the statutory term “extreme cruelty” to require proof of physical—as distinguished from mental or emotional—abuse. And second, she asserts that having misread the law, the IJ and the BIA wrongly concluded that she doesn’t qualify for discretionary relief.   The Eleventh Circuit agreed with Petitioner that the IJ and the BIA misinterpreted Section 1229b(b)(2) and thereby applied an erroneous legal standard in evaluating her request for cancellation of removal. The court explained that the term “extreme cruelty” does not require a petitioning alien to prove that she suffered physical abuse in order to qualify for discretionary cancellation of removal; proof of mental or emotional abuse is sufficient to satisfy the “extreme cruelty” prong of Section 1229b(b)(2)’s five-prong standard. Accordingly, the court granted her petition for review and remand to the BIA for further consideration. View "Esmelda Ruiz v. U.S. Attorney General" on Justia Law

This diversity case arises out of the theft—possibly by a group of third-party contractors—of 1,380 memory cards that belonged to Global Network Management, LTD., and were stored in a data center operated by Centurylink Latin American Solutions, LLC. Global Network sued Centurylink for implied bailment, breach of contract implied in law, and breach of contract implied in fact to hold Centurylink liable for the theft of the memory cards. The district court dismissed all of the claims with prejudice, and Global Network now appeals.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court held that the district court correctly dismissed the contract implied in law and contract implied in fact claims. But Global Network plausibly alleged that Centurylink possessed the memory cards at the time of the theft, and as a result, the implied bailment claim survives at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage. The court explained that according to Centurylink, Global Network’s ability to visit the servers means that it did not possess the servers exclusively, and as a result, no bailment relationship was formed. But this argument does not carry the day at this stage of the proceeding, where the standard is plausibility and not probability. The court noted that it does not hold there was an implied bailment as a matter of fact or law; it only held that Global Network plausibly alleged an implied bailment. View "Global Network Management, Ltd. v. CenturyLink Latin American Solutions, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a security guard, alleged that his employer set two different “regular rates” and that one of those rates was an artificial one that his employer designed to avoid complying with the FLSA’s overtime-compensation requirement. When Plaintiff became a security guard for Defendant Regional Security Services, Inc., his established regular rate was $13.00, and he typically worked a forty-hour week. But seven months after Regional Security first started scheduling Plaintiff to work overtime, it reduced his rate to $11.15 per hour. Regional Security then stopped scheduling Plaintiff to work overtime hours and, at the same time, restored his non-overtime pay rate to $13.00 per hour. At issue is whether Plaintiff’s “regular rate” was $13.00 per hour or $11.15 per hour during the year or so that he worked overtime hours and earned $11.15 per hour.   The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s order granting Defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and remanded. The court explained that Plaintiff’s allegations support his theory that Regional Security set an artificial $11.15 rate during the year that it scheduled him to work significant overtime hours so that it could avoid paying him $19.50 for his overtime hours. During the year that Plaintiff worked significant overtime hours, his reduced $11.15 rate caused him to earn on average $13.00 per hour for all sixty hours in a sixty-hour workweek. Plus, Regional Security immediately reverted to paying Plaintiff’s $13.00 rate when it stopped scheduling him to work overtime hours. Accordingly, the court held that these allegations plausibly support Plaintiff’s claims. View "David Thompson v. Regions Security Services, Inc" on Justia Law