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

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

Plaintiff sued three Defendant correctional officers under Section 1983 for alleged violations of his First and Eighth Amendment rights. While Plaintiff was in his prison cell, two correctional officers sprayed a chemical agent on him. The parties contest why the officers did this: Plaintiff says it was in retaliation for his protected speech; the correctional officers respond that it was to stop Plaintiff from tampering with a sprinkler in his cell. Shortly after that, Plaintiff alleged that a supervising officer instructed the prison staff not to feed him—again, in retaliation for Plaintiff’s protected speech. Plaintiff sued the two officers and the supervising officer for violating his First and Eighth Amendment rights. The district court dismissed Plaintiff’s claims against the two correctional officers under Heck v. Humphrey because it concluded that the success of Plaintiff’s claims required a showing that his prison disciplinary conviction was invalid. But although the district court dismissed Plaintiff’s claims for compensatory and punitive damages against the supervising officer, it allowed Plaintiff’s demand for nominal damages to go to trial. The jury returned a verdict for the supervising officer.   The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s claims against the two correctional officers. The court explained that Heck does not bar Plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment claim, and even if Heck applies to Plaintiff’s First Amendment claim, Plaintiff is entitled to leave to amend. The court agreed with Plaintiff that the district court erred in dismissing his claims for compensatory and punitive damages. View "Wendall Jermaine Hall v. Lieutenant Peter Merola" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were employees of VMSB’s restaurant. They argue that VMSB failed to meet its minimum wage and overtime pay obligations under the Fair Labor Standards Act and comparable Florida laws. Plaintiffs’ complaint alleged three counts, and both sides filed cross-motions for summary judgment. Plaintiffs moved the district court to approve the settlement and to “direct the clerk to dismiss Count III” with prejudice. The district court ultimately adopted the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation and entered judgment for VMSB on Counts I and II. Plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal regarding Counts I and II.   The Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal. The court explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2) provides only for the dismissal of an entire action. Any attempt to use this rule to dismiss a single claim, or anything less than the entire action, will be invalid—just like it would be under Rule 41(a)(1). Because the parties here attempted to use Rule 41(a) to dismiss a single count and not an entire lawsuit, a final judgment was never rendered. Accordingly, the court found that it lacks jurisdiction to hear this appeal. View "Israel Rosell, et al. v. VMSB, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a Florida prisoner, brought a complaint under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 alleging sexual abuse by Defendant, a pastor at a church Plaintiff attended more than thirty years ago. A magistrate judge granted Plaintiff leave to proceed in forma pauperis and then recommended that the case be dismissed for failure to state a claim. In response, Plaintiff submitted a filing seeking to voluntarily dismiss the case and to receive a refund of his court fees. The district court, rather than treating Plaintiff’s filing as a self-executing notice of dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41 referred the matter to the magistrate judge, who issued a report recommending that Plaintiff’s requests be denied. The magistrate judge made that recommendation in an attempt to further the purposes of the “three-strikes provision” of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation, and this appeal followed.  Plaintiff, represented by counsel on appeal, contends that the district court erred by invoking the PLRA’s purposes to trump his clear right to voluntarily dismiss the action under Rule 41.   The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment. The court explained that it found no language in the PLRA purporting to limit or condition a plaintiff’s right to voluntarily dismiss an action “without a court order” under Rule 41(a) in the prisoner-litigation context. Plaintiff acted within the bounds of Rule 41(a) by filing a notice of dismissal before Defendant responded. That notice was effective immediately upon filing and deprived the court of jurisdiction over the case. View "Jason Elliott Smith v. Delwyn Gerald Williams" on Justia Law