Blog's Anniversary

On this date in 2011, in a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan, history was made.  Admittedly, it was a very, very small event in history, but history nonetheless.

https://manhattanbarrister.blogspot.com/2011_07_05_archive.html

Ninth Circuit: Fleshman v. Volkswagen AG

Statute grants absolute right of intervention only to citizens who are barred from filing their own suit to enforce the law due tot he government's attempt to enforce that specific law.

As the government filed suit under the law regulating the devices, citizen suits seeking to enforce clean air laws are not barred, and the potential plaintiffs have no absolute right to intervene.

The present request to intervene seeks relief that is distinct from the government's relief; absent Article III standing (which can't be manufactured by simply seeking absolute compliance with the Act), the potential intervenor does not have an intervention of right.

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/07/03/16-17060.pdf

Ninth Circuit: Wheeler v. City of Santa Clara

A sufficiently expansive state law of survivorship and intestate succession can bar an adopted natural child from asserting a S1983 claim, as there is no absolute right of succession implied by the purposes of the act.

Claims under the ADA and the RA are remedial in nature, not punitive; the statute-borrowing provisions of civil rights law are therefore inapplicable; there is no precedent under federal common law for allowing an adopted natural child to state a claim.

Absent a showing of a true parental relationship, an adopted natural child with a close relationship cannot state a claim under a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest.

Court properly denied leave to amend, given relevant state statute of limitations, as nature of present claim doesn't hold the door open for relation-back.

Concurrence: Adopted children can establish a 14A claim.

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/07/03/16-17375.pdf

Seventh Circuit: Ricardo Sanchez v. Jefferson B. Sessions III

Board's statement of a legal standard of probability suffices to establish a violation of the Fifth Amendment when considering the right to counsel in deportation proceedings where the correct standard is that of reasonable possibility of a different outcome.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D07-05/C:17-1673:J:Rovner:aut:T:fnOp:N:2181672:S:0


Seventh Circuit: Thomas Lovelace v. Todd McKenna

Court did not abuse its discretion in barring physician's record of statement that prison inmate asserted that the guards had beaten him, as it address the truth of the matter asserted, rather than the reason that treatment had been sought.

Witness' statement that he feared retribution from guards permissibly barred as more prejudicial than probative.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D07-03/C:17-1393:J:Kanne:aut:T:fnOp:N:2181083:S:0

Seventh Circuit: Wisconsin Central Limited v. Tienergy, LLC

Unresolved third-party claims do not preclude an appeal of the final decision where the trial court has clearly signalled an intent to resolve any outstanding claims.

Federal law defining rail transport rates created an independent cause of action under the act.

Transporting company's lack of actual knowledge of manifest terms defining it as a consignee does not preclude statutory liability as a consignee where it is not in the business of transporting cargo and it retains all funds from the subsequent sale of the product.

No implicit scheme of contribution or agency existed that would shift the costs.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D07-03/C:17-2343:J:Barrett:aut:T:fnOp:N:2181198:S:0




Fifth Circuit: USA v. Jesus Ledezma-Cepeda, et al

Court did not abuse its discretion in denying severance, as curative instruction sufficed to protect co-defendant from gruesome evidence against another defendant, despite mixture of questions at trial and the fact that his own attorney objected to some evidence against the other defendant.

http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/16/16-11731-CR0.pdf

Fifth Circuit: US v. Simone Swenson

As the defense could have sought a continuance after last-minute disclosures, the putative bad faith and actual prejudice from prosecutorial discovery misconduct did not rise to the abhorrent level needed to justify dismissal with prejudice.

http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/17/17-20131-CR0.pdf

Fifth Circuit: Firefighters' Retirement Sys, et al v. Consulting

Prior assertion that the court did not have personal jurisdiction over them does not judicially estop the deft from invoking the protection in the state statute, as the court ultimately did not accept the challenge to jurisdiction.

Where there is a clear prerequisite for suit in the state statute that can only be waived by written agreement of the parties, a federal court can enforce the prerequisite requirement despite state precedent to the contrary, as the question becomes one of procedure, not of substantive law.

Under state law, contra non valentum does not apply to peremption periods.

Waiver of the peremption period for fraud requires specific intent to deceive.

Under state law, filing of suit does not toll the peremptive period for the prerequisite accounting review.

http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/17/17-30274-CV0.pdf




Second Circuit: American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Justice

Prevailing party who can demonstrate a likelihood of harm from an incidental disclosure in the court's decision has standing to seek appellate review of that decision as an aggrieved party.

Where the challenged dictum is not necessary to the holding and the government party to the case can advance a reasonably debatable argument for its falsity, there is a substantial possibility of material harms to the government's interests from disclosure, and the fact is available in publicly available sources, the court may redact the statement from the opinion.

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/43875d78-c1de-461c-92e1-0df1db0fda59/1/doc/17-157_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/43875d78-c1de-461c-92e1-0df1db0fda59/1/hilite/