Sixth Circuit: Henry Kaplan v. Univ. of Louisville

 

Ex Parte Young isn't available as an exception to the state university's sovereign immunity, as the university is not a state official, and administrators are being sued in their personal capacities here.

Absent statute or contract, there is no property interest in the appointment to department chair if  that chair does not itself lead to a form of tenure.

A dismissed professor can have received adequate due process even if the reviewing committee declined to recommend dismissal.

Placement on paid leave prior to dismissal proceedings was not a deprivaiton of due process, given the evidence in the record and the sufficiency of the proceedings.

Plaintiff must have exhausted 14A liberty interest claim in reputation by requesting a name-clearign hearing; the university was under no obligation to provide for it in its procedures, its refusal to toll the statute of limitations for the present suit did not preclude a paralell proceeding, and the present suit is not a sufficient proxy.

https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/21a0187p-06.pdf

Seventh Circuit: Kimberly Nelson v. City of Chicago

 

Loss of employment is insufficient harm to establish a claim under substantive due process, as employment is not a fundamental right.

Negligence in not listening to emergency radio dispatches doesn't state a substantive due process claim for a police officer later injured due to lack of assistance.  The state-created danger exception to the private danger exclusion in due process analysis can't be invoked here, since it only applies when the state disables people from protecting themselves.

Disregarding a known risk to a public employee or altering work records after the fact are insufficiently conscience-shocking to state a substantive due process claim, and the emotional injury from the latter is insufficient to support a S1983 claim.

Plaintiff did not identify procedural shortcomings in protections sufficient to state a claim under procedural due process.

Monell claim against the municipality wasn't supported by showing of pattern or practice beyond individual acts subject to respondeat superior, which is not a basis for liability in S1983.

Kimberly Nelson v.  City of Chicago

Eighth Circuit: John Pietsch v. Ward County

 

Notice and a hearing on the landowners' applications for variances from a zoning regulation sufficed for procedural due process. The zoning regulation requiring a right of way wasn't irrational, given the public interest in road construction.  Claim of unfair exaction improperly attempts to recast a takings claim as a procedural due process claim.

John Pietsch  v.  Ward County

Tenth Circuit: Independent Producers Group v. CRB

Copyright Royalty Judges'  denial of claims as a discovery sanction wasn't a violation of constitutional due process -- as the tribunal is a largely clerical creature of statute, a different calculus applies to review of discovery sanctions than is applied in Article III courts.

Although the tribunal had earlier rejected the scheme that it eventually adopted, the new information provided in the interval constituted a quantum of persuasive evidence.

Independent Producers Group v. CRB 

Second Circuit: Williams v. Korines

Prison regulation of gang insignia and materials clearly prohibited possession of photographs of people in the gang's colors and making hand-signs associated with the gang; no reasonable guard would be unaware that there materials were encompassed by the regulation.

Where a previous penalty proceeding is vacated upon review, and in the subsequent penalty, credit is given for the time served of the earlier penalty, the first proceeding is not a basis for a due process liberty claim.

Although the second proceeding was reversed by the Director, the state's deprivation of due process standard merely requires sufficient information to constitute substantial evidence, so the expert opinions offered in the proceeding sufficed.

Circles added to photographs examined during the proceeding were harmless, as the expert earlier reviewed the photos without the circles.

Talking over the presiding officer and waving his finger at her was sufficient basis to remove the prisoner form the proceeding.

Williams v. Korines

Third Circuit: Lea Augustin v. City of Philadelphia

Property owners have sufficient interest upon which a due process claim can arise when a municipality files a perfected utility lien against the property, as it can cloud the title and complicate the property's use and value.

As a matter of law, the minimal deprivation of property rights imposed by the lien, the relative lack of difficulty in correcting errors or monitoring third-party compliance, and the value of the gas provided satisfy the due process interests of the landlords.

http://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/171216p.pdf

Ninth Circuit: Shorter v. Baca

Plaintiff's separate challenge to a jury instruction requiring deference to jail's policies sufficiently preserved a more general challenge to the instruction.

Juries should be instructed to give deference to jail's policies only where the treatment is a necessary, justified, and proportional security-based policy.

Absent any security-based reason, deference to the policy should be denied as a matter of law.

Pretrial detainees are entitled to a grievance procedure upon changes in their classification that increases the severity of the conditions of confinement.

Deliberate indifference claims arising from medical treatment should be judged under a standard of objective deliberate indifference.

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/07/16/16-56051.pdf

Seventh Circuit: Joshua Vasquez v. Kimberly Foxx

State's expansion of residence restrictions for registered offenders was not an ex post facto penalty, as the conduct regulated is post-enactment knowing residence.  The law does not amount to a taking, since it is a regulation on the use of property, doesn't affect the market value of the property, and plaintiffs acquired the property after enactment.  Procedural due process does not require individual hearings.  The law has a rational basis.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D07-11/C:17-1061:J:Sykes:aut:T:fnOp:N:2184695:S:0

Third Circuit: Brittan Holland v. Kelly Rosen

Plaintiff's opting out of the bail hearing does not deprive him of standing to challenge the bail law, since the challenge is not to the detention order, but to the lack of constitutionally sufficient procedure.

As the bail-bonding agency has only a hypothetical relationship with future customers, it does not have third-party standing to challenge the law on their behalf.

The Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a fair consideration of potential monetary bail, as that was not the practice at the time of adoption, and the Amendment does not mention monetary bail.

Cash bail and corporate surety are not protected by substantive due process, as they are neither sufficiently historically rooted nor inherent in the concept of ordered liberty. Statute's subordination of monetary bail to non-monetary restrictions is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.

Where deft is able to ask the court for decreased restriction, sufficient procedural due process in a scheme where non-monetary pretrial appearance guarantees are prioritized over monetary bail.

http://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/173104p.pdf

Seventh Circuit: Destiny Hoffman v. Susan Knoebel

Sheriff's department employees had no affirmative duty to repair systematic infractions of rights in state drug court; as their conduct was simply negligent, they were not liable for the harms under S1983.

Insufficient showing for municipal liability, since there were potentially remediatory policies in place.

Arrests with insufficient authority were an issue of state law that didn't rise to the level of a constitutional violation.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D07-03/C:17-2750:J:Wood:aut:T:fnOp:N:2180890:S:0

Seventh Circuit: Kevin Carmody v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

If a university official provides incorrect information to investigators, it doesn't, standing alone, present a due process issue for trial, as it doesn't affect the notice and fair hearing protections of due process.

University administrators and officers who would have no reason to doubt the proceeding are not liable for a pre-firing due process claim.

Absent specific waiver, claims against the Board of Trustees of a state university are barred by the state's sovereign immunity.

Denial of summary judgment cannot be challenged on appeal, as the matter of law was fact-bound, and the questions went to trial.

Defts did not waive privilege on inadvertently disclosed document, as production was reasonably diligent, and request for claw-back was timely.

Although plaintiff had no obligation to renew objection to in limine ruling excluding certain evidence, there was insufficient proffer beforehand to preserve the issue for appeal.  ("Deft construes?")

Although appeal was converted to interlocutory status on remand, and the court was therefore free to consider new documents, where these challenged the appellate holding, they needed to surmount the law of the case doctrine and the mandate doctrine.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2018/D06-19/C:16-1335:J:Hamilton:aut:T:fnOp:N:2172829:S:0

 

Federal Circuit: Williams v. MSPB

Agency regulation holding a minimal period of unemployment when transferring between jobs is sufficient to constitute a break in employment for purposes of qualifying for protections of judicial review is a reasonable one, and as it's specific, it's not subject to the anti-parroting canon.

When an agency does not inform an employee of the loss of appeal rights from a transfer, those appeal rights can't later be grated by the Board when they are outside of the statutory jurisdiction of the Board.

No Due Process rights, as the boundaries of the right are coterminous with the boundaries of the statute.

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/17-1535.Opinion.6-7-2018.1.pdf

Second Circuit: In re Motors Liquidation Co.

Bankruptcy, Jurisdiction, Procedural Due Process,  Mootness


As direct and indirect post-sale claims against the successor corporation arose within the bankruptcy process and related to the injunctions issued, the bankruptcy court properly exercised jurisdiction over the claims.

Prepetition tort claims against a successor corporation state a claim in bankruptcy where the both the contingent flaw and the relationship from which the duty arose were present prior to the order of sale. 

No clear error in court's holding that Procedural Due Process requires--prior to approval of sale--direct purchaser notice of flaws that manufacturer reasonably should have known about.

To determine PDP prejudice, court must have a fair assurance that the prior decision was not substantially swayed.

Given high stakes, there was a substantial likelihood of settlement for claims directly relating to the defect.

 Court's ruling that claims against successor corporation were equitably moot was advisory and is therefore vacated.


In re Motors Liquidation Co.