Amendment to the statute allowing for a corrective methodology in calculating the constructed value of an item given a particular market situation cannot be applied by the agency to the parallel calculation of the cost of production, which is used to determine if a product is being sold at less than cost.
Since 2011. An occasional commonplacing of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.
Neither an authoritative statement of the law nor legal advice. Quick work.
Showing posts with label Statutory Construction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Statutory Construction. Show all posts
Third Circuit: PJM Power Providers Group v. FERC
Sufficient injury for standing from the electric rate increases; as vacating the underlying order would revert the scheme to its prior arrangement, rather than make it subject to change on remand, the injury is sufficiently redressable.
As the statutory cause of action references the generic act, the standard of review is the generic test, rather than a specific threshold in the statute.
Where the vote of the commissioners is tied, and the individual statements of the commissioners therefore in no way constitute an order of the commission, judicial review properly incorporates the entire record, including the individual statements.
When an agency shifts position on an issue, it need not prove that its new approach is better than the previous one. Agency's constructive acceptance of the new policy was neither arbitrary nor capricious, and was supported by substantial evidence in the record.
Second Circuit: Saba Cap. CEF Opportunities 1, Ltd., Saba Cap. Mgmt., L.P. v. Nuveen
Sufficient injury for standing where an investor has progressively accumulated a position in a fund, and the administrators pass a measure limiting the voting rights by default above a certain imminent threshold; this is not a "someday intention," and the possibility that the terms could be renegotiated after a proffer would merely constitute another injury from the costs.
Diminishment of the value of the shares is an injury in law, as it violates the statute; as the loss in value is analogous to conversion or other tort claim, there is a sufficient historical analogue to establish the concrete nature of the harm.
Default restriction on the voting rights of the shares of some purchasers inherently violates the statutory requirement of present, equal voting rights in shares. The share-shareholder distinction has only been recognized in limited terms, such as compliance with incorporation requirements, and other shareholder-based restrictions on voting are less fundamental than blocking the voting rights entirely.
Plain meaning of the statute controls, rather than interpretations of its stated purposes.
Saba Cap. CEF Opportunities 1, Ltd., Saba Cap. Mgmt., L.P. v. Nuveen
Ninth Circuit: Tellez-Ramirez v. Garland
Under modified categorical review, the state drug statute is a valid immigration predicate. The list of drug classes doesn't establish several means of committing a single crime in itself, but is rather a list of elements establishing distinct violations--this is due to the varying lengths of sentence, caselaw referencing the need to prove specific substances within a single class, and the fact that the specific illicit substance is named within the jury instructions.
The overbreadth of the state statute relative to the federal crime doesn't import a similar overbreadth into the mens rea; a belief that the substance was proscribed under state law would suffice for a state conviction that could pass Immigration muster, as the state mens rea and federal mens rea requirements are identical.
State caselaw incorporating solicitation into aiding and abetting, and under which, by statute, the conduct is culpable as the conduct of a principal under the specific state statute doesn't make the specific state statute broader than the federal version, since solicitation alone would be an inchoate offense distinct from an accessory's conviction as a principal under the specific statute, which would require a completed offense--not mere solicitation.
Fourth Circuit: US v. Dearnta Thomas
The federal racketeering violence statute is a crime in itself, and satisfies the requirements for a crime of violence without looking through the statute to the underlying state-law predicates of the conviction.
Eighth Circuit: United States v. Michael Goforth
Given another circuit's on-point precedent (with a novel definition of the generic crime), a state kidnapping statute is a valid predicate, as the state court decision that expanded the bounds of the statute beyond those of the generic crime did so in dicta, after first determining that the conduct satisfied the state statute.
DC Circuit: Jane Doe v. SEC
Although the list of examples in the statute isn't explicitly an exclusive one, deference to the authoritative, considered interpretation of the agency within its competency asserting the exclusivity of the list is warranted. Expressio unius would require an exclusive list.
CONCURRENCE:
When a statute lists three means for accomplishing something, there are three means of accomplishing something under the statute. Expressio unius applies.
Ninth Circuit: Laidlaw's Harley Davidson Sales v. Commisioner
Law requiring initial determination of tax assessment to be approved by a supervisor prior to enforcement of the penalty doesn't preclude pre-approval notice to the taxpayer that the government will enforce the penalty; the supervisor's approval must occur before the actual enforcement, but sufficiently in advance that the supervisor still has the discretion to withhold approval.
DISSENT:
By the plain language, the initial determination must be approved before it becomes the basis for agency action.
First Circuit: Cushing v. Packard
For claims arising from either of the federal statutes at issue, a suit against an officer of a state legislature in their official capacity, and in which the state is not named in the action, is against the legislator personally in their legislative capacity and doesn't implicate state sovereign immunity.
If Congress can abrogate conduct-based legislative immunity, as opposed to status-based sovereign immunity, a clear statement to that effect in the law is required.
State legislature did not waive its officers' legislative immunity from disability related discrimination claims by accepting federal funds for the legislative session costs pursuant to a federal statute with an antidiscrimination clause.
Legislative immunity bars a suit against a state officer where the injunctive remedy would effect a change in the rules that was more than merely casually or incidentally related to legislative affairs.
Legislative immunity under the Speech and Debate clause can't be limited by the state's adoption of a less expansive standard in its own law.
Extraordinary exceptions to legislative immunity aren't available, since, among other reasons, the legislature was following independent procedural rules, rather than changing them.
DISSENT:
Purpose of the immunity is to prevent the disenfranchisement of the people. Effective ouster and disenfranchisement of some can't therefore be immunized in the interests of protecting others. Only immunizing conduct that isn't facially discriminatory opens the door to facially neutral but discriminatory rulemaking.
Eleventh Circuit: Fuad Fares Fuad Said v. U.S. Attorney General
Given the plain language of the proscription, and the fact that the wider prohibition encompasses actual (as opposed to hypothetical) substances, the state crime isn't a valid immigration predicate, as the divergence is significant enough to constitute, as a matter of law, a reasonable probability of prosecution under the state law for acts that would exceed the reach of the federal law.
Eighth Circuit: Colby Beal v. Outfield Brew House
Telephonic communications device that stores a predefined list of numbers and then randomly or in a defined manner selects and dials certain numbers doesn't come within the statutory proscription of random dialing machines.
CONCURRENCE IN PART:
Footnote that recites Supreme Court GVR's and denials of certiorari is error, as they're not precedential.
Fifth Circuit: Vitol v. USA
When a fuel is correctly categorized as taxable under the statute, it is ineligible also to be categorized as an alternative fuel, since the latter statute excludes fuels encompassed by the definition of taxable fuels. The statutory scheme is clear enough to defeat a plain meaning argument to the contrary. Any partial categorization of a blend as partially alternative would require a clear statement in the statute.
DISSENT:
The provision making the two categories mutually exclusive is in the excise tax portion of the Code, so the tax credit language in another area isn't bound by it, given plain meaning to the contrary. The excise provisions define the wide swath of the tax categories, and the credit provisions define particular instances. Ordinary meaning is the Star of Bethlehem.
Fourth Circuit: Evens Julmice v. Merrick Garland
Silence of the immigration statute as to whether the citizen whose child is seeking to immigrate needs to be alive at the time of application isn't sufficient to justify deference to the agency's interpretation imposing the requirement.
Ninth Circuit: Marroquin v. Garland
Given the identical punishments, the structure of the statute tends to suggest that the two proscribed acts are two means of committing the same offense, rather than two distinct offenses, and no caselaw or charging documents in the present case indicate a certainty to the contrary. Intervening higher authority allows the present panel to overrule a circuit decision to the contrary that was based entirely on the statute's phasing in the disjunctive. As the offense is more broad than the generic crime, the law is not a valid immigration predicate aggravated felony.
DISSENT:
Under the state's law, principals and accessories after the fact are mutually exclusive roles that inherently require different elements of proof. Charging document establishes that petitioner was convicted as a principal.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/18/18-72922.pdf
First Circuit: Ass'n Hosp. del Maestro, Inc. v. Becerra
Agencies can exercise discretion only in places of ambiguity or silence; they are unable to amend a clear statutory mandate that seems at odds with the purposes of the legislation. Agency did not err, and the rulemaking did not run afoul of the APA.
Agency's implementation according to statute did not offend Equal Protection; proof of discriminatory of intent would also be needed.
Mandate requiring extension of policy in the same manner and to the extent that it applies to existing facilities mans that the same methodology should be implemented to the same extent, not that the facilities should be funded to the same extent.
http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/19-1475P-01A.pdf
Sixth Circuit: United States v. Edmund Phillips
As the statute doesn't limit the post-sentencing review of restitution interest charges, and the most logical reading of the circumstance is that a petition arising from changed circumstances is unlikely to happen at sentencing, the court erred in ruling that it had no jurisdiction to modify an interest obligation after sentencing.
Extensive review of statute's structure and history.
https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/21a0185p-06.pdf
Ninth Circuit: Dennis Munden v. Stewart Title Guaranty Co.
Since the roadmaps were created under a state statute and designed, at least in part, to give owners in property notice of extant interests in their property, the road map is a public record for the purposes of the title insurance contract, and the insurers had a duty to defend the landowner against the otherwise unrecorded state road easement and right of way.
Policy exclusion for claims arising from public interests in roads applies to bar the claim, since the state is asserting such an interest, and the policy owner is opposing it.
One deft to pay the plaintiff's costs, and the plaintiff to pay the prevailing deft's costs.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/13/20-35336.pdf
Federal Circuit: Vollono v. McDonough
As the statutory bar to receiving duplicate funding doesn't look to current eligibility status, a veteran who received funding through one program and therefore chose to forgo another funding source can't later seek to receive the second funding after the eligibility for the first was determined to be erroneous, though non-recoupable.
Ninth Circuit: USA v. Jane Boyd
Statute that allows for penalties for any violation of a certain section does not permit multiple penalties for multiple aspects of the violation of a single obligation, but rather establishes that any of the violations specified in the statute and associated regulations are subject to the penalty.
Materially similar provision for willful violations of the same obligation that allows for multiple penalties cuts against the idea that multiple penalties should be allowed in the section of the statute that doesn't explicitly mention them.
Tax statutes should be strictly constructed where they impose an obligation.
DISSENT:
The reporting requirement is a procedural element, but the substance of the statute is that each of the foreign bank accounts should be reported.
The use of "violation" as defined by its context in the similar provision establishes that the term should have that definition throughout the statute.
Majority's reading is not strict, but strained.
Seventh Circuit: USA v. Dwight Jackson
Since the provision in the Code authorizing appeal for discretionary release in "any case" doesn't apply to all cases, since it was added to the Code by the same law that provided for its own effective date and non-retroactivity.
Subsequent law reiterating the effective date and non-retroactivity of portions of the earlier law did not, by implication, amend the status of other parts of the earlier law.
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