Justia U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff challenged HUD's refusal to authorize reimbursement of defense costs plaintiff incurred while successfully defending criminal charges stemming from a series of transactions involving Middletown's use of funds it received from HUD. The court held that HUD acted arbitrarily and capriciously by incorrectly determining that plaintiff's legal fees were a result of his acting solely as Middletown's mayor's private counsel. The court held that the legal fees and expenses incurred by plaintiff in successfully defending the criminal charges were legal expenses required in the administration of federal programs under the OMB Circular. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court and ordered HUD to authorize Middletown to reimburse the criminal defense costs to plaintiff. View "Guertin v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendants plead guilty to committing a series of bank robberies. On appeal, defendants challenged the district court's order of restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA), 18 U.S.C. 3663-64. The court held that expenses other than those enumerated in section 3663A(b) were not compensable under the MVRA. In this case, the restitution order properly included the amount of money stolen during the bank robberies. However, the only portion of Merchant Bank's expenses subject to restitution was the amount paid to the bank's regular staff while the bank was closed as a crime scene. Accordingly, the court vacated the restitution component of the judgments and remanded to determine the amount of restitution. View "United States v. Maynard and Ludwig" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, former NBA referees, filed suit alleging breach of contract and/or seeking reformation with respect to each supplemental insurance policy that plaintiff had. Plaintiffs had relied on the insurance agent's representations that when plaintiffs where injured and unable to work as NBA referees, they would receive disability payments until the age of sixty-five. The court concluded that plaintiffs' failure to read the policy did not defeat their reasonable expectations. Pennsylvania law determined plaintiffs' right to reformation; absolved the insured from not reading the policy at delivery; and allowed the contract to be interpreted (or recast) from the date the carriers acted in a manner inconsistent with the insured's reasonable expectations of coverage. The policies that underlay Pennsylvania's substantive contract law of the reasonable expectations doctrine directly contradict those that drive Connecticut's view of when a claim for non-conforming coverage accrues. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's decision dismissing plaintiffs' breach of contract claims and remanded for further proceedings. View "Nunn v. Massachusetts Casualty Ins." on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of the People's Republic of China, sought review of the BIA's order affirming the IJ's denial of her motion to reopen. Petitioner contended that her prior deportation proceedings were void ab initio because exclusion proceedings at the port of entry were the only appropriate procedure for determining whether she could enter into and remain in the United States. The court concluded, however, that petitioner conceded to the charge of deportability at her hearing before the IJ and did not attempt to terminate the proceedings until filing her motion to reopen over nine years after the deportation order became effective. The court rejected petitioner's remaining arguments, finding them to be without merit. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review. View "Li v. Holder" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's imposition of a two-level sentencing enhancement for distribution of child pornography under U.S.S.G. 2G2.2(b)(3)(F). The court concluded that, although a defendant's intent was irrelevant for the enhancement under section 2G2.2(b)(3)(F), a defendant must know that his actions, such as the use of peer-to-peer software, would make the child-pornography files accessible to others. Because the district court's finding that defendant should have known that his files containing child pornography would be shared fell short of the required finding of knowing distribution, and because such error was not harmless, the court vacated and reversed for resentencing. View "United States v. Baldwin" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a Kurdish ethnic and citizen of Turkey, sought review of the BIA's order affirming the IJ's denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). The IJ concluded that on at least four or five occasions, petitioner gave food and, on at least one occasion, clothing, to individuals whom petitioner knew, or had reason to know, to be members of Kurdish terrorist groups. The BIA adopted the IJ's findings and legal conclusions. The court found no error in the agency's factual conclusion that petitioner provided material support to a terrorist organization. However, the court remanded in order to allow the BIA to address a precedential issue: whether the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)(B)(iv)(VI), should be construed to include a duress exception to the admissibility bar that the Act otherwise established for those who have provided material support to a terrorist organization. Accordingly, the court granted in part, denied in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Ay v. Holder" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a citizen of Vietnam, sought review of an order of the BIA dismissing her appeal from a decision of the IJ, which ordered her removed and denied her petition to remove conditions placed upon her residency in the United States. The USCIS denied the petition after finding that petitioner was her husband's half-niece, concluding that the marriage was incestuous and therefore void. The court affirmed the IJ's factual determination that petitioner and her husband were related as half-blooded niece and uncle. The court certified to the New York Court of Appeals the issue of whether such relationships were void for incest under New York's Domestic Relations Law, N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law 5(2). View "Nguyen v. Holder" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 and 31 U.S.C. 5363, and other charges. The indictment alleged that three leading internet poker companies doing business in the United States violated section 5363 by deceiving United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments for illegal gambling activity on their sites. The companies accomplished the alleged deception by hiring third-party payment processors, such as defendant, to disguise payments from United States gamblers as payments to hundreds of purportedly legitimate, but non-existent, online merchants and other non-gambling businesses. The court held that, in light of United States v. Cotton, the question of whether defendant's conduct constituted a conspiracy to violate the UIGEA was a non-jurisdictional challenge to the prosecution; count one of the indictment sufficiently invoked the district court's jurisdiction by alleging that defendant had committed a federal criminal offense at a stated time and place in terms of plainly tracking the language of the relevant statute; defendant's unconditional guilty plea to count one precluded his argument on appeal that he was convicted of a so-called "non-offense" under the UIGEA; and defendant's sentence was neither substantively nor procedurally unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Rubin" on Justia Law

Defendant executed several illegal insider trades involving the stock of the supermarket chain Albertson's using material nonpublic information received from an employee of UBS. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's judgment ordering him to disgorge profits from illegal insider trading, enjoining him from further violating the securities laws, and ordering him to pay prejudgment interest on the entire disgorgement amount. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ordering disgorgement because the court's cases have established that tippers can be required to disgorge profits realized by their tippees' illegal insider trading. This case was distinguishable only insofar as defendant himself executed the fraudulent trades rather than leave that task to a tippee. The court found no abuse of discretion in the district court's imposition of an injunction on defendant or in its order that he pay prejudgment interest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "SEC v. Contorinis" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, pro se, filed suit against defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment for deliberate indifference. After plaintiff was beaten by police officers, he was taken to the emergency room where was evaluated doctors. Plaintiff alleged that Defendant Rabin, one of the doctors, allowed herself to be influenced by the officers who told Rabin that plaintiff had attacked a female police officer and that he should be ignored and left alone. The district court concluded that plaintiff's complaint did not state a claim for deliberate indifference because he did not adequately allege that Rabin acted with a sufficiently culpable state of mind. The court concluded that if plaintiff's complaint were amended to include the allegations in his opposition to the motion to dismiss, the complaint would sufficiently set forth the mental state element of his deliberate indifference claim. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of leave to amend and remanded for further proceedings where amendment in this instance would not be futile. View "Nielsen v. Bloomberg" on Justia Law