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

Plaintiff filed suit under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. 1030, and the Stored Communications Act (SCA), 18 U.S.C. 2701 et seq., alleging that defendant, her former boyfriend, had gained access to her e-mail and Facebook accounts without her permission and therefore in violation of the CFAA and the SCA. Plaintiff discovered that she could not log on to her AOL e-mail account on or about August 1, 2011 and plaintiff discovered that she could not log into her Facebook account on February 24, 2012. The district court granted defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint as untimely. While the CFAA and the SCA provided a civil cause of action, the statute of limitations to file under each statute is two years. The court concluded that plaintiff's claims relating to defendant's alleged unlawful access to her e-mail account are time-barred because she filed suit on January 2, 2014, after the two year statute of limitations had expired. However, the court concluded that plaintiff's claims relating to the alleged unlawful access of her Facebook account were timely filed, less than two years from the date they accrued. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Sewell v. Bernardin" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs challenged, on statutory and constitutional grounds, the telephone metadata program under which the NSA collects in bulk "on an ongoing daily basis" the metadata associated with telephone calls made by and to Americans. The NSA aggregates those metadata into a repository or data bank that can later be queried. The district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss and denied plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction. The court concluded that the plaintiffs have standing to sue; the court disagreed with the district court insofar as it held that plaintiffs are precluded from bringing suit against the government and hold that they have a right of action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 702; on the merits, the court concluded that § 215 of the PATRIOT Act, Pub. L. No. 107-56, section 215, does not authorize the telephone metadata collection program; the court did not address the constitutionality of the program; and the court declined to conclude that a preliminary injunction is required, leaving it to the district court to reconsider, in the first instance, the propriety of preliminary relief in light of a correct understanding of the governing law. Therefore, the district court erred in ruling that section 215 authorizes the telephone metadata collection program. The telephone metadata program exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized and therefore violates § 215. The court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "ACLU v. Clapper" on Justia Law

Wright-Darrisaw called the White House Comments Line and, after statements characterized as “foul,” and “irrational,” stated “I’m going to f**k and kill Obama.” A telephone operator transferred her to the Secret Service. The call was not recorded. The Secret Service subpoenaed phone records and determined that Wright-Darrisaw had called the White House Comments Line several times. Wright-Darrisaw admitted to calling to voice her displeasure with child custody laws, but denied making any threats. Wright-Darrisaw was convicted of threatening to kill the President, 18 U.S.C. 871(a), and of making a false statement, 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2),and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. The district court declined to apply a four-level decrease in the offense level under U.S.S.G. 2A6.1(b)(6), finding that the threat involved deliberation, and applied a three-level increase under U.S.S.G. 3A1.2(a) because Wright-Darrisaw was motivated by the victim’s status as a government official. The Second Circuit deferred consideration of the sufficiency of the evidence that the communication constituted a “true threat,” pending the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Elonis, but remanded for reconsideration of the sentence in light of a Second Circuit holding that “deliberation” under U.S.S.G. 2A6.1(b)(6) is deliberation related to the communication of the threat itself. View "United States v. Wright-Darrisaw" on Justia Law

Peter Ricci, a Teamsters member since 1983, refused to endorse Union President Doyle in 2002. For the next 10 years, Ricci claims, he suffered retaliation. He was fired from jobs he should have kept; he was not placed in jobs he should have gotten; and generally disfavored, even as compared with members with less seniority. In 2012, members of the Union distributed newsletters containing statements about the Riccis. Those newsletters were also published on a website hosted on GoDaddy’s web servers. The Riccis claim that GoDaddy refused to investigate Ricci’s complaints. In the Ricci’s pro se defamation and retaliation suit, the district court dismissed all claims against GoDaddy and federal claims against the Union. The Second Circuit affirmed. GoDaddy is immune from the defamation claims under the Communications Decency Act of 1996: “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1), and “No cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” The labor claims were barred by the NLRA’s six‐ month statute of limitations, 29 U.S.C. 160(b). View "Ricci v. Teamsters Union Local 456" on Justia Law

Officer Matthews sued, alleging that the City of New York retaliated against him for speaking to his commanding officers about an arrest quota policy at his precinct. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment, holding that Matthews spoke as a public employee, not as a citizen, and that his speech was, therefore, not protected by the First Amendment. The Second Circuit vacated, reasoning that because Matthews’s comments on precinct policy did not fall within his official duties and because he elected a channel with a civilian analogue to pursue his complaint, he spoke as a citizen. View "Matthews v. City of New York" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against MAB, a collection agency, alleging that MAB sent numerous telephone calls to his mobile phone number in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 47 U.S.C. 227. MAB made the calls in an attempt to collect plaintiff's deceased mother-in-law's unpaid $68 electric bill. The district court concluded that plaintiff consented to the calls when he contacted the electric company to discontinue service after the mother's death. However, the court concluded that plaintiff did not consent to giving his phone number "during the transaction that resulted in the debt owed" where he provided his number long after the debt was incurred and was not responsible for the debt. Accordingly, the court concluded that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to MAB where plaintiff did not consent to the calls and the calls were prohibited by the TCPA. The court reversed and remanded. View "Nigro v. Mercantile Adjustment Bureau" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit in district court in Vermont against the Diocese and its former priest, alleging that the priest transported plaintiff from New York to Vermont for the purpose of sexually abusing him, and did sexually abuse him. The Diocese, a New York special act corporation with its principal office in Albany, subsequently petitioned the court for a writ of mandamus directing the district court in Vermont to dismiss the case against it for lack of personal jurisdiction. The court granted the Diocese's petition, concluding that this was an extraordinary case warranting mandamus relief where the court considered (a) the irreparable harm caused by a needless foray into prior abuse investigations within the Diocese, exposing victims and their families to grueling inquires that would not be undertaken in the absence of the district court's erroneous ruling, (b) the clarity of the district court's error and futility of remand, and (c) the opportunity in this case to shed light on the Supreme Court's most recent expressions on general jurisdiction, especially as applied to religious and other charitable organizations, constituted "exceptional circumstances" that warrant the issuance of the writ. View "In Re: Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, NY" on Justia Law

Time Warner petitioned for review of the FCC's 2011 order promulgated under section 616(a)(3) and (5) of the Communications Act of 1934 (Communications Act), as amended by the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 (Cable Act), 47 U.S.C. 536(a)(3), (5). Section 616(a)(3) and (5) and that part of the 2011 Order establishing the standard for demonstrating a prima facie violation of these statutory provisions (the program carriage regime) were intended to curb anticompetitive behavior by limiting the circumstances under which a distributor of video programming could discriminate against unaffiliated networks that provided such programming. The court concluded that the program carriage regime did not violate the First Amendment where its case-specific standards for identifying affiliation-based discrimination served important government interests in promoting competition and diversity in an industry still posing serious competitive risks and were narrowly tailored not to burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests. The court concluded, however, that the 2011 Order was substantive and therefore subject to the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq. Because the FCC failed to comply with such requirements, the court granted the petition for review insofar as it raised an APA challenge. View "Time Warner Cable Inc. v. FCC" on Justia Law

The IRS challenged the district court's judgment upholding the bankruptcy court's decision to grant the objection of the reorganized Worldcom debtors to the IRS's proof of claim for taxes owed and the debtors' refund motion for the taxes WorldCom had already paid. At issue was whether WorldCom must pay federal excise taxes on the purchase of a telecommunications service that connected people using dial-up modems to the Internet. The court held that WorldCom purchased a "local telephone service" when it paid for the telecommunications service and that WorldCom must therefore pay federal communication excise taxes on those transactions. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "In Re: WorldCom, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a complaint seeking damages and injunctive relief, alleging that defendants violated, inter alia, the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(a)(1), and New York General Business Law 349 when defendants published a scientific article reporting research results related to plaintiff's production of surfactants. The court concluded that, as a matter of law, statements of scientific conclusions about unsettled matters of scientific debate could not give rise to liability for damages sounding in defamation. The court also concluded that the secondary distribution of excerpts of such an article could not give rise to liability, so long as the excerpts did not mislead a reader about the conclusions of the article. Therefore, the district court correctly concluded that plaintiff failed to state a claim based on publication of the article itself because the challenged statements were protected scientific opinion and plaintiff failed to adequately allege that defendants Chiesi and Cornerstone distributed misleading excerpts of the article. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "ONY, Inc. v. Cornerstone Therapeutics, Inc." on Justia Law