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

Plaintiffs appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants on plaintiffs' First Amendment retaliation claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983. Plaintiffs alleged that defendants, who are supervisors or officials at the Ulster County, New York Sheriff's Office and the county jail, took adverse employment actions against them in retaliation for a parody created by one of the plaintiffs that suggested corruption among jail officials, and subsequently filing a lawsuit based upon this alleged retaliation. The court held that the district court correctly determined that none of the conduct for which plaintiffs alleged they suffered retaliation touched on a matter of public concern, and that plaintiffs as public employees, could therefore not sustain First Amendment claims under section 1983 against defendants. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Singer v. Ferro" on Justia Law

Two groups of plaintiffs, holders of copyrights in programs broadcast on network television, filed copyright infringement actions against Aereo. Aereo enabled its subscribers to watch broadcast television programs over the internet for a monthly fee. Plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction barring Aereo from transmitting programs to its subscribers while the programs were still airing, claiming that those transmissions infringed their exclusive right to publicly perform their works. The district court denied the motion and plaintiffs appealed. The court concluded that Aereo's transmissions of unique copies of broadcast television programs created at its users' request and transmitted while the programs were still airing on broadcast television were not "public performances" of plaintiffs' copyrighted works under Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc. As such, plaintiffs have not demonstrated that they were likely to prevail on the merits on this claim in their copyright infringement action. Nor have they demonstrated serious questions as to the merits and a balance of hardships that tipped decidedly in their favor. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's order denying plaintiffs' motion. View "WNET v. Aereo, Inc." on Justia Law

Willow Creek sued UBS, claiming a violation of Rule 10(b)-16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. 78j(b), because UBS failed to fully disclose its generally applicable margin rules until after it demanded that Willow Creek provide additional collateral for its margin account. Willow Creek also alleged that UBS failed to provide adequate notice before it revised those rules. The district court granted UBS's motion for judgment on the pleadings, concluding that the initial disclosure statement provided by UBS satisfied Rule 10b-16's disclosure requirements. The court concluded that, in this instance, where a broker disclosed its margin policies regarding the circumstances that could lead it to reevaluate the adequacy of the collateral in a customer's account and also indicated that more specific information about its margin policies was available to the customer, it need not disclose the precise, complex formulas it used to calculate its collateral requirements. Nor did Rule 10b-16(b) require UBS to provide advance notice to Willow Creek before it changed its margin rules. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "WC Capital Mgmt. v. UBS Sec., LLC" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from the denial of a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. Defendant's conviction stemmed from his participation in the Colombo organized crime family. Defendant claimed that the government violated due process requirements by failing to disclose exculpatory information and failing to correct testimony known to be false. The court affirmed the judgment because the district court did not err in finding that the allegedly exculpatory evidence was not suppressed and was not material; and that the alleged perjury was not material to defendant's conviction. View "United States v. Orena (Sessa)" on Justia Law

SDBC, formerly known as Stella D'oro, petitioned for review of a decision and order of the Board which held that Stella D'oro engaged in unfair labor practices principally by declining to permit the Union to retain a copy of the 2007 audited financial statement during the course of collective bargaining. The Board cross-petitioned for enforcement. The court concluded that there was insufficient evidence in the record to support the Board's conclusion that Stella D'oro pled an "inability to pay," thereby triggering a duty for the company to substantiate those assertions; moreover, the Board erroneously disregarded settled law in failing to properly apply or distinguish through reasoned decisionmaking Stroehmann Bakeries. Even if the facts supported a conclusion that Stella D'oro pled an inability to pay, Stella D'oro adequately substantiated its assertions by making the 2007 Financial Statement available to Union representatives for examination and note-taking, and therefore the company acted lawfully. Accordingly, SDBC's petition for review of the Board's decision was granted, and the Board's cross-petition for enforcement was denied. View "SDBC Holdings, Inc. v. NLRB" on Justia Law

Defendants James and Mallay appealed from judgments of conviction based on their participation in a wide-ranging conspiracy that involved fraudulently obtained life insurance policies for members of their extended families and others in the Guyanese and Guyanese-American community, and, in several instances, murder of the insured to collect on those policies. The court found no error in the admission of an autopsy report and a toxicology report; there was no error in the district court's decision to exclude the prosecutor's rebuttal statement in a prior, related trial; the district court did not abuse its discretion in disallowing as impeachment evidence certain statements made by a witness; the district court's denial of James' severance motion did not warrant vacatur of the verdict; there was no Sixth Amendment violation in the admission of surreptitious recordings made by a government informant; it was proper to admit that recording; there was no error in denying a motion for a new trial; and there was no cumulative error. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. James and Mallay" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from his conviction of honest services mail fraud. Defendant argued that the district court committed reversible error when it used a jury instruction on honest services mail fraud that allowed the jury to find him guilty of that crime without finding a bribery or kickback scheme, in contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in Skilling v. United States. The court held, under plain error review, that while the jury instruction was error, it did not merit reversal because bribery was the only theory of honest services mail fraud available to the jury based on the arguments and evidence at trial. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Botti" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of violent crimes in aid of racketeering activity, sought an order authorizing the district court to consider a second or successive motion filed under 28 U.S.C. 2255. The court held that, to the extent that this second motion presented the same claim presented in the first untimely section 2255 motion, the claim was dismissed under Green v. United States. To the extent this second motion presented a new claim based on Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, that new claim must be dismissed because it was not based on a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable. Accordingly, the court denied the motion. View "Gallagher v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs are motorists who use the Grand Island Bridge but, because they are not residents of Grand Island, did not qualify for the lowest toll rate. Plaintiffs sought a judgment declaring that the toll discount policies violated the dormant Commerce Clause as well as the constitutional right to travel that courts have located in the Privileges and Immunities and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, both in violation of 42 U.S.C. 1983. On appeal, plaintiffs challenged the November 28, 2011 Memorandum Decision and Order of the district court, among other things, that granted judgment in favor of defendants. The court held that plaintiffs have standing under Article III, the toll policy at issue was a minor restriction on travel and did not involve "invidious distinctions" that would require strict scrutiny analysis pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment; the district court correctly used, in the alternative, the three-part test set forth in Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County of Kent, to evaluate both plaintiffs' right-to-travel and dormant Commerce Clause claims; and the Grand Island Bridge toll scheme was based on "some fair approximation of use" of the bridges; was not "excessive in relation to the benefits" it conferred; and did not "discriminate against interstate commerce." Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Selevan, et al. v. New York Thruway Authority, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs initiated this putative class action against Priceline, seeking compensatory, punitive, and equitable relief for alleged breaches of fiduciary duty and contract, as well as a violation of Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), Conn. Gen. Stat. 42-110b. Plaintiffs' claims arose from Priceline's alleged failure to disclose to users of its "Name Your Own Price" booking service that a successful bid for a hotel room would generally exceed the amount Priceline itself compensated the hotel vendor, with Priceline retaining the difference as profit. Because plaintiffs failed as a matter of law to allege an agency relationship between Priceline and consumers who use its "Name Your Own Price" service to reserve hotel accommodations, they could not plausibly claim that Priceline breached an agent's fiduciary duty in failing to apprise consumers that it might have procured the accommodations at costs lower than their bids, retaining the difference as profits. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' claims. View "Johnson v. Priceline.com, Inc." on Justia Law