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

Four female employees, including plaintiff, filed suit alleging hostile work environment claims. The jury awarded plaintiff a total of $400,000 on her claims against defendants under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. 1983. The County then filed motions for judgment as a matter of law or, alternatively, for a new trial, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b) and 59(b). The district court then sua sponte denied the motions based on the restrictions established by Rule 6(b)(2) on extending time for filing such motions. The Second Circuit vacated the denial order and remanded. On remand, the district court found that plaintiff "constructively waived" her objection to the timeliness of the County's motions and entered orders reducing plaintiff's Title VII award to $75,000 and overturning the jury verdict in her favor on her section 1983 claim for want of evidence of an unlawful municipal custom or practice under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Both plaintiff and the County appealed.The Second Circuit held that plaintiff forfeited her right to object to the untimeliness of the County's post-trial motions by failing to raise the issue contemporaneously with the district court's grant of the extension. The court further rejected the County's position that plaintiff's acceptance of remittitur on her Title VII claims forecloses her appeal of the judgment insofar as it relates to her section 1983 claim. On the merits, the court affirmed the judgment in plaintiff's favor on her Title VII claim and rejected the County's cross-appeal seeking judgment in its favor on that claim as a matter of law. In regard to the section 1983 claim, the court concluded that the district court erred in entering judgment as a matter of law for the County, because the jury had a reasonable basis for its finding of sufficient municipal involvement to support its award to plaintiff. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. View "Legg v. Ulster County" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs enrolled in a Group Variable Universal Life Insurance (GVUL) policy offered by MetLife. During the enrollment process, neither plaintiff indicated that he smoked tobacco, but MetLife nevertheless designated them as tobacco smokers, thus triggering their payment of higher insurance premiums. Plaintiffs filed suit after MetLife refused to refund the amount of overpayments, alleging breach of contract and tort violations under New York law.The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' claims as time-barred under New York's applicable statute of limitations. The court held that the continuing-violation doctrine did not toll the limitations period for the breach of contract claim where the issue in this case rests on a single allegedly unlawful act, namely MetLife's initial designation of both plaintiffs as smokers. The court noted that determining whether the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act bar applies here is a fraught and unnecessary endeavor. View "Miller v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against his instructor at Charter Oak State College, alleging that the instructor violated his First Amendment rights by removing an online blog post that he made in response to a class assignment. Plaintiff also alleged that the instructor and others violated his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment in connection with disciplining him for the blog post.The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the suit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The court held that the district court did not err by analyzing plaintiff's First Amendment claim under the Hazelwood standard because plaintiff's speech bears the hallmark of school sponsorship. The court also held that, under the Hazelwood standard, the district court did not err in determining that the instructor's deletion of plaintiff's post was reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. Furthermore, plaintiff failed plausibly to allege that the instructor's actions constituted viewpoint discrimination. Rather, the instructor's deletion of plaintiff's post reflected a content-based restriction that the Supreme Court has instructed the court to tolerate in the school setting. In this context of an online message board for completing course assignments, the court concluded that plaintiff was not subjected to viewpoint discrimination when his post criticizing rather than performing the assignment was deleted. Finally, the court rejected plaintiff's Fourteenth Amendment due process claim and held that plaintiff was afforded a full opportunity to be heard and received sufficient process, and any discernible substantive due process claim fails alongside his more particularized First Amendment censorship claim. View "Collins v. Putt" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for four counts of receipt of child pornography, one count of possession of child pornography, and two counts of transportation of child pornography. The court held that the evidence showed that defendant downloaded child pornography files on a peer-to-peer file sharing network, thus making those files available to be downloaded by other users on the network, and that government agents downloaded two video files from his computer. Therefore, the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions. Furthermore, even assuming a violation of defendant's entitlement to discovery, defendant has not demonstrated that he suffered prejudice.The court also held that defendant's 120 month sentence is procedurally and substantively reasonable. Finally, the court affirmed the monetary fines imposed on defendant for costs incurred because defendant failed to show up for the first day of trial, for an assessment, for a penalty under the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, and for a special assessment. View "United States v. Clarke" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of relief to defendant under the First Step Act. The court held that, under the First Step Act, a district court has the authority to lower a sentence only if that sentence could have been lower had the Fair Sentencing Act applied. In this case, defendant pleaded guilty to an information that charged, in its first count, that defendant committed three offenses—distributing, and possessing with intent to distribute, crack cocaine, cocaine, and heroin. The court explained that, because the Fair Sentencing Act did not alter the mandatory minimum sentences triggered by the quantities of heroin and cocaine charged in count one of the information, defendant's sentence could not have been lower than 120 months. Therefore, because defendant's sentence could not have been lower even if sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act were in effect at the time the covered offense was committed, the district court correctly concluded that it lacked the authority to reduce defendant's sentence. View "United States v. Echeverry" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of habeas corpus relief to petitioner, who was detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1226(a), which provides for discretionary detention of noncitizens during the pendency of removal proceedings. The habeas petition challenged the procedures employed in petitioner's bond hearings, which required him to prove, to the satisfaction of an immigration judge, that he is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk.The court held that the district court correctly granted the petition where petitioner was denied due process because he was incarcerated for fifteen months (with no end in sight) while the Government at no point justified his incarceration. The district court also provided the correct remedy by ordering a new bond hearing in which the Government bore the burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence that petitioner was either a danger or a flight risk. View "Velasco Lopez v. Decker" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York and the district court's permanent injunction enjoining the County from foreclosing on the Cayuga Indian Nation's real property for nonpayment of taxes. The court agreed with the district court that tribal sovereign immunity from suit bars the County from pursuing tax enforcement actions under Article 11 of the New York Real Property Tax Law against the Cayuga Indian Nation. The court explained that the County's foreclosure proceedings are not permitted by the traditional common law exception to sovereign immunity that covers certain actions related to immovable property. In this case, the foreclosure actions fall outside the purview of the common law version of the immovable-property exception. The court also rejected the County's reading of City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 544 U.S. 197 (2005), as abrogating a tribe's immunity from suit. View "Cayuga Indian Nation of New York v. Seneca County" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of the government defendants in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action brought by plaintiff, seeking documents related to the revocation of his visa.The court held that the contested documents were properly withheld under FOIA Exemption 3, and specifically INA 222(f), because they pertain to the issuance and refusal of a visa. Furthermore, officials properly invoked Exemption 3 to withhold revocation documents as they are related to visa issuances and refusals. Finally, plaintiff failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that the records are needed by a court "in the interest of the ends of justice," and the discretionary release of records under 8 U.S.C. 1202(f)(1) provides no basis for disclosure in this FOIA action. For the reasons set forth in a separate summary order addressing FOIA Exemption 5 filed simultaneously with this opinion, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Spadaro v. United States Customs and Border Protection" on Justia Law

A jury found that defendant had, through his actions in two distinct schemes, breached his fiduciary duty to Yukos, YHIL, Foundation 1, and Foundation 2 (collectively, the "Yukos Group"), as well as Mark Fleischman, as Trustee of the 2015 Security Trust, as successor in interest to the 2014 Security Trust. In this case, neither the Yukos Group nor Fleischman had sought compensatory damages for defendant's alleged breaches, and the jury declined to award them any disgorgement of defendant's compensation pursuant to New York's faithless servant doctrine. Therefore, the district court awarded the Yukos Group entities and Fleischman each $1 in nominal damages (for a total of $5).The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to David Godfrey, its non-imposition sanctions, and its decision to instruct the jury as it did regarding the standard for disgorgement of a faithless servant's compensation. However, the court concluded that Foundation 1 and Foundation 2 failed to prove breach of fiduciary duty claims against defendant. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of defendant's Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law as to them. View "Yukos Capital S.A.R.L. v. Feldman" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of defendant's motion for a new trial under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33, following defendant's conviction for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud. The court clarified that the preponderates heavily standard requires that the district court determine whether all the evidence at trial, taken as a whole, preponderated heavily against the verdict. It does not, however, permit the district court to elect its own theory of the case and view the evidence through that lens. The court held that the weight of the evidence at trial did not preponderate heavily against the jury's verdict, and thus the district court abused its discretion in vacating the judgment and granting a new trial. The court reinstated the conviction and remanded to the district court for sentencing. View "United States v. Archer" on Justia Law