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

Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate his securities fraud convictions in light of United States v. Newman, 773F.3d438 (2dCir. 2014), in which the Second Circuit reversed the insider trading convictions of two tippers. The court affirmed the judgment and held that petitioner presented no viable claim that the personal benefit challenge was unavailable to his counsel on appeal; petitioner failed to show prejudice where the personal benefit instructions he challenged were so flawed as to deny him due process; and petitioner has not demonstrated his actual innocence where the evidence contained ample evidence that petitioner was in a conspiracy to trade on the basis of non public information and that petitioner benefited financially from the trading. View "Gupta v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged two conditions of his 2017 supervised release: a ban on accessing the Internet without prior specific permission of the court and a total ban on viewing or possessing adult pornography. The Second Circuit held that imposition of both the Internet ban and the pornography ban was substantively unreasonable on this record as these conditions were not reasonably related to the relevant sentencing factors. In this case, the court found that defendant was twice convicted over fifteen years ago, when he was twenty‐one and twenty‐two years old, of having unlawful sexual relationships with two thirteen‐year old girls, and since then has substantially, if imperfectly, complied with the terms of his extended periods of supervised release. Furthermore, the conditions imposed a greater restriction than reasonably necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing in light of defendant's crime of conviction (failure to register as a sex offender) and his criminal history. View "United States v. Eaglin" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud. In this case, defendant was a tipper who did not directly trade on material, non‐public information but rather shared it with a tippee who did.The court held that the evidence was sufficient to prove his criminal intent where the jury was not required to credit defendant's deposition testimony that he intended only to brag when he tipped his friend and financial advisor about an upcoming merger, and the evidence taken as a whole permitted the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant intended his communication to lead to trading in securities of the company in question. View "United States v. Klein (Schulman)" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of SquareTrade's motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action seeking to hold SquareTrade accountable for alleged violations of consumer protection laws. The court agreed with the district court and held that the arbitration provision did not become part of the contract because plaintiff did not have reasonable notice of and manifest his assent to it. In this case, the consumer was presented with several documents including the Pre-Sale T&C, the body of the subsequent email, and the Post-Sale T&C, none of them specifically identified as the "Service Contract" governing the purchase, and all containing different sets of terms. Furthermore, the prior course of dealing between the parties did not convince the court that plaintiff was on inquiry notice of the arbitration provision. View "Starke v. SquareTrade, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that two Monroe County Assistant District Attorneys (ADA), and others, violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by failing to timely arraign him on four of six identity fraud and larceny charges.The Second Circuit reversed the district court's denial of absolute immunity to the ADAs, holding that they were performing a traditional prosecutorial function when they determined that they would initiate plaintiff's prosecution via grand jury indictment and thus delay his arraignment on separate individual charges. The court held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction to consider the district court's denial of Monroe County's motion to dismiss because these claims against the county were not inextricably intertwined with the issue of the ADA's immunity. View "Ogunkoya v. Drake" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought an adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court, alleging that defendants wrongfully failed to pay debtor for produce held in trust for plaintiffs, in violation of the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. The Second Circuit agreed with the bankruptcy judge and district court and affirmed summary judgment for plaintiffs, but held that defendants should receive a pro rata share of assets of the trust established under the Act.Because assets subject to the Act are held in a ʺfloatingʺ trust for the benefit of unpaid produce suppliers and never become part of a bankruptcy estate, when a purchaser of produce files for bankruptcy under Chapter 7, a creditor covered by the Actʹs provisions is entitled to a pro rata share of trust assets, but not to a complete offset of mutual debts between it and the bankrupt. In this case, although defendants did not file a proof of claim after the district court issued a claims process order under the Act, they preserved their claims by providing statutorily required notice to debtor in connection with each pre‐bankruptcy sale of fresh produce; filed a proof of claim with the bankruptcy court before the district court had issued the claims process order; and reasonably, although mistakenly, thought that they could vindicate their rights as creditors using a bankruptcy offset. View "The PACA Trust Creditors v. Genecco Produce Inc." on Justia Law

The Second Circuit vacated the district court's judgment granting petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to set aside his sentence imposed under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The court held that any offense that satisfies the essential elements of robbery under Con. Gen. Stat. 53a-133 involves use or threat of force capable of causing pain or injury and thus qualifies as an ACCA predicate. Therefore, defendant had three prior violent felonies including his conviction under section 53a-133. View "Shabazz v. United States" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for crimes stemming from his role in drug and racketeering related murders. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to support guilty verdicts on the charged violent crimes in aid of racketeering (VICAR) counts; the court rejected both defendant's perjury challenges to the conviction; and defendant failed to show any prosecutorial misconduct in summation.However, the court vacated defendant's sentence, holding that two prosecutorial errors in response to the Efrain Johnson evidence, considered together, required vacatur. The court rejected defendant's sufficiency and constitutional challenges to his sentence. The court remanded for a new sentencing hearing. View "United States v. Aquart" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of a permanent injunction enjoining the government from continuing to apply the requirement that government funds assisting plaintiffs' efforts to fight HIV/AIDS abroad could not be used to provide assistance to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.In Agency for Int'l Dev. v. Alliance for Open Soc. Int'l, Inc., 570 U.S. 205 (2013), the Supreme Court concluded that the requirement compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment. Applying the Supreme Court's reasoning in AOSI to this case, the court held that the speech of a recipient who rejects the government's message was unconstitutionally restricted when it has an affiliate who is forced to speak the government's contrasting message. The court rejected the remaining claims and held that the district court did not abuse its discretion. View "Alliance for Open Society International v. United States Agency for International Development" on Justia Law

An interpleader defendant, NuStar, appealed the district court's partial final judgment rejecting its claims of entitlement to maritime liens against two chartered vessels. The district court ruled that NuStar was not entitled to maritime liens under the Commercial Instruments and Maritime Liens Act (CIMLA).The Second Circuit affirmed and held that the district court did not err in interpreting the CIMLA or ruling that maritime liens may not properly be granted based on principles of equity. The court held that NuStar's contentions as to the proper interpretation of the CIMLA was foreclosed by the court's recent decision in ING Bank N.V. v. M/V TEMARA, 892 F.3d 511 (2d Cir. 2018). Furthermore, the district court did not err by concluding that the exception to the general rule against a subcontractor's entitlement to a maritime lien did not apply to NuStar. View "Clearlake Shipping PTE Ltd. v. NuStar Energy Services, Inc." on Justia Law