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

Plaintiff filed suit against defendants, alleging willful violations of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), 15 U.S.C. 1681c(g). Section 1681c(g) seeks to reduce the risk of identity theft by, among other things, prohibiting merchants from including more than the final five digits of a customer’s credit card number on a printed receipt. The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's second amended complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that the parties' factual disagreement as to whether printing the first six digits constituted a material risk of harm was a question of fact even at the Rule 12(b)(1) motion‐to‐dismiss stage, and so the court reviewed the district court's finding for clear error. On the basis of the record and plaintiffs' affirmative burden to establish subject matter jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence, and informed by the findings of other district courts as to this specific issue, the court concluded that the district court's findings were not clearly erroneous. The court held, however, that a complaint must be dismissed without prejudice where the dismissal was due to the court's lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Therefore, the court remanded so that the district court may amend the judgment and enter the dismissal without prejudice. View "Katz v. The Donna Karan Company, LLC" on Justia Law

George Elias, IV, Stephen Hadford, and Ross Fowler appealed the district court's dismissal of their defamation claims against Rolling Stone and others, alleging claims arising from a now-retracted Rolling Stone magazine article titled, "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA" as well as a subsequent online podcast. The Second Circuit held that the district court properly dismissed plaintiffs' defamation claim arising from the podcast; the district court properly dismissed plaintiffs' claims relating to Hadford individually; with regard to Elias and Fowler, the complaint plausibly alleged that the statements in the article were "of and concerning" them individually; and the complaint plausibly alleged that all plaintiffs were defamed as members of the Phi Kappa Psi under a theory of small group defamation. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Elias v. Rolling Stone LLC" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit held that its appellate jurisdiction extended to defendant's challenges to both his conviction and sentences for various fraud and theft charges. In this case, the notice of appeal form stated defendant's intent to appeal his judgment of conviction and his narrower designation of issues appeared only in an administrative section of the same form. On the merits, the court affirmed the conviction and sentence, holding that the evidence was sufficient to support defendant's conviction for mail fraud; the district court did not improperly instruct the jury regarding the materiality element for the mail fraud counts; and the district court did not commit procedural error by applying the Guidelines' loss calculations. View "United States v. Caltabiano" on Justia Law

BikerGear filed suit against FedEx, accusing FedEx of fraudulently marking up the weights of packages shipped by BikerGear and overcharging BikerGear for Canadian customers, in violation of the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995 (ICCTA), 49 U.S.C. 13708(b), and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. 1962(c). The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the ICCTA claim on the pleadings, and the district court's grant of summary judgment for FedEx and dismissal of BikerGear's substantive RICO claims. The court held that (1) Section 13708 of the ICCTA requires shipping documents to truthfully disclose the charges that a motor carrier in fact assesses, and prohibits a motor carrier from stating it will charge one amount when in reality it charges another; and (2) where, as here, the RICO persons and the RICO enterprise were corporate parents and wholly‐owned subsidiaries that "operate within a unified corporate structure" and were "guided by a single corporate consciousness," the mere fact of separate incorporation, without more, did not satisfy RICO's distinctness requirement under Section 1962(c). View "U1IT4Less Inc. v. FedEx Corp." on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of this defamation action as to the out-of-state defendants, holding that Connecticut General Statute 52‐59b—which provides for long‐arm jurisdiction over certain out‐of‐state defendants except in defamation actions—does not violate plaintiff's First or Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's defamation claim based on the "as much as $500 million" statement under the New York Civil Rights Law 74, but held that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's claim based on the "repeatedly tried to extort" statement. Therefore, the court reversed in part the dismissal of plaintiff's claim against the Bloomberg Defendants and remanded for further proceedings. View "Friedman v. Bloomberg L.P." on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress physical evidence that he had body-packed narcotics into Vermont. The court held that police were not under an obligation to release defendant after x-rays taken pursuant to a search warrant did not reveal evidence that he was body-packing; suppression was not an appropriate remedy in this case for failure to comply with the 48‐hour rule established by County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44 (1991), because such failure was not the cause of the officers' discovery that defendant was, in fact, body‐packing narcotics; and applying the framework established in McLaughlin, the evidence adduced by defendant did not reveal that the police unreasonably delayed his Gerstein hearing. View "United States v. Pabon" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence of 180 months in prison after he was convicted of assaulting a federal officer. In light of Beckles v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 886 (2017), which held that the residual clause of the Career Offender Guideline—a second basis for finding a crime of violence—was not unconstitutional, the court held that New York first‐degree robbery categorically qualifies as a crime of violence under the residual clause and the court need not address defendant's argument based on the force clause. The court also held that defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

A Chinese construction company and seven of its employees challenged the district court's order denying their motion to quash subpoenas requiring the employees to appear before a grand jury. The Second Circuit affirmed the order, holding that the 2009 Bilateral Agreement between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) incorporates a 2003 Diplomatic Note that imposes a registration requirement on construction personnel. In this case, the Executive Branch reasonably interpreted the relevant agreements as requiring construction personnel to register with the State Department before receiving immunity and because that condition was not satisfied here, the employees were not entitled to diplomatic immunity. View "In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Returnable December 16, 2015" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit's prior decision in this False Claims Act (FCA) case in light of Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989 (2016). The court vacated and remanded for further proceedings because Escobar set out a materiality standard for FCA claims that has not been applied in this case. On remand, the district court must determine, in the first instance, whether relators have adequately alleged the materiality of defendants' alleged misrepresentations. View "United States v. Wells Fargo & Co." on Justia Law

LIAAC petitioned for review of the Board's order determining that LIAAC violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. 158(a)(1), by promulgating an unlawful confidentiality agreement and by terminating an employee for his refusal to sign the unlawful confidentiality agreement. The Second Circuit enforced the order and held that an employer violates section 8(a)(1) when it terminates an employee for refusing to sign an unlawful employment document. The court disposed of the remaining issues on appeal in a summary order. View "NLRB v. Long Island Ass'n for AIDS Care, Inc." on Justia Law