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

In 2021, the Court affirmed Defendant’s conviction after a guilty plea in district court. Among other things, The Second Circuit affirmed Defendant’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. Sections 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (ii), (iii), and 2 for using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to an attempted Hobbs Act robbery, as well as his conviction under 18 U.S.C. Sections 924(j)(1) and 2 for murdering a person with a firearm during and in relation to an attempted Hobbs Act robbery. The Supreme Court vacated that judgment and remanded it to the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of its decision in United States v. Taylor, 142 S. Ct. 2015 (2022).   The Second Circuit vacated the section 924(c) conviction and the section 924(j) conviction. The court explained that after Taylor, attempted Hobbs Act robbery no longer qualifies as a crime of violence under section 924(c)(3)(A) and, therefore, cannot serve as a predicate for Defendant’s conviction under section 924(c)(1)(A). Furthermore, because an element of an offense under section 924(j)(1) is that the defendant was “in the course of a violation of [section 924(c)],” attempted Hobbs Act robbery also cannot serve as a predicate for Defendant’s conviction under section 924(j)(1). Moreover, the court wrote it cannot conclude that the purported Rule 11 error made any difference in Defendant’s guilty-plea calculation. View "United States v. Collymore" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued Defendants St. Joseph Hospital and Catholic Health System of Long Island, Inc. for injuries he sustained at St. Joseph Hospital, where he was admitted in March 2020 with COVID-19. Plaintiff brought claims for malpractice, negligence, and gross negligence in New York state court. Defendants removed the case to the New York district court and moved to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Defendants asserted state and federal immunities under the Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act (“EDTPA”) and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (“PREP Act”). The district court denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss.   The Second Circuit vacated the district court’s order and remanded with directions to remand the case to state court. The court concluded that removal to federal court was improper because the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. First, Plaintiff’s state-law claims are not completely preempted by the PREP Act. Second, there is no jurisdiction under the federal-officer removal statute because Defendants did not “act under” a federal officer. Finally, Plaintiff’s claims do not “arise under” federal law. View "Solomon v. St. Joseph Hosp." on Justia Law

The Evergreen Association brought an action against New York officials, seeking to enjoin the enforcement of New York Labor Law Sec. 203-e, which prohibits employers from taking adverse employment actions against employees for their reproductive health decisions. Evergreen claimed that Sec. 203-e unconstitutionally burdens its right to freedom of expressive association, preventing it from employees who seek abortions. The district court granted the New York defendants' motion to dismiss, and Evergreen appealed.On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of Evergreen's claims that Sec. 203-e violates its right to freedom of speech, violates its right to the free exercise of religion, and is impermissibly vague. However, the court reversed Evergreen's claim that the statute violates its freedom of expressive association. More specifically, the panel held that the district court should have applied strict scrutiny. Because the state did not show that Sec. 203-e is the least restrictive means to achieve its governmental interest, the panel reversed on this issue alone. View "Slattery v. Hochul" on Justia Law

Plaintiff responded to a distracted-driving enforcement campaign conducted by Defendants (the City of Stamford and its Sergeant) by standing down the street from where police sat holding a sign stating "Cops Ahead." Plaintiff's sign was confiscated twice before he was arrested for interfering with an officer. Charges were filed, Plaintiff spent a night in jail, and shortly thereafter, the prosecution dropped the charges against Plaintiff. Plaintiff filed suit under Sec. 1983, claiming Defendants infringed on his freedom of speech, engaged in malicious prosecution, and deprived him of equal protection and due process, violating the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants, and Plaintiff appealed.The Second Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part Plaintiff's Sec. 1983 claim. Specifically, the court held that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Defendants on the First and Fourth Amendment claims but did not err in dismissing Plaintiff's Fourteenth Amendment claim. The court held that no Connecticut law proscribed Plaintiff's conduct, and thus, officers did not have probable cause to arrest him. Thus, the district court erred in finding that the existence of probable cause served as a complete defense to Plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim. The court also held that Plaintiff's speech was protected but rejected his equal protection and due process claims based on the City's bail-setting policies. View "Friend v. Gasparino" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs are participants in the physical and derivatives markets for platinum and palladium and seek monetary and injunctive relief for violations of the antitrust laws and the Commodities Exchange Act (“CEA”). According to Plaintiffs, Defendants—mostly foreign companies engaged in trading these metals—manipulated the benchmark prices for platinum and palladium by collusively trading on the futures market to depress the price of these metals and by abusing the process for setting the benchmark prices. Defendants allegedly benefited from this conduct via trading in the physical markets and holding short positions in the futures market. The district court held that it had personal jurisdiction over two of the foreign Defendants, but it dismissed Plaintiffs’ antitrust claims for lack of antitrust standing and the Plaintiffs’ CEA claims for being impermissibly extraterritorial. Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal of these claims.   The Second Circuit reversed in part, vacated in part, and affirmed in part. The court reversed the district court’s holding that the “Exchange Plaintiffs” lacked antitrust standing to sue for the manipulation of the New York Mercantile Exchange futures market in platinum and palladium. The court explained that as traders in that market, the Exchange Plaintiffs are the most efficient enforcers of the antitrust laws for that injury. But the court affirmed the district court’s conclusion that KPFF Investment, Inc. did not have antitrust standing. Additionally, the court vacated the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ CEA claims. View "In re Platinum and Palladium Antitrust Litigation" on Justia Law

Alleging the creation of a hostile work environment in violation of federal, state, and city law, Plaintiff sued the New York City Housing Authority (“NYCHA”) and two NYCHA senior officials (collectively, the “NYCHA Defendants”) and the former Speaker of the New York City Council (collectively, “Defendants”). The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that the district court erred in granting Defendants’ motions for summary judgment and, in doing so, misapplied the totality of the circumstances standard established in Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (1993).   The Second Circuit agreed and vacated the district court’s judgment. The court concluded that the district court failed to draw “all reasonable inferences” in Plaintiff’s favor when it considered the five incidents underlying her claims, both when viewing the incidents individually and in their totality. The court explained that the district court held that Plaintiff did not demonstrate the effort to replace her tangibly impacted her work environment, bearing in mind that all a plaintiff must show is that the harassment “altered working conditions as to  make it more difficult to do the job.” But a jury could find that the delay in filling the HA vacancies and the transfer of the superintendent, along with the behind-the-scenes effort to transfer Plaintiff, made it more challenging for Plaintiff to carry out her job. Regardless, these are determinations for the jury, not the judge, to make. View "Allison Williams v. New York City Housing Authority" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. Section 552, seeking documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) related to himself, speculating that they might include exculpatory information that the government had not disclosed in his recent criminal trial. The government produced sets of responsive documents and an index detailing FOIA exemptions under which it withheld other responsive documents, and the district court granted summary judgment for the government. Plaintiff appealed the district court’s ruling granting summary judgment to the United States Department of Justice.   On appeal, Plaintiff argued (1) that summary judgment was improperly granted because his FOIA action is an effort to vindicate his rights under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and (2) that, in the alternative, the district court erred in not conducting an in-camera inspection of withheld documents. The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that in Brown v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 658 F.2d 71, 76 (2d Cir. 1981), FOIA and the criminal discovery process provide distinct tracks for seeking disclosure from the government. That a FOIA action might lead to the discovery of documents useful to a particular criminal defendant changes neither the government’s statutorily defined obligations under FOIA nor the government’s burden at summary judgment. View "Jabar v. U.S. Department of Justice" on Justia Law

The government petitions for a panel rehearing of so much of the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Gibson, 55 F.4th 153 (2d Cir. 2022), as ruled that the 2015 removal of naloxegol from the federal controlled substances schedules promulgated under the Controlled Substances Act ("CSA"), 21 U.S.C. Sections 801-971, rendered those schedules categorically narrower than the New York drug schedules applicable to Defendant’s 2002 state-law conviction. The government's petition suggests that that ruling in the court’s opinion ("Opinion") was dictum rather than a holding and asks that the court issue an amended opinion so stating.   The Second Circuit granted rehearing in order to note the government's various positions on the comparability of the state and federal drug schedules and to flag some defects in the petition's characterizations of the record. However, the court denied the request for an amended opinion. The court explained that the comparability of the New York's 2002 drug schedules and the current federal drug schedules was an issue that the district court was required to, and did, decide in order to make a determination as to what Defendant’s Guidelines sentence would be. This Court was required to and did, determine whether the district court's decision was correct. View "USA v. Gibson" on Justia Law

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (“ASPCA”) appealed the judgment of the district court dismissing its “policy or practice” claim brought under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) against the Department of Agriculture and its component agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The ASPCA alleged that the agencies adopted a policy or practice of violating the FOIA when the agencies decommissioned two online databases of frequently requested documents. The ASPCA argued that the policy or practice violates the FOIA. While the ASPCA’s action was pending before the district court, Congress enacted a new statute that required the agencies to recommission the databases, and the agencies complied. The district court held that the ASPCA’s policy or practice claim was resolved when the agencies recommissioned the databases as required by law.   The Second Circuit affirmed, holding that the ASPCA cannot state a policy or practice claim that the agencies systematically violated the FOIA after an intervening statutory enactment required the restoration of the databases that underpinned the ASPCA’s claim. The court explained that even assuming that a “policy or practice” claim is cognizable, the ASPCA failed to state such a claim against the agencies because the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 reversed the alleged policy or practice. View "ASPCA v. APHIS & Dep't of Agric." on Justia Law

The case presents an apparently unresolved question in the Second Circuit: whether a district court’s order granting a purportedly final judgment on a noteholder’s claims seeking (1) foreclosure on a mortgage, (2) foreclosure on a security interest in real property and (3) possession of said real property is an appealable final judgment – even though the order also refers the case to a magistrate judge to calculate the amount of the judgment of foreclosure and sale. The district court struck the Borrower’s and Guarantors’ affirmative defenses, granted the motion for summary judgment on the Foreclosure Claims, and granted the motion to sever the Guaranty Claim in an opinion and order dated December 2, 2021. On appeal, the Borrower contends that the district court improperly struck certain affirmative defenses prior to entering summary judgment for the Noteholder on the Foreclosure Claims.   The Second Circuit dismissed the appeal. The court concluded that such a judgment is not, in fact “final” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. Section 1291 and that no other basis for appellate jurisdiction exist. The court explained that the district court did not certify its judgment as final and appealable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) in its December 2, 2021, Order and Judgment. And even if it did, the Court would have to “consider for itself whether the judgment satisfies the requirements of that rule.” View "RSS WFCM2018-C44 - NY LOD, LLC v. 1442 Lexington Operating DE LLC" on Justia Law