Justia U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence for possessing a firearm and ammunition after having been convicted of a felony. The court concluded that the totality of the circumstances - including defendant's brisk departure from his car and the circumstances that transpired during the seconds between her exit and the officer's seizure of him - did not amount to articulable facts from which an officer could reasonably suspect that defendant was engaged in criminal activity. Accordingly, the seizure violated defendant's Fourth Amendment rights under Terry v. Ohio and the court vacated the conviction and sentence. View "United States v. Hill" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence for illegal reentry. The court held that defendant's previous conviction in Texas state court for burglary was a predicate offense constituting a "burglary of a dwelling" under the Sentencing Guidelines and was therefore a crime of violence. The court also held that defendant's written Texas "boiler plate" judicial confession, in which he confessed to "each and every act alleged" in the indictment, was sufficient to establish that his prior conviction rested on every offense the indictment charged. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Conde-Castaneda" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit in state court against Verizon, alleging that Verizon discharged her in retaliation for complaining of discrimination and harassment pursuant to Texas law. Verizon moved to federal court based on diversity. The court held that the exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement is only a condition precedent. When the court considered the appeal on the merits, the court found no merit based on the absence of causation between plaintiff's complaints and her discharge; the decisionmaker had no knowledge of the alleged protected activity claimed by plaintiff; and although the Verizon executive terminating her had no knowledge of her complaint, she did not have knowledge of a complex commission-generating scheme in which plaintiff was implicated and from which she profited. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court granting summary judgment to defendants. View "Gorman v. Verizon Wireless Texas, L.L.C., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against Novartis in the Western District of Texas, then the case was transferred by the Judicial Panel on MDL to the Middle District of Tennessee. Plaintiffs' compliant alleged, inter alia, that Novartis failed to notify the public and physicians of the possibility of suffering osteonecrosis of the jaw until 2004 and failing to notify dental professionals until 2005. The MDL court granted partial summary judgment to Novartis and ruled that: (1) Texas law applied to plaintiffs' case, and (2) Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code 82.007(a) - which provides manufacturers a rebuttable presumption against liability for failing to warn - foreclosed plaintiffs' failure to warn claims. On remand, the district court granted summary judgment on plaintiffs' remaining claims. The court affirmed the denial of plaintiffs' Rule 56(d) and Rule 60(b) motions; the remand court properly applied the law of the case when it refused to reconsider the MDL court's rulings that section 82.007 applied to plaintiffs' failure to warn claims; and the remand court properly granted summary judgment on plaintiffs' warranty claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "McKay, et al v. Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp." on Justia Law

Appellant and his children brought tort claims against Placid in connection with the allegedly asbestos-related illness and death of his wife. On appeal, appellants challenged the district court's affirmance of the bankruptcy court's grant of Placid's motion for summary judgment. The court affirmed, concluding that appellants were unknown creditors whose pre-petition claims were discharged by Placid's constructive notice and that Placid's notice was not substantively deficient. The court has never required bar date notices to contain information about specific potential claims and neither the Bankruptcy Court nor Rules require bar date notices to apprise creditors of potential claims. The court held that because a bar date notice need not inform unknown claimants of the nature of their potential claims, Placid's notices were substantively sufficient to satisfy due process. View "Williams, Sr., et al. v. Placid Oil Co." on Justia Law

Elizabeth Mosley, a volunteer driver for LogistiCare, provided non-emergency medical transportation services for Medicaid patients using an automobile insured by State Farm. After Mosley was involved in an accident in which she was driving and Pearlie Graham was injured, Graham's heirs filed suit against Mosley and LogistiCare in Mississippi state court. State Farm filed suit in federal court seeking a declaration that it had no duty to defend or indemnify Mosley or LogistiCare in the underlying action. The court concluded that collateral estoppel did not prevent State Farm from litigating the "for a charge" exclusion contained in the insurance policy in the present case; the allegations do not sufficiently trigger the "for a charge" exclusion and therefore do not absolve State Farm of its duty to defend LogistiCare and Mosley; the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of State Farm as to the duty to defend; but the district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of State Farm as to the duty to indemnify. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "State Farm Mutual Auto Ins. Co. v. Mosley, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his sentence after pleading guilty to illegal reentry. The court concluded that an offense defined by Louisiana Revised Statutes section 14:34, as narrowed pursuant to the modified categorical approach, qualifies as a crime of violence under U.S.S.G. 2L1.2 because it has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of force against the person of another. Because section 14:34 criminalizes aggravated batteries committed by administering poison, which does not necessarily entail the destructive or violent use of physical force, the statute as a whole does not categorically qualify as a crime of violence. In this case, the court may narrow the statute of conviction under the modified categorical approach to exclude the possibility that defendant was convicted of aggravated battery committed by means of poisoning. The court concluded that the offense for which defendant was convicted necessarily had as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of force against the person of another and therefore qualifies as a crime of violence under section 2L1.2. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Herrera-Alvarez" on Justia Law

The government appealed the district court's Final Judgment which rejected the government's efforts to tax Burnett Ranches as a "farming syndicate" tax shelter per I.R.C. 464. The court agreed with the district court that an otherwise qualified individual who has participated in management of the farming operation for not less than five years comes within the Active Participation Exception in section 464(c)(2)(A), irrespective of the fact that the legal title of such individual's attributable interest happens to be held in the name of her wholly owned S corp. rather than in her own name. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's lift of the stay of its earlier ruling and made final judgment in favor of Burnett Ranches. View "Burnett Ranches, Ltd. v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after pleading guilty to reentry of a deported alien. The government withheld an additional one-level reduction under U.S.S.G. 3E1.1(b) for pretrial acceptance of responsibility solely because defendant refused to waive his right to appeal. Amendment 755 to the Sentencing Guidelines became effective after defendant was sentenced but while this appeal was pending. Amendment 755 provides that the government should not withhold a section 3E1.1(b) motion based on interests not identified in section 3E1.1, such as whether the defendant agrees to waive his right to appeal. Concluding that the amended Guidelines applied to this case, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Palacios" on Justia Law

ACL sought a declaratory judgment that certain vessels chartering agreements with DRD were void ab initio. The district court dismissed based on the equitable doctrine of judicial estoppel. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the action where ACL's position in the declaratory judgment action clearly contradicted its earlier position in a related proceeding that the charters were valid, which had been accepted by the district court. View "American Commercial Lines, L.L.C. v. D.R.D. Towing Co., L.L.C." on Justia Law