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

On January 20, 2021, Acting Secretary of the Interior Scott de la Vega suspended delegated authority “[t]o issue any onshore or offshore fossil fuel authorization . . . .” On January 27, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14,008.   The district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction enjoining President Biden and various Department of Interior officials (the “Government”) from pausing oil and gas lease sales. The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded, holding that the district court’s order and accompanying memorandum lack specificity. The court explained that to comply with Rule 65(d) a district court’s order should state its terms specifically and describe in reasonable detail the conduct restrained or required. The court wrote that the present injunction fails to meet Rule 65(d) requirements. View "State of Louisiana v. Biden" on Justia Law

Cable technicians working for HD and Associates (HDA) alleged that they did not receive overtime pay, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Granting summary judgment to HDA, the district court ruled that the technicians and HDA were not covered by the FLSA and that even if they were covered, the technicians qualified for the bona fide commission exemption and thus were exempt from the overtime provisions. The technicians appealed.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling. The court held that HDA technicians are paid a bona fide commission and are exempt from FLSA overtime compensation requirements. The court explained that at issue is only whether HDA pays technicians a commission. Whether a payment is a commission for the purposes of this exception is a question of law that relies on how a payment works in practice, rather than what it is called.   Here, the commission paid is a percentage of the ultimate price passed onto Cox customers and the amount earned is tied to customer demand. Given the nature of cable repairs, the work does not lend itself to a standard workday and this payment system does not offend the purposes of the FLSA. The determining factor is thus whether the amount of income earned is decoupled from the time worked. Here, because compensation goes up or down by the number of work orders completed, not the number of hours worked, HDA technicians are paid a bona fide commission and are exempt from FLSA overtime requirements. View "Taylor v. HD and Associates" on Justia Law

Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (“NYK”), incorporated and headquartered in Japan, is a major global logistics company that transports cargo by air and sea. On June 17, 2017, the ACX Crystal, a 730-foot container ship chartered by NYK, collided with the destroyer USS Fitzgerald in Japanese territorial waters. Personal representatives of the seven sailors killed sued NYK in federal court, asserting wrongful death and survival claims under the Death on the High Seas Act.  In both cases, the plaintiffs alleged that NYK, a foreign corporation, is amenable to federal court jurisdiction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2) based on its “substantial, systematic and continuous contacts with the United States as a whole. The district court granted NYK’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(2).   The Fifth Circuit affirmed, rejecting Plaintiffs’ invitation to craft an atextual, novel, and unprecedented Fifth Amendment personal jurisdiction standard. The court explained that under the Supreme Court’s reigning test for personal jurisdiction, the district court did not err in absolving NYK from appearing in federal court. The court wrote that general jurisdiction over NYK does not comport with its Fifth Amendment due process rights. NYK is incorporated and headquartered in Japan. As a result, exercising general jurisdiction over NYK would require that its contacts with the United States “be so substantial and of such a nature to render [it] at home” in the United States. Here, NYK’s contacts with the United States comprise only a minor portion of its worldwide contacts. View "Douglass v. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit against Defendants for conduct that occurred during his incarceration at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants, and Plaintiff appealed. The Fifth Circuit remanded to the district court for a factual inquiry into the timeliness of Plaintiff’s Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment under Rule 59(e). See Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). The district court determined that Plaintiff’s appeal was not time-barred; thus, the court held they have jurisdiction.The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings. Plaintiff acknowledges that the PLRA prohibits an inmate from bringing suit until he exhausts the administrative remedies that are available. He argues, however, that he satisfied Section 1997e(a) by exhausting the remedies available to him because he followed the grievance policy set forth in the 2015 Mississippi Department of Corrections (“MDOC”) Standard Operating Procedures (“2015 SOP”) and had no knowledge of or access to the revised handbook that listed the claims ARP director’s reason for rejection.Here, viewed light most favorable to Plaintiff, this evidence satisfies the unavailability exception under Ross because the “administrative scheme [was] so opaque that it bec[ame], practically speaking, incapable of use” by an “ordinary prisoner.” Ross, 578 U.S. at 644. Accordingly, the court held that Defendants are not entitled to summary judgment because there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether administrative remedies were made available to Plaintiff. View "Huskey v. Jones, et al" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs are oil-field manufacturing and services companies (collectively, “Chandler”) who brought Walker Process fraud and sham patent litigation claims against defendants Phoenix Services, LLC, and its CEO, Mark Fisher (collectively, “Phoenix”). The patent at issue here is U.S. Patent No. 8,171,993 (the “’993 Patent”), which was issued to Mark Hefley, founder of Heat On-The-Fly, LLC (“HOTF”). The district court dismissed some of the claims for lack of standing and others as time-barred. The case was then appealed to the Federal Circuit, but the Federal Circuit found the case had no live patent issues and so transferred the case to the Fifth Circuit.Both parties moved for summary judgment, to support its claims, Chandler alleged Phoenix was liable as HOTF’s parent company for two anticompetitive acts involving the ’993 Patent. Chandler and Phoenix cross-moved for summary judgment. The Fifth Circuit accepted the case and affirmed the district court’s judgment. The court explained that it cannot find the Federal Circuit’s decision implausible. Next, turning to the merits, the court found that the district court correctly found a lack of substantial evidence that the cease-and-desist letter materially caused Supertherm’s lost profits. Finally, because the district court correctly ruled that tolling does not apply, Chandler’s claims are time-barred. View "Chandler v. Phoenix Services" on Justia Law

Plaintiff recieved a debt-collection letter from Defendant, a law firm that specializes in collecting debt on behalf of the Texas government. However, the limitations period for the debt mentioned in the letter had run. Plaintiff filed a claim against the law firm under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Plaintiff also sought, and obtained, class certification. The law firm appealed the district court's certification.On appeal, the Fifth Circuit sua sponte found that Plaintiff lacked standing to bring a claim against a debt-collection law firm under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The court held that Plaintiff failed to establish that the law firm's debt-collection letter inflicted an injury with a “close relationship to a harm traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts." Without this showing, Plaintiff could not establish the first element of standing: that she suffered a concrete harm. View "Perez v. McCreary, Veselka, Bragg" on Justia Law

A time-chartered vessel allided with a barge and a dock in the Houston Ship Channel. The owner of the barge and the lessee of the dock sued both the vessel’s owner and her then-time charterer, seeking damages for negligence. The district court granted summary judgment in the time-charterer’s favor. It held that the time charterer did not function as the vessel’s de facto owner, nor did it negligently discharge its duties as her time charterer. The lessee of the dock, on behalf of itself and certain other interested parties, timely appealed.The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The two relevant question son appeal are whether there are two questions on appeal. The first is confined to the facts of this case: Did China Navigation exercise sufficient operational control over the Yochow such that it should be considered her de facto owner? The second is more general and, if resolved in TPC’s favor, would have potentially far-reaching consequences for the shipping industry: Does a time charterer have a duty to vet a vessel owner prior to executing a charter party?The court explained that the facts do not demonstrate that China Navigation retained contractual control over the Yochow. Nor do they suggest that it exercised operational control over the Yochow to such an extent that it should be considered her de facto owner. Further, the court wrote that China Navigation did not owe a duty to vet Grand Famous’ finances or the Yochow’s safety management protocols prior to executing the time charter. View "TPC Group v. China Navigation" on Justia Law

In exchange for Defendant’s guilty plea on the superseding indictment’s principal drug-dealing charge (“Count 1”), the Government dismissed all other charges. The parties stipulated to a recommended prison sentence of 240 months. The district court followed the parties’ sentencing recommendation and dismissed all remaining counts in the superseding indictment “on the motion of the United States. Some months later, the Government discovered the procedural snag at the heart of this case: the superseding indictment to which Defendant pleaded guilty had been returned by a grand jury whose term had expired. At a plea hearing in which Defendant indicated satisfaction with his trial counsel’s performance and familiarity with the “grand jury mess-up[]” that had occurred in his initial case, Defendant pleaded guilty in accordance with the new plea agreement. The district court then imposed the 144-month sentence the parties agreed to and noted for the record the key terms of the provision quoted above.   Without conducting a hearing, the district court accepted a magistrate’s recommendation that Defendant’s Section 2255 motion be denied. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that the expired grand jury’s untimely superseding indictment in Defendant’s first criminal case was null and void when jeopardy would have otherwise attached at Defendant’s jury trial and, accordingly, could not have placed Defendant in actual legal jeopardy within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Because the failure of Defendant’s trial counsel to advise Defendant of a meritless double jeopardy argument was neither deficient nor prejudicial, the district court was correct to deny Defendant’s habeas corpus petition. View "USA v. Slape" on Justia Law

Plaintiff regularly reports on local crime, missing persons, community events, traffic, and local government. Plaintiff published a story about a man who committed suicide and identified the man by name and revealed that he was an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol. Two arrest warrants were issued for Plaintiff for violating Texas Penal Code Section 39.06(c). According to Plaintiff, local officials have never brought a prosecution under Section 39.06(c) in the nearly three-decade history of that provision.Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of her claims against the officials under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. She also appeals the dismissal of her municipal liability claims against the City of Laredo, but not her claims against Webb County. The Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court dismissing Plaintiff’s First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments claims, as well as her civil conspiracy claims. The court affirmed the district court’s judgment dismissing Plaintiff’s municipal liability claims against the City of Laredo. The court explained that it has no difficulty observing that journalists commonly ask for nonpublic information from public officials, and that Plaintiff was therefore entitled to make that same reasonable inference. Yet Defendants chose to arrest Plaintiff for violating Section 39.06(c). The court accordingly concluded that Plaintiff has sufficiently pled the existence of similarly situated journalists who were not arrested for violating Section 39.06(c). View "Villarreal v. City of Laredo" on Justia Law

After the bankruptcy court confirmed Falcon V’s reorganization plan, Argonaut Insurance Company asked the court to interpret the plan, arguing primarily that a $10.5 million suretyship agreement was an “executory contract” and that the reorganized Falcon V had therefore assumed the agreement under the reorganization plan’s express terms. The bankruptcy court concluded that Falcon V had not assumed the agreement and disallowed Argonaut’s $7.3 million unsecured claim against Falcon V. The district court affirmed the judgment of the bankruptcy court.On appeal, Argonaut primarily argues that the bankruptcy and district courts erred in determining that the Surety Bond Program was not assumed under the Plan. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the Surety Bond Program does not satisfy the Countryman test’s second requirement. Accordingly, it is not an executory contract, and the bankruptcy and district courts correctly determined that it was not assumed under the Plan. View "Argonaut Insurance v. Falcon V" on Justia Law