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

After Eli Gauna, Jr. committed suicide while being held in the Bell County jail as a pretrial detainee, his mother filed suit against the licensed clinical social worker who was the mental health professional that evaluated Gauna and took him off suicide watch. The district court granted summary judgment for the social worker, concluding that she was entitled to qualified immunity and had not acted with deliberate indifference to Gauna's serious medical needs.The Fifth Circuit reversed, concluding that the social worker, as an employee of a private organization systematically organized to perform a major administrative task, is not entitled to qualified immunity. Furthermore, plaintiff provided sufficient evidence regarding whether the social worker knew about Gauna's suicide risk to raise a genuine dispute of material fact over whether the social worker was deliberately indifferent to Gauna's medical needs. In this case, the social worker knew of Gauna's suicidal ideations and chose to have him taken off suicide watch, placing him into the general population where he would have access to tie-off points and ligatures, including the bedsheets with which he eventually hanged himself. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "Sanchez v. Oliver" on Justia Law

Petitioner, an inmate on death row in Texas, filed a federal habeas application under 28 U.S.C. 2254, arguing that his counsel was constitutionally ineffective in numerous ways at trial and sentencing. Petitioner's convictions stemmed from his murder of his wife, son, and step-daughter. The Fifth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability on four of petitioner's issues.As a preliminary matter, the court concluded that petitioner's notice of appeal was timely and thus the court has jurisdiction. The court affirmed the district court's denial of habeas relief, concluding that the state court's decision was not contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court, or was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceeding. In this case, the court concluded that petitioner is not entitled to relief on the basis that the state court improperly resolved the claim that any partial jurors were seated; on the basis of the claim involving the jurors who expressed opposition to interracial marriage; and on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to challenge petitioner's competency to stand trial, in rebutting the voluntary-intoxication theory, and in presenting a mitigation defense. View "Thomas v. Lumpkin" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, convicted of capital murder in 1998, filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas postconviction DNA testing statute and seeking to compel the Texas officials to release the items he wishes to test.After determining that it had jurisdiction to hear the appeal and that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not apply, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's claim, concluding that plaintiff's claim is barred by the statute of limitations. In this case, plaintiff knew or should have known of his alleged injury in November 2014, five years before he brought his section 1983 claim, and thus his claim is time-barred. View "Reed v. Goertz" on Justia Law

Jesse Aquirre's family filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action alleging that the San Antonio Police Department violated Aguirre's constitutional rights by causing his death through the use of excessive force. The district court granted summary judgment to the individual officers based on qualified immunity and to the City of San Antonio.The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for the officers in regard to the excessive force claims. The court weighed the Graham factors and concluded that the first Graham factor—the severity of any crime of which Aguirre was suspected—weighs in favor of it being unreasonable and excessive for the officers to hold Aguirre in the dangerous maximal-restraint position for five and a half minutes, and there are at very least genuine disputes as to the second two Graham factors—whether Aguirre posed a safety threat to officers or others or was resisting the officer's efforts to remove him from the highway and hold him safely until the police wagon arrived. The court explained that these disputes of material facts alone are enough to preclude a finding of summary judgment that the force used by the officers in holding Aquirre in a hog-tie position was constitutionally reasonable. Under Graham and its progeny, the court concluded that it is unreasonable for an officer to use injurious force against a non-resisting, non-dangerous individual who is not suspected of a serious crime, which the court must assume occurred here under Aguirre's version of events. The court also concluded that the summary judgment evidence indicates that a reasonable officer in the officers' position would have known that applying the maximal-restraint position to Aguirre and holding him in this position for an extended period posed a substantial risk of causing his death or serious bodily injury. Therefore, a reasonable jury could find that the officers' use of force constituted "deadly force." Accordingly, the officers are not entitled to summary judgment based on qualified immunity.However, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment on plaintiffs' deliberate indifference claims. Finally, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' municipal liability claim; rejected plaintiffs' claims against the City under the Texas Tort Claims Act; and granted the motion to supplement the record and denied the motion to take judicial notice as moot. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Aguirre v. City of San Antonio" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, three women who suffered persistent hair loss after chemotherapy treatments, sued as a part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) against distributors of the drug Taxotere (docetaxel) for permanent chemotherapy-induced hair loss, asserting a failure-to-warn claim.Louisiana law provides a one-year liberative prescription period for products-liability cases. Furthermore, under Louisiana law, there is a firmly rooted equitable-tolling doctrine known as contra non valentem agere non currit praescriptio, which means "[n]o prescription runs against a person unable to bring an action."The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of Sanofi, agreeing with the district court that plaintiffs' claims are facially prescribed. The court interpreted Louisiana law to require that once hair loss persisted after six months, contra non valentem tolled the prescription period until the point when a prospective plaintiff through the exercise of reasonable diligence should have "considered [Taxotere] as a potential root cause of" her injury. In this case, the court concluded that plaintiffs did not act reasonably in light of their injuries and their causes of action were reasonably knowable in excess of one year prior to their filing suit. Therefore, Louisiana's equitable tolling doctrine of contra non valentem did not save plaintiffs' claims. View "Thibodeaux v. Sanofi U.S. Services, Inc." on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of qualified immunity and summary judgment to defendant on plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims, alleging that defendant, an off-duty sheriff's deputy at the time, used excessive force when he shot her several times. Plaintiff had emerged from a stopped vehicle and would not follow defendant's demands, and when she reached behind her waist, defendant feared that she might be reaching for a weapon and shot her. The court concluded that defendant made a split second decision to use deadly force against a non-compliant person who made a movement consistent with reaching for a weapon, and plaintiff failed to identify clearly established law prohibiting defendant's use of deadly force.Plaintiff also alleged that defendant shot her in retaliation for engagement in activity protected by the First Amendment. The court agreed with the district court that plaintiff did not present evidence that her speech and expressive conduct was a but-for cause of the shooting. In this case, defendant did not discharge his firearm at plaintiff when she began shouting expletives at him or when she was walking towards him. Rather, he shot her when she reached her hand behind her back towards the waistband of her pants. Finally, plaintiff has not shown that defendant responded to her medical needs with deliberate indifference. View "Batyukova v. Doege" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. The court concluded that the district court did not err in applying a four-level sentencing enhancement for possession of a firearm "in connection with another felony offense" pursuant to USSG 2K2.1(b)(6)(B). The court also concluded that the district court did not clearly err by delegating supervision of the "modality, duration, intensity, etc." of drug treatment to the probation officer. View "United States v. Huerta" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of three counts of possession of child pornography. The Fifth Circuit vacated defendant's Count Two conviction and sentence under 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(4)(B) and (b)(2), and modified the district court's judgment to impose only a $200 special assessment and a $10,000 assessment under the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. The court affirmed in all other respects. In this case, the court could not say that the district court's decision to exclude the relevant expert testimony was manifestly erroneous; the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting into evidence the images and video clips of child pornography; and the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the two pornographic narratives. Finally, the court rejected claims of instructional error. View "United States v. Naidoo" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment on plaintiff's failure-to-warn claim asserted against the manufacturers of Taxotere, a chemotherapy medication. Plaintiff argues that Taxotere's manufacturers failed to provide an adequate warning of potentially permanent hair loss, which caused her injuries.The court concluded that, under Louisiana law, plaintiff cannot establish causation where, on this record, it is beyond any genuine dispute that a warning of the risk of permanent hair loss—as opposed to temporary hair loss—would not have affected the prescribing physician's decision to prescribe Taxotere. Therefore, plaintiff's claim fails as a matter of law. View "Phillips v. Sanofi U.S. Services, Inc." on Justia Law

After defendant pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud for purporting to broker cattle deals worth millions of dollars, pocketing the money, and then disappearing the herd, the district court ordered more than $2 million in restitution. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the restitution award, rejecting defendant's contention that the Government failed to prove which cattle he sold and which he stole. Rather, the court concluded that the Government easily met its burden of proving an actual loss of $2,066,525 where it led the district court through each and every line item in its restitution request. Furthermore, the district court went through the data itself, considered the testimony and evidence, and found that each line item individually constituted an actual loss by a preponderance of the evidence. View "United States v. Williams" on Justia Law