Justia U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that BAE had tortiously interfered with his at-will employment arrangement in violation of District of Columbia law. Plaintiff filed a diversity case in federal district court but would like to have the dispositive question he raises on appeal decided by the District Court of Columbia Court of Appeals: whether District of Columbia law recognizes a cause of action for tortious interference with at will employment against a third party former employer who procured the plaintiff's discharge from his new employer. Because the question on which plaintiff seeks certification is neither genuinely uncertain nor of sufficient public importance to warrant burdening the D.C. Court of Appeals, the court denied the request. The court affirmed the judgment of that court because plaintiff does not ask this court to independently review the district court's resolution of that question. View "Metz v. BAE Sys. Tech." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a class action suit against his former employer, Harman, under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq., alleging that Harman breached its fiduciary duties by making false and misleading statements to investment firms. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's conversion of defendants' motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)(d) and grant of summary judgment to defendants without giving plaintiff a reasonable opportunity to present evidence. The court did not reach the merits of the appeal, concluding that if the district court violated Rule 12(d), the error would be harmless in this case where discovery would be futile. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Russell v. Harman Int'l Indus." on Justia Law

The County filed suit against the Department, challenging the Secretary's approval of a gaming compact between the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians and the State of California. The Tribe sought to intervene after six years of litigation for the purpose of dismissing the amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion as untimely where the district court set forth the proper test, analyzed the relevant factors, and concluded that the Tribe's motion did not satisfy Rule 24(a)'s timeliness requirement. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Amador County, CA v. Dept. of the Interior" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against the Fund, asserting claims for assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The Fund's motion to dismiss was converted into a discovery dispute when the district court granted plaintiff's request for jurisdictional discovery over the Fund's objections. The court concluded that, because plaintiff's assertions amount to mere conjecture and surmise, they cannot provide sufficient support to justify jurisdictional discovery. Further, the Fund's subsequent voluntary disclosure of the contract at issue conclusively resolved any question of waiver. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's orders permitting jurisdictional discovery and remanded for further proceedings. View "Nyambal v. International Monetary Fund" on Justia Law

Alaska filed suit challenging the Forest Service's Roadless Rule in 2011. In 2001, the Forest Service adopted the Rule, which prohibited road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting on millions of acres of national forest lands, including national forest land in Alaska. In 2005, the Forest Service repealed the Rule, but, in 2006, the District Court for the Northern District of California ordered reinstatement of the Rule. The court concluded that when the Rule was reinstated in 2006 after its repeal in 2005, a new right of action accrued. Under 28 U.S.C. 2401(a), Alaska had six years from the time of the Rule's reinstatement in 2006 to file a lawsuit challenging the rule. Therefore, Alaska's suit is timely because it filed in 2011. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's dismissal of Alaska's complaint and remanded for further consideration. View "State of Alaska v. Department of Agriculture" on Justia Law

Appellants filed a wrongful death action against Romarm, a foreign corporation and firearms manufacturer owned by the Romanian government and located in Bucharest. The district court granted Romarm's motion to dismiss based on failure to allege personal jurisdiction over Romarm. Supreme Court Justice Breyer's narrow concurrence in J.McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro concluded that a foreign corporation's sale to a distributor, without more, is insufficient to establish the minimum contacts necessary for a court to exert personal jurisdiction over the corporation, even if its product ultimately causes injury in the forum state. In light of Nicastro, the court concluded that appellants have failed to allege any conduct by Romarm that was purposely directed toward the District of Columbia; nor could their discovery requests supply the missing element; and the district court appropriately dismissed the case for lack of personal jurisdiction. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.View "Williams, et al. v. Romarm, SA, et al." on Justia Law

The city of Jersey City and a coalition of environmental groups filed separate petitions challenging FERC's order granting a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the construction of a natural gas pipeline connecting New York and New Jersey. The court concluded that it could not consider the merits of the petitions where the environmental petitioners lacked Article III standing as an association; the court did not have original jurisdiction over claims arising from the Budget Act, Pub.L. 105-33, 111 Stat. 251; and the court rejected the City's remaining standing claims. Accordingly, the court dismissed the petitions for lack of jurisdiction.View "NO Gas Pipeline v. FERC" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed a putative class action alleging that aerial herbicide spraying of illegal coca crops had drifted across the border from Colombia and that planes themselves had actually crossed the border and sprayed in Ecuador. Plaintiffs asserted a wide variety of tort claims for alleged injuries to health, property, and financial interests. The court agreed with the district court that the Ecuadorian provinces lacked Article III standing; the court rejected the challenge brought by the 163 plaintiffs who were dismissed for failure to provide complete responses to the court-ordered questionnaires; because District of Columbia law requires expert testimony where the parties offer competing causal explanations for an injury that turns on scientific information, the district court appropriately dismissed individual plaintiffs' claims for crop damages; because expert testimony was not necessary to prove plaintiffs' claims for battery, nuisance, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the district court erred in dismissing these claims; and because expert testimony is necessary to determine whether plaintiffs were actually in the zone of physical danger, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the negligent infliction of emotional distress claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further consideration., battery, nuisance, iemdView "Arias, et al. v. Dyncorp, et al." on Justia Law

AF Holdings, represented by Prenda Law, filed suit in district court against 1,058 unnamed John Does who it alleged had illegally downloaded and shared the pornographic film "Popular Demand" using a file-sharing service known as BitTorrent. Prenda Law's general approach was to identify certain unknown persons whose IP addresses were used to download pornographic films, sue them in gigantic multi-defendant suits that minimized filing fees, discover the identities of the persons to whom these IP addresses were assigned by serving subpoenas on the Internet service providers to which the addresses pertained, and then negotiate settlements with the underlying subscriber. The providers refused to comply with the district court's issuance of subpoenas compelling them to turn over information about the underlying subscribers, arguing that the subpoenas are unduly burdensome because venue is improper, personal jurisdiction over these Doe defendants is lacking, and defendants could not properly be joined together in one action. The court agreed, concluding that AF Holdings clearly abused the discovery process by not seeking information because of its relevance to the issues that might actually be litigated here. AF Holdings could not possibly have had a good faith belief that it could successfully sue the overwhelming majority of the John Doe defendants in this district. Although AF Holdings might possibly seek discovery regarding individual defendants in the judicial districts in which they are likely located, what it certainly may not do is improperly use court processes by attempting to gain information about hundreds of IP addresses located all over the country in a single action, especially when many of those addresses fall outside of the court's jurisdiction. Given AF Holdings' decision to name and seek discovery regarding a vast number of defendants who downloaded the film weeks and even months apart - defendants who could not possibly be joined in this litigation - one can easily infer that its purpose was to attain information that was not, and could not be, relevant to this particular suit. Accordingly, the court vacated the order and remanded for further proceedings, including a determination of sanctions, if any, for AF Holdings' use of a possible forgery in support of its claim.View "AF Holdings, LLC v. Does 1-1058" on Justia Law

Freedom Watch filed suit against OPEC, alleging that OPEC violated federal anti-trust law by fixing the price of gasoline. The district court dismissed based on insufficiency of service of process. The court agreed with the district court that Freedom Watch failed to satisfy the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 4 by serving process on OPEC at its headquarters in Vienna via personal delivery and Austrian mail. However, because the district court invoked Rule 4(h)(1) instead of its discretionary authority under Rule 4(f)(3) - authorization of alternative methods of serving process on OPEC - in rejecting Freedom Watch's request, the court remanded to enable the district court to exercise its discretion under the latter provision. View "Freedom Watch, Inc. v. OPEC" on Justia Law