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

Petitioners sought review of an order of the Surface Transportation Board ("STB") granting BNSF Railway Co. ("BNSF") an exemption from the procedures in the Interstate Commerce Act ("ICA"), 49 U.S.C. 10903-10904, for abandoning a rail line. At issue was whether the STB's decision to exempt the middle segment of the Chickasha Line from the procedures set out in section 10904 was arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and whether the STB's decision was inconsistent with the agency's own regulations under 49 C.F.R. 1152.50(d)(3). The court held that it was not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion for the STB to exempt the middle segment from section 10904 where there was no shipper in the middle segment and abandonment of that section could adversely affect only shippers located in the eastern and western segments. The court also held that it would give deference to the STB's interpretation of its own regulation.

Petitioners sought review of an order of the Surface Transportation Board ("STB") denying them preliminary injunctive relief where one petitioner leased a locomotive from the other petitioner and contracted with BNSF Railway Co. ("BNSF") to deliver the locomotive care of a third party. At issue was whether the STB properly denied injunctive relief where the petition was moot and where petitioner failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The court dismissed the petition where it lacked jurisdiction to decide all but one of the claims presented and held that the petitioners failed to exhaust their administrative remedies as to that claim when petitioners voluntarily dismissed motions pending before the STB to pursue relief in court.

Criminal proceedings were conducted with five defendants, members of the Raven 23 team from Blackwater Worldwide ("Blackwater"), where Blackwater was hired by American security officials to evacuate a diplomat from a car bomb explosion and where there existed a dispute over who fired shots that killed and wounded Iraqi civilians. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed an indictment against the five defendants on the ground that the evidence presented to the grand jury, and the decision to prosecute two of the defendants, was tainted by statements of defendants. The court held that the district court erred by treating evidence as single lumps and excluding them in their entirety when at the most, only some portion of the content was tainted; by failing to conduct a proper independent-source analysis as required by Kastigar v. United States and United States v. Rinaldi; by applying the wrong legal standard when it excluded a defendant's journal and his testimony simply because the news reports based on some of the immunized statements were "a cause" for his writing it; and to the extent that evidence tainted by the impact of one defendant's immunized statements may be found to have accounted for the indictment of that defendant, it did not follow that the indictment of any other defendant was tainted.

Defendant appealed jury convictions of four drug and firearm offenses when defendant was found with heroin worth about $30,000, two loaded guns, and $27, 730 in cash. At issue was whether the admission of the state court clerk's letters violated defendant's rights to cross-examination under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause; whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") agent's testimony about the meaning of slang was improperly admitted as lay testimony; whether the FBI agent's overview testimony was based on inadmissible hearsay; whether the judge should have instructed the jury to disregard a police officer's reference to the "two large bundles" near the gun; and whether the judge's finding that defendant had a prior drug conviction and reliance on that prior conviction to double defendant's mandatory minimum sentence violated defendant's Sixth Amendment right. The court held that defendant's Sixth Amendment right was violated where the clerk's letters were testimonial but he was not subject to cross-examination. The court also held that the FBI agent's interpretation of slang was admissible only as expert testimony but that the error was harmless. The court further held that the FBI agent's objected-to testimony at the beginning of trial was not based on hearsay; the district court sufficiently instructed the jury to disregard the reference to the "bundles;" and the judge's finding about defendant's prior drug conviction did not violate the Sixth Amendment.

Plaintiff, an American citizen who resides in Canada, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, challenged 18 U.S.C. 922 and related regulations promulgated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which made it impossible for a person who lived outside the United States lawfully to purchase a firearm in the United States. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's suit for lack of standing where plaintiff attempted to purchase a firearm in the United States while living in Canada. The court held that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's suit for lack of standing where plaintiff's injury was present and continuing when plaintiff intended to return regularly to the United States to visit friends and relatives and when plaintiff intended to purchase firearms for the purposes of sporting and self defense and to store the firearms with his relatives in Ohio.

Plaintiffs filed a class action suit for damages against defendant, a former United States Marshal, claiming that they were unconstitutionally strip searched by Deputy U.S. Marshals under defendant's direction after plaintiffs were arrested during a demonstration in September 2002. At issue was whether it was clearly established in September 2002 that strip searching an arrestee before placing him in a detention facility without individualized reasonable suspicion was unconstitutional. The court held that it need not consider whether defendant had individual suspicion as to each of the plaintiffs where there was no clearly established constitutional prohibition in 2002 of strip searching arrestees without individualized, reasonable suspicion and therefore, defendant was entitled to qualified immunity and summary judgment.

Plaintiff, a Cuban corporation, sued the United States Department of Treasury when plaintiff's renewal of its trademark, which had previously been permitted as an exception under the Trading with the Enemy Act ("Act"), was barred by the 1998 law that modified the Cuban Assets Control Regulations and subsequently barred renewals of certain trademarks. At issue was whether plaintiffs had invoked the presumption against retroactivity and the 1998 law should be interpreted to bar only new trademark registrations, not renewals of previously registered trademarks, and if the 1998 law did bar the renewal of previously registered trademarks, then would it violate the substantive due process doctrine. The court held that the presumption against retroactivity did not apply to plaintiff where plaintiff did not possess a vested right to renewal of its trademark. The court also held that the 1998 law did not violate the substantive due process doctrine where it was rationally related to the legitimate government goals of isolating Cuba's Communist government and hastening a transition to democracy in Cuba.