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

Defendant appealed the sentence he received after pleading guilty to five counts of filing a false tax return. At issue was whether the district court erred in applying the Guidelines by increasing his base offense level and by denying him credit for acceptance of responsibility. Also at issue was whether the district court erred by varying upward from the Guidelines range pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3553(a). The court held that the district court did not err by increasing defendant's base offense level because he significantly disrupted a governmental function. The court held, however, that it was unable to determine whether in denying his credit for acceptance of responsibility and varying upward from the Guidelines range, the district court relied solely upon constitutionally permissible factors. Therefore, the court vacated defendant's sentence and remanded his case for resentencing.

After illegally collecting a three percent excise tax, the IRS created a refund procedure for taxpayers to recoup their money. Appellants argued that the procedure was unlawful. At issue was whether the court had jurisdiction and whether appellants stated a valid claim upon which relief could be granted. The court held that it had federal question jurisdiction and neither the Anti Injunction Act, 26 U.S.C. 7421(a), nor the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. 2201(a), provided a limitation on the court's exercise of its jurisdiction. Therefore, because appellants had no other adequate remedy at law, the district court should consider the merits of their Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 551 et seq., claim on remand.

This case stemmed from a challenge to the EPA's regulation of ozone under the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7409(a). At issue was an EPA "guidance document" addressing obligations of regions still in nonattainment of a now-revoked ozone air quality standard. The court held that the Guidance qualified as a legislative rule that the EPA was required to issue through notice and comment rulemaking and that one of its features, the so-called attainment alternative, violated the Clean Air Act's plain language. Therefore, the court granted the petition for review and vacated the Guidance.

This case stemmed from petitioner's rates filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for its Michigan oil pipeline where petitioner agreed with two of its three shippers to restrict rate increases for a three-year moratorium period. At issue was the initial rate petitioner must use to calculate its new annual ceiling levels. Petitioner argued that after the end of the moratorium period, its ceiling levels should be calculated as if its maximum rates had been set under FERC's indexing methodology all along. In contrast, FERC would simply pick up the rates where the settlement agreement left off, using the last rate under the agreement as the initial rate for the period after the agreement. The court held that neither the agreement nor the relevant regulations clearly laid out how to determine the rates petitioner could charge now that the three-year period had past. Therefore, finding both the agreement and the regulations ambiguous, the court deferred to the reasonable views of FERC and denied petitioner's petition for review.

A jury found for the District of Columbia government and a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)(collectively, the government), in this case alleging a 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim for the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and common law claims for assault and battery. Appellant, as personal representative of her brother's estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by the detective, and she contended on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principle issue concerned the district court's rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding an altercation between the detective and appellant's brother. A related issue involved a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The court found no abuse of discretion by the district court where the record revealed that it properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudiced the government. The court also held that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert's disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but in view of appellant's cross-examination of the expert, after receiving the expert's interview notes, that the violation was harmless and so the district court's refusal to strike the expert's testimony was not reversible error. Accordingly, because appellant's other claims of error and her bias claim were unpersuasive, the court affirmed the judgment.

Three state and local governmental units, along with individual citizens, petitioned the court for review of and other relief from two "determinations" made by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the other respondents: the DOE's attempt to withdraw the application it submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to construct a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and the DOE's apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. The court concluded that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 10101-270, set forth a process and schedule for the siting, construction, and operation of a federal repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. At this point in that process, the DOE had submitted a construction license application for the Yucca Mountain repository and the NRC maintained a statutory duty to review that application. Therefore, the court held that unless and until petitioners were able to demonstrate that one of the respondents had either violated a clear duty to act or otherwise affirmatively violated the law, petitioners' challenges to the ongoing administrative process was premature. Accordingly, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction over petitioners' claims and dismissed the petitions.

Plaintiff, the former captain of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), filed a ten-count complaint charging the District of Columbia with racial and ethnic discrimination and retaliation against him because of a series of discrimination complaints he filed against the MPD. At issue was whether plaintiff's damages award constituted impermissible double recovery, represented compensation for two distinct juries, or reflected a single award apportioned between two theories of liability. The court found that the magistrate judge explicitly instructed the jury not to concern itself with double recovery because he had concluded "as a matter of law" that plaintiff could recover under both his federal and state law theories. Therefore, the court held that it could not presume that the jury intended to compensate plaintiff for a single injury without regard to the multiplicity of the theories pled. Accordingly, because the jury's award amounted to impermissible double recovery, the court reversed the magistrate's order denying the District's motion for judgment as a matter of law and remanded the case.

Defendant was convicted of federal insider trading crimes and subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking information from the FBI that he believed would show misconduct by the federal investigators and prosecutors handling the case. At issue was whether the FBI could withhold certain documents pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 7(C) and 7(E). As a preliminary matter, the court held that the documents sought in the case qualified as "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes" under 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7). The court also held that defendant failed to meet the demanding National Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish test for challenging the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(C), which protected personal privacy. The court also upheld the FBI's invocation of FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protected certain law enforcement techniques and procedures, where release of certain information at issue would expose computer forensic vulnerabilities to potential criminals and where disclosure of certain information at issue "could enable criminals to employ countermeasures to avoid detection, thus jeopardizing the FBI's investigatory missions." The court briefly addressed and disposed of defendant's two other claims. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Appellants, nonprofit environmental organizations, appealed from a judgment of dismissal entered by the district court in an action against the EPA under the citizen suit provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq., challenging the EPA Administrator's failure to take action to prevent the construction of three proposed pollution-emitting facilities in Kentucky. The court held that the validity of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permits issued under the noncompliant State Implementation Plan (SIP), and the possible invalidity of the amended SIP, sufficiently raised a current controversy to save the litigation from mootness. The court also held that the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., did not provide a cause of action to review the EPA Administrator's failure to act under section 7477 of the CAA because her decision was an agency action "committed to agency discretion by law." Therefore, the EPA Administrator's decision was discretionary and not justiciable and thus, appellants failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Although the district court dismissed the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the court affirmed the district court's action because dismissal would otherwise have been proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).

Southwest Airlines Co. and 18 other airlines alleged that the TSA's determination of their year 2000 costs was arbitrary and capricious for purposes of the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq. At issue was whether the TSA should have relied on the Simat, Helliesen & Eichner, Inc. report (SH&E report) commissioned by the TSA or, at least, should have more fully explained why it rejected the conclusions of the Campbell Aviation Consultants report (Campbell report) submitted by the airlines. The court held that the TSA's determination was not arbitrary or capricious when the TSA chose the SH&E report with good reason where it sent a letter to each airline stating that it had thoroughly reviewed the Campbell report and concluded that the report was insufficient due to its limited data and broad, simplistic methodologies and the letter also explained SH&E's more extensive methodology. The court also discussed and disposed of the three other arguments the airlines raised. Accordingly, the court denied the airlines' petitions for review.