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

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that the denial of full compensation for the land allegedly seized from her family during the Cold War (the Estate) violated the bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany (FCN Treaty). The DC Circuit held, in light of de Csepel v. Republic of Hungary, that a foreign state was immune to claims for the expropriation of property not present in the United States. In this case, plaintiff did not dispute that the Estate was located abroad or that Germany was the foreign state itself. Therefore, the court held that the district court properly concluded that U.S. courts could not exercise subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiff's claims against Germany under the expropriation exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). However, the court left for the district court to consider in the first instance whether BVVG was properly considered an "agency or instrumentality" of Germany rather than the state itself. View "Schubarth v. Federal Republic of Germany" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action alleging violation of plaintiff's rights to freedom of speech and freedom of unreasonable seizures. In this case, plaintiff was escorted by officers out of an event at George Washington University where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was delivering a speech. Plaintiff stood during the speech, facing the audience and blocking the view of audience members, wearing a shirt proclaiming "Veterans for Peace." He did not respond or react to officers' repeated requests to come with them. The court held that the officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff because they had issued a sufficient demand for plaintiff to leave and he refused their demand. The court also held that the use of force was not so excessive that no reasonable officer could have believed in the lawfulness of his action. View "McGovern v. Brown" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action alleging violation of plaintiff's rights to freedom of speech and freedom of unreasonable seizures. In this case, plaintiff was escorted by officers out of an event at George Washington University where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was delivering a speech. Plaintiff stood during the speech, facing the audience and blocking the view of audience members, wearing a shirt proclaiming "Veterans for Peace." He did not respond or react to officers' repeated requests to come with them. The court held that the officers had probable cause to arrest plaintiff because they had issued a sufficient demand for plaintiff to leave and he refused their demand. The court also held that the use of force was not so excessive that no reasonable officer could have believed in the lawfulness of his action. View "McGovern v. Brown" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied the Arkansas Commission's petition for review of a final FERC order. The FERC order held that an operating company withdrawing from a multi-state energy system must continue to share the proceeds of a pre-departure settlement with the other member companies. The court held that FERC had a lawful basis to order the sharing of the benefits of the settlement and was reasoned in its allocation methodology. Therefore, FERC's order for Entergy Arkansas to share the Union Pacific Settlement benefits and its method for allocating the settlement was not arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law. View "Arkansas Public Service Comm. v. FERC" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit held that two Federal Trade Commission attorneys were immune from suit for their conduct during an enforcement action against a medical-records company after the company's CEO publicly criticized the FTC about their investigation, where the company's data-security practices made patient records available over public file-sharing. The court held that qualified immunity protected all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law and, even if the attorneys sought to retaliate for the public criticism, their actions did not violate any clearly established right absent plausible allegations that their motive was the but-for cause of the Commission's enforcement action. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's denial of qualified immunity to the attorneys. View "Daugherty v. Sheer" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit granted Tramont's petition for review in part, remanding for the Board to provide an explanation of the legal standard it applied when determining which subjects of mandatory bargaining were displaced by a successor's unilaterally imposed employment terms pursuant to National Labor Relations Board v. Burns International Security Services, Inc. The court denied the petition for review in all other respects. In this case, Tramont opted to exercise the right afforded certain successor employers under Burns to unilaterally set the rehired workers' initial terms and conditions of employment pending the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement. Tramont set out these initial terms in an employee handbook and argued that the provision in the employee handbook had reserved the company's right to implement layoffs and thus relieved it of its bargaining duty. View "Tramont Manufacturing, LLC v. NLRB" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied ILWU's petition for review of the Board's decision and order concluding that an employer was obligated to bargain with IAM over the termination of PMMC's unit employees and that the employer's recognition of ILWU was unlawful. The court held that the employer was required to bargain over its decision to shut down PMMC's operations and transfer them to PCMC; the employer's decision to close PMMC was based primarily on labor costs and thus it had an obligation to bargain under Sections 8(a)(5) and (d) of the National Labor Relations Act; and when PCMC/PMMC refused IAM's bargaining request and unilaterally terminated its recognition of the Union, it breached that obligation. The court also held that substantial evidence supported the Board's conclusion that the M&R employees at the Oakland and Tacoma ports were not part of ILWU's West Coast-wide bargaining unit and the employer's duty to bargain with the existing IAM bargaining unit was not extinguished by virtue of the accretion doctrine. Therefore, IAM continued as the appropriate bargaining representative for the M&R mechanics and ILWU violated Sections 8(b)(1)(A) and (2) when it accepted recognition from the employer. View "International Longshore & Warehouse Union v. NLRB" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied a petition for review of the FAA's refusal to grant petitioner, a type-one diabetic, a medical certificate required for commercial flight. In this case, petitioner had declined to provide data from a relatively new method of blood-glucose testing known as continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), and this court remanded for the FAA to explain why it needed the data. The court held that the FAA satisfied the remand order where the FAA explained that it needed the data because CGM is able to detect hypoglycemic episodes often missed by more traditional monitoring, and the FAA supported that explanation with medical studies in the administrative record. View "Friedman v. FAA" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possession of a firearm, possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking offense. The DC Circuit held that any error in admitting prior crimes evidence was harmless. However, the court remanded trial issues regarding the ineffective assistance of counsel to the trial judge because the record was quite sketchy regarding plea discussions. The court remanded for resentencing because defendant received ineffective assistance at sentencing and his sentence as a career criminal was improper. View "United States v. Winstead" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied petitions for review of the Commission's two orders directing the Postal Service to include among the "costs attributable" to competitive products those costs that would disappear were the Postal Service to stop offering those products for sale. Petitioner, UPS, argued that the cost attribution methodology the Commission used was both inconsistent with the statute that gives the Commission its regulatory authority and arbitrary and capricious. The court held that the orders did not conflict with the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, because the Commission's reading of "institutional costs" was reasonable; UPS failed to show that the Accountability Act unambiguously compelled a reading of "indirect postal costs" that included only those costs that were shared across products; and Chevron deference was appropriate in this case. The court also held that the orders were not arbitrary, capricious, nor an abuse of discretion, because the Commission properly recognized that its role was to carry out the particulars of the scheme Congress created, not to engineer specific market outcomes. Finally, the Commission's adoption of an incremental-cost approach to attribution was not arbitrary nor capricious. View "United Parcel Service, Inc. v. PRC" on Justia Law