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.

FG Hemisphere Associates, LLC ("FG Hemisphere") brought a suit against the Democratic Republic of Congo ("DRC") under the provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ("FSIA"), 28 U.S.C. 1604, permitting a plaintiff to confirm an arbitration award secured against a foreign sovereign. At issue was whether the district court could sanction DRC for failing to respond to a court-ordered discovery under the FSIA. The court held that the FSIA did not abrogate a court's inherit power to impose contempt sanctions on a foreign sovereign and therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it sanctioned the DRC.

Plaintiff sued defendants, United Healthcare Insurance Company and the American Association of Retired Persons, alleging breach of contract, fraud under the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, and unjust enrichment when plaintiff had to pay nearly $40,000 in uninsured medical bills. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim when plaintiff tried to recover the uninsured amount by alleging that the contract between plaintiff and defendants was ambiguous. The court held that the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's claim under Rule 12(b)(6) where the contract was not ambiguous when it included sections on what services were and were not covered and included notations limiting coverage that was directly relevant to plaintiff's circumstances.

Appellees filed a suit challenging the Federal Trade Commission's ("Commission") Extended Enforcement Policy claiming that the Commission had intruded upon an area of traditional regulation when it authorized the Fair Trade Reporting Act ("FACT"), 15 U.S.C. 1681, and that the policy was unlawful absent a clear statement from Congress authorizing federal regulation over the practice of law. Shortly after oral arguments, Congress passed the Red Flag Program Clarification Act of 2010 which expressly amended the FACT Act by changing the definition of "creditor." Therefore, the court vacated the district court's opinion holding that legislation had clearly altered the posture of the case such that there was no longer a live "case or controversy" before the court.

Plaintiff filed an action against defendants claiming that they violated the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act ("CPPA"), DC Code 28-3904, by inducing her to sell her house to one of the defendants and then failing to pay her the full amount promised. At issue was whether the district court erred in granting summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 and sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. The court affirmed summary judgment where the district court correctly concluded on the record before it that one of the defendants was not a merchant subject to the CPPA. The court vacated the sanction award against one defendant where the defendant's conduct did not involve representations to the court that was sanctionable under Rule 11.

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.

Plaintiff filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") seeking disclosure of a classified international trade agreement. At issue was whether plaintiff was entitled to recovery of attorney fees for his lawsuit when the United States Trade Representative declassified and released the agreement at issue to the public while plaintiff's suit was pending. The court held that plaintiff was not entitled to recover attorney fees where the government was justified in withholding the document as a matter of law.

Petitioner, a manufacturer and distributer of aircraft parts, filed a petition seeking review of an "Unapproved Parts Notification" ("UPN") posted by the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA") on its website. At issue was whether the petition for review of the FAA order should be granted where petitioner erroneously filed its petition for review in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and where the petition was then forwarded to the court and subsequently filed. The court denied the petition as untimely where petitioner filed after the 60 day statutory time limit had elapsed and it failed to demonstrate reasonable grounds for missing the deadline.

Petitioner sued defendant, who plead guilty to possession of child pornography and possessed depictions of petitioner, seeking over $3,000,000 in restitution. At issue was whether her petition for mandamus should be granted where the district court awarded her an amount of $5000 in restitution and whether petitioner may directly appeal the district court's decision. The court granted the petition for mandamus in part where the district court admitted the restitution award was smaller than the amount of harm she suffered as a result of defendant's offense. The court denied petitioner's direct appeal where it was not authorized by statute and dismissed as moot her motion to consolidate her mandamus petition with her direct appeal.