Month: June 2017
Court Provides Guide For Defining Property In A Takings Case
St. Croix has a regulation that prohibits the owners of two neighboring properties along the St. Croix River from being separately sold or built upon unless each property has at least an acre of developable land. The Murrs owned two such parcels, each with less than an acre available to be developed. The Murrs wanted to sell one of the ... Read More
POSTED: Murr v. Wisconsin
Court Rules That District Courts Can Hear Mixed Cases Dismissed For Lack Of Jurisdiction, Over Justice Gorsuch’s First Dissent
In Perry v. Merit Systems Protection Board, the Court had to determine which federal court could hear an appeal from the Board’s decision that it lacked jurisdiction to hear a federal employee’s case. When Perry was fired from his job with the U.S. Census Bureau, he claimed discrimination (making his case a “mixed” one), but then signed a settlement agreeing ... Read More
Court Applies Five-Year Limitations Period to SEC Disgorgement Actions
In Kokesh v. Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC sought to force Kokesh to disgorge millions he had misappropriated from various businesses from 1995 to 2009. While the Supreme Court had long held that a five-year limitations period applied to any SEC “action, suit or proceeding for the enforcement of any civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture,” the district court held ... Read More
Supreme Court Limits Government’s Power to Seize Personal Property
The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act mandates forfeiture of “any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds the person obtained, directly or indirectly, as the result of” certain drug crimes. After brothers Tony and Terry Honeycutt were indicted for such drug crimes for selling a particular chemical through a hardware store Tony owned, Tony pled guilty and agreed to forfeit the bulk ... Read More
An ERISA Church Pension Plan Need Not Be Established by a Church
Originally, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act exempted “church plans” from a variety of rules designed to ensure solvency, and defined those plans as having been “established and maintained . . . for its employees . . . by a church.” Later, Congress amended this exception to include “a plan maintained by an organization . . . the principal purpose ... Read More
Court Affirms Virginia Court’s Application Of Juvenile Punishment Standards
In Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), the Court held that juvenile defendants convicted of nonhomicide offenses could not be sentenced to life without parole. Virginia had already abolished parole and instead replaced it with a “geriatric release” program which allowed older inmates to receive conditional release. In Virginia v. LeBlanc, LeBlanc was sentenced to life in prison for ... Read More
Patent Holders May Not Use Federal Law To Issue Injunctions Against Applicants For Biosimilar Products
The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 provides an abbreviated process for the FDA to approve drugs that are biosimilar to already licensed biological products. The Act, in part, requires an applicant for a biosimilar product to provide its application and manufacturing information to the patent holder within 20 days of the date the FDA notifies the applicant ... Read More
Court Again Limits Ability To Appeal Denial Of Class Certification
Consumers who purchased Xbox 360s sued Microsoft both individually and as a class. The district court struck the class allegations, refusing to certify the class. The Ninth Circuit refused to hear the appeal of that ruling under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f), which allows such interlocutory appeals only by permission of the court of appeals. Instead of pursuing their individual ... Read More
Court Again Limits Forum-Shopping In Suits Against Nationwide Companies
In Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., San Francisco City, a number of users of the drug Plavix sued the maker in California for alleged health problems caused by the drug, despite the fact that hardly any of the users lived in that state, and Bristol-Myers being incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York. None of the ... Read More
Supreme Court: Posting To Facebook Is A First Amendment Right
A North Carolina law made it a felony for a registered sex offender “to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages.” When a sex offender posted on Facebook about getting a traffic ticket dismissed, he was convicted and ... Read More
September 11 Detainees Denied A Bivens Action For Their Detention
In Ziglar v. Abbasi, the Court was asked to extend the implied cause of action theories under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) to alleged constitutional violations six men claimed to have suffered during detention shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Second Circuit permitted the claims to go forward against certain executive officials, ... Read More
Supreme Court Clarifies Expert Psychiatric Assistance In Indigent Defendant Cases
The Court had previously held in Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1985), that when an indigent defendant’s mental condition is relevant to his criminal culpability, the State must provide that defendant with access to a mental health expert who is sufficiently available to the defense, and independent from the prosecution, to conduct a psychiatric examination and “assist in evaluation, ... Read More
SCOTUS: Disparaging Trademarks Have First Amendment Protection
The Lanham Act has a provision prohibiting the registration of trademarks that “disparage . . . or bring . . . into contemp[t] or disrepute” and “persons, living or dead.” Simon Tam, lead singer of the Japanese rock band “The Slants” sued when the band’s name was denied registration. The Federal Circuit held that the disparagement clause was facially unconstitutional ... Read More
Supreme Court Rejects Gender-Based Differentiation In Immigration Law
The Immigration and Naturalization Act provided that a child born abroad to a father who was a U.S. citizen and a mother who was not was eligible for U.S. citizenship if the father had spent ten years in the U.S., with at least five of those years after turning 14. If the mother was the U.S. citizen, however, the mother ... Read More
Justice Gorsuch’s First Majority Opinion Is A Win For Debt Purchasers
In Henson v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc., Justice Gorsuch authored the unanimous decision in a decidedly conversational tone, holding that an entity that purchases another’s debt and then seeks to collect that debt is not a “debt collector” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and thus is not beholden to that Act’s strictures for debt collection. The Act defines ... Read More