21 results for 'judge:"Diaz"'.
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly granted judgment to the homeowner. The owner and the county have been embroiled in litigation over whether her large vacation home, boasting 24 bedrooms, 25 bathrooms, and a pool, complies with county and state zoning requirements. A recent amendment to North Carolina’s state zoning law meant the home now complies with county and state requirements. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: May 17, 2024, Case #: 22-1785, Categories: Property, Zoning, Housing
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly denied the defendant's motion to suppress evidence, failed to give his proposed jury instruction, and admitted certain testimony. The defendant robbed a coin store owner at gunpoint, handcuffed the owner, and duct-taped his wrists and ankles together. A notebook found at the scene contained the defendant's fingerprints. Police searched his vehicle and apartment and found the coin store owner's firearm along with several pieces of currency matching what was taken from the store. The defendant moved to suppress the evidence seized during the search on the ground that the search warrant affidavit failed to establish probable cause, but his fingerprints were probative to suspect him as the robber. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: May 16, 2024, Case #: 22-4726, Categories: Evidence, Firearms, Robbery
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly entered judgment voiding the contract between the star basketball player and his former agents. The basketball star signed an agreement with an agency after he played his final game for Duke but before he was drafted into the NBA. The agents argued that the player didn't count as a student-athlete for the purpose of the North Carolina Uniform Athlete Agents Act, which governs contracts between student-athletes and their agents. The player was still a student-athlete when he signed the contract because he had not yet left the university or signed a professional contract. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: May 6, 2024, Case #: 22-1793, Categories: Education, Tort, Contract
J. Diaz finds that the lower court properly found that a wireless company in the business of selling pre-paid airtime from cellular networks is subjected to a city's utility tax. Precedent from the Supreme Court, the legislature's intent when crafting the utility tax, and a plain reading of the tax code all point to the wireless company's services falling under the umbrella of the utility tax. Affirmed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: April 29, 2024, Case #: 85094-6-I, Categories: Tax
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly denied the correctional officers motion for summary judgement. The officer, accused of forcing an employee she mistook for a prisoner to strip search, is not entitled to qualified immunity because body cavity or strip search of a prison employee is reasonable only if officials have reasonable and individualized suspicion the employee is carrying contraband. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: February 22, 2024, Case #: 21-1960, Categories: Constitution, Police Misconduct, Prisoners' Rights
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J. Diaz finds the lower court properly convicted the defendant of Hobbs robbery. The defendant and a group of co-conspirators attempted to rob the owners of a local restaurant as they returned home from work, leading to a shootout that left one of the owners dead. The defendant claims the jury was unfair because the court struck two Black jurors, the same race as a defendant, and no white defendants. Although both the Black defendants and white defendant did not raise their hands as they should have when asked verbatim whether they had family members who had ever been plaintiffs or defendants in a court case, the white juror had told the court before she had a family member that fit the description the verbatim questioning. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: February 15, 2024, Case #: 21-4458, Categories: Jury, Robbery, Jury Instructions
J. Diaz dismisses the defendant's appeal of orders compelling his physical presence at a resentencing hearing. The court can't rule on anything from the lower court except final orders and instructions to appear physically for a resentencing hearing do not meet that threshold.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: February 14, 2024, Case #: 23-4055, Categories: Sentencing
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly convicted the defendant for the use of excessive force. The defendant, a former police officer, assaulted a drunk arrestee in the police station restroom before slamming the arrestee's head into a door frame while dragging him into another room. The defendant challenged his conviction on the ground that requiring witnesses to testify while wearing facemasks violated his constitutional right to face-to-face meetings with witnesses appearing before the trier of fact. The use of facemasks during the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes an important public policy as required to circumvent the face-to-face requirement. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: January 11, 2024, Case #: 22-4178, Categories: Fair Trial, Sentencing, Assault
J. Diaz finds that the lower court properly convicted defendant of a series of sex crimes against his daughter, including rape and child molestation. Defendant argues that a law criminalizing incest is unlawful and that there was not enough evidence to convict him. But there is nothing on the record that supports any of his assertions and defendant's claims of "irregularities" during trial are without merit. Affirmed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: January 2, 2024, Case #: 84445-8-I, Categories: Sex Offender, Child Victims
J. Diaz finds the lower court improperly granted defendant’s motion to dismiss. Defendant was charged with felony indecent exposure for being in his apartment and touching himself while watching three minor girls play on the apartment complex playscape. The lower court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss, because he was clothed and defendant argues that nudity is an essential element of the crime. The instant court finds that despite being clothed, defendant’s behavior constitutes obscene exposure even without nudity, as is not a statutory requirement. The matter is remanded for further proceedings. Reversed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: October 3, 2023, Case #: 84366-4-I, Categories: Sex Offender
J. Diaz finds that the lower court improperly found in favor of a union in a dispute where a nonprofit health care system tried to recoup overpaid wages from the union members. The lower court found that the overpaid wages being recovered did not fit the "inadvertent and infrequent" nature of the relevant statute. However, there still remains questions over the legal definition of "inadvertent and infrequent" as it relates to the wages. Summary judgment, as a result, was premature. Reversed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: September 18, 2023, Case #: 84660-4-I, Categories: Employment, Labor / Unions
J. Diaz finds the lower court improperly held that because Virginia's requirements for Medicaid eligibility for expensive Hepatitis C drugs violated the Medicaid Act, the pharmacy's misrepresentations allowing more people to qualify were immaterial as a matter of law. The pharmacy can’t collaterally attack Virginia’s eligibility requirements as a defense against fraud. Vacated.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: August 15, 2023, Case #: 22-1491, Categories: Fraud, Government, Medicaid
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly dismissed the suspended student's complaint holding that he hadn’t alleged a cognizable liberty or property interest in his continuing education. The student, accused of abusing his girlfriend, hasn’t alleged that he was deprived of his education without sufficient process including a three-month-long investigation. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: August 8, 2023, Case #: 22-1971, Categories: Education, Assault
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly denied the defendant's motion for a sentence reduction. The quantity of crack cocaine the police obtained, his violent history in prison and the government's suspicion that he participated in an FBI informant’s murder add up to the defendant not qualifying for a reduction. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: August 3, 2023, Case #: 21-6829, Categories: Drug Offender, Sentencing
J. Diaz finds the board properly denied the employer's petition to review whether a lawsuit filed by the longshoreman labor union violated the National Labor Relations Act. The board rationally held that the lawsuit against the employer sought to preserve its coastwide jurisdiction over loading and unloading work, so it didn’t violate the Act. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: July 28, 2023, Case #: 23-1059, Categories: Employment, Labor / Unions, Labor
J. Diaz finds that the lower court improperly interpreted the wills of a husband and wife in a survivorship dispute. The thrust of the dispute stems from the question of whether the two wills, which covered how much the son would inherit, conflicted with each other in their survivorship clauses. The documents can be read in such a way to avoid conflict if interpreted through a disclaimer provision, leaving no "irreconcilable ambiguity" between the wills. Reversed.
Court: Washington Court Of Appeals, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: July 10, 2023, Case #: 85041-5-I, Categories: Wills / Probate
J. Diaz finds the immigration board improperly determined that the Pakistani businessman could live in a new area of Pakistan without fear of reprisal from the Taliban. The businessman sold supplies to U.S. service members in Afghanistan, resulting in the Taliban threatening his life. The government believed that he would be safe because, after being threatened, he survived several weeks in Islamabad before seeking asylum in America. His brief sojourn to Islamabad - where he never left the house - doesn’t rebut the presumption that a notorious terrorist organization continues to imperil his life. Reversed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: July 6, 2023, Case #: 22-1026, Categories: Immigration, Terrorism
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly denied postconviction relief to the murderer. Police charged the murderer with several crimes, including carjacking, kidnapping, armed robbery, first-degree assault, and first-degree murder. The prosecutor offered to dismiss all the other charges if he pleaded guilty to two counts of carjacking and one count of second-degree murder. The murderer took the plea deal after hearing that Maryland's guidelines for these offenses are thirty to fifty-one years rather than the ninety possible years he faced for the original charges. He contends he involuntarily agreed to the plea deal, but the terms of his plea agreement, including his maximum sentencing exposure, were explained to him. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: June 14, 2023, Case #: 19-7638, Categories: Murder, Plea, Vehicle
J. Diaz finds the lower court properly granted judgment to the holding company. The investors failed to show they were misled about the merger and how the holding company's omission of cash-flow projections caused any economic loss. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: June 1, 2023, Case #: 21-1571, Categories: Securities, Business Practices
J. Diaz finds the lower court improperly dismissed the inmates' families' RICO charges. The families sufficiently pled injury in being overcharged for prison phone calls stemming from the providers' misrepresentation of prices to local governments. Vacated.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Diaz, Filed On: May 25, 2023, Case #: 22-1472, Categories: Government, Consumer Law, Racketeering