167 results for 'filedAt:"2024-03-20"'.
J. McFadden finds that the trial court properly convicted defendant of child molestation and correctly denied defendant's motion for a new trial. Sufficient evidence was presented to support defendant's conviction. Defendant failed to reserve his objection to the trial court's refusal to instruct the jury on rape as a lesser-included offense of child molestation. Under the law in effect at the time of his 2005 trial, defendant waived the right to assert that the trial court's decision was an error. Affirmed.
Court: Georgia Court of Appeals, Judge: McFadden, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: A24A0459, Categories: Sex Offender, Jury Instructions
J. Hutchinson finds that the lower court properly found that defendant is not entitled to credit against his sentence for time spent confined at home while on bond, but improperly summarily dismissed his postconviction petition. Time spent on home supervision as a condition of pretrial release is not required to be credited against his sentence. Affirmed in part.
Court: Illinois Appellate Court, Judge: Hutchinson, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 230099, Categories: Firearms, Sentencing, Bail
J. Jennings grants Allstate's motion to dismiss most claims in this contract and conversion suit. The purchaser of an Allstate-owned, California salvage title vehicle discovered the vehicle was stolen when he was arrested in Kentucky for receiving stolen property. Though the insurance company is now in possession of the vehicle, the purchaser has not been refunded his purchase price. Allstate's causation argument on a factual dispute regarding the arrest and vehicle seizure, as affecting the purchaser's conversion claim, is not dismissed, being better suited to a motion for summary judgment. The purchaser has failed to allege Allstate's behavior was extreme or outrageous, and the tort claim is dismissed. Punitive damages are also not assertable as independent counts.
Court: USDC Western District of Kentucky, Judge: Jennings, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 3:23cv108, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Tort, Conversion, Contract
J. Rush finds the trial court properly ordered the ex-husband to obtain a life insurance policy to secure the ex-wife’s portion of his police pension. Though the husband challenges the court's authority, saying it did not consider the tax consequences of his future pension payments, trial courts have broad authority to order a security or other guarantee to secure division of property. The court’s evidence-based findings support the judgment. The husband waives his tax consequences challenge due to his presenting the court with only speculation.
Court: Indiana Supreme Court, Judge: Rush , Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 23S-DN-245, Categories: Family Law, Insurance, Property
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J. Hale grants the district's motion to dismiss this employment retaliation and discrimination suit. The former employee alleges she was subject to harassment and discrimination. Her complaint says certain supervisors were acting in the scope of their employment, and her claims must fail under the intracorporate-conspiracy doctrine. The employee's argument a supervisor was acting in his personal interest when he fired her is contradicted by the complaint. The dismissal of her improperly-made standalone claim for punitive damages does not preclude her from recovering damages if the evidence warrants.
Court: USDC Western District of Kentucky, Judge: Hale , Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 3:23cv42, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Damages, Employment Discrimination, Employment Retaliation
J. Jones grants the consumer relationships software manufacturer's motion for re-taxation of costs and $6.8 million in attorney fees. Although summary judgment was granted in favor of the manufacturer in this suit alleging that it infringed certain cyber patents, a subsequently discovered clerical error supports the manufacturer's motion. Also, because the patentee's continuing to litigate after claim construction ended any likelihood of prevailing on the merits, an award of attorney’s fees is warranted.
Court: USDC Nevada, Judge: Jones , Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 3:13cv628, NOS: Patent - Property Rights, Categories: Patent, Attorney Fees, Technology
J. Smith finds the trial court properly convicted defendant for conspiracy to commit illegal remunerations. Defendant operated a distributor responsible for attracting Medicare referrals to the pharmacogenetic testing lab. All evidence involving illegal remuneration schemes supports the conviction. Defendant says a particular good faith instruction would allow the jury to consider the court's allegedly negligent submission of a certain report as proof of intention. But if the submission was negligent, it does not fall within a definition of “intent to deceive," and nothing in the instruction can be read to allow negligence to substitute for the proper intention of willfulness. Affirmed.
Court: 5th Circuit, Judge: Smith , Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 22-40617, Categories: Fraud, Jury Instructions
J. Wilkinson finds the Board properly denied the Venezuelan's petition for relief from deportation. The Venezuelan argued his attempts to meet a 14-year-old for sex, which led to attempted sexual battery and electronic solicitation of minor convictions, are not crimes involving moral turpitude. He argued that attempted sexual battery was not a crime involving moral turpitude as the minimum conduct to sustain a conviction was insufficiently reprehensible. And he claimed that the electronic solicitation statute lacked the requisite culpable mens rea to be a crime involving moral turpitude. Statutes that limit convictions to defendants who knew or had reason to believe that their intentional sexual acts were directed at children categorically involve moral turpitude. Denied.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Wilkinson, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 23-1238, Categories: Immigration, Sex Offender, Child Victims
J. Floyd finds the lower court improperly opted not to lower the defendant's sentence under the First Step Act. The court originally sentenced the defendant in 1996 to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment on a continuing criminal conspiracy count and a federal crack cocaine offense. The defendant is worthy of a time education because he has displayed good conduct, is unlikely to commit crimes, spent half his life in prison and other co-defendants have received sentence reductions. Vacated.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Floyd, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 22-6748, Categories: Drug Offender, Sentencing, Conspiracy
J. Hudson finds the lower court properly granted summary judgment to the health research foundation. Doctors exposed Guatemalan prisoners and sex workers to sexually transmitted diseases without their full consent in an effort to better understand diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis. Although the foundation provided general funding, the doctors who infected the prisoners were not acting as agents of the foundation. Affirmed.
Court: 4th Circuit, Judge: Hudson, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 22-1678, Categories: Civil Rights, Health Care, Immunity
J. Eagles partially grants a motion for extension of time to obtain timely and valid service to the parents of a Black child whom a white woman allegedly struck in the face while he and his sister visited a swimming pool on the property she manages. The parents do not have good cause for having missed their deadline to obtain service of process on the apartment complex where the white woman worked, but they do show good cause to extend the deadline in their service of suit to the property owner.
Court: USDC Middle District of North Carolina, Judge: Eagles, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 1:23cv689, NOS: Other Civil Rights - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Property, Tort
J. Wicker finds that the trial court properly granted attorney defendants' exceptions of no cause of action in a case alleging a property at issue in an underlying succession suit was sold without notice and without paying the decedent's sons their half of the sale proceeds in accordance with the decedent's will. The defendants include the attorneys in the underlying case. Therefore, the sons were required to show that the attorneys acted with a "specific malice to personally inflict direct harm upon his client’s adversary and with full knowledge that his conduct would cause such harm." Affirmed.
Court: Louisiana Court Of Appeal, Judge: Wicker, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 23-CA-297, Categories: Civil Procedure, Malicious Prosecution
J. D’Agostino dismisses with prejudice an employment discrimination and retaliation complaint brought against Hamilton College by a university professor, who says he was targeted for being a Black immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of his allegations involve actions that occurred prior to 2018, including the university’s decision not to appoint him to chair of the French and Franco Studies Department in 2012, which the court finds are untimely.
Court: USDC Northern District of New York, Judge: D’Agostino, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 6:22cv1395, NOS: Employment - Civil Rights, Categories: Education, Employment Discrimination, Employment Retaliation
J. Seybert adopts in part a magistrate judge’s report and preserves for trial claims for fraud, rescission and declaratory relief stemming from a home equity sharing agreement. The court agrees with objections filed by two associated entities and dismisses claims for contract rescission against them, finding the claims were premised on fraud allegations that were dismissed.
Court: USDC Eastern District of New York, Judge: Seybert, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 2:21cv4542, NOS: Truth in Lending - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Fraud, Property, Contract
J. Brodie rules on a series of expert and evidence-related motions in a negligence case against American Airlines, who was sued by a passenger alleging she was sexually assaulted by a drunk passenger during a flight from Phoenix to New York. Notably, the court allows evidence related to the litigant’s history of sexual abuse and assault to be presented at trial, but only for the purposes of identifying sources of prior trauma or apportionment of damages.
Court: USDC Eastern District of New York, Judge: Brodie, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 1:18cv6110, NOS: Other Personal Injury - Torts - Personal Injury, Categories: Evidence, Experts, Assault
J. Komitee issues his findings of fact following a bench trial and rules in favor of four car wash attendants on their unpaid-wages and retaliation claims against a Brooklyn-based car wash. The court awards each litigant $3,000 in damages for their state labor law retaliation claims, prejudgment interest, plus individualized awards for unpaid wages and misappropriated gratuities.
Court: USDC Eastern District of New York, Judge: Komitee, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 1:13cv6085, NOS: Fair Labor Standards Act - Labor, Categories: Employment, Damages, Labor
J. Procaccini affirms the district court's findings that police had probable cause to arrest the defendant, later convicted of first-degree murder, and that police did not materially misrepresent information in an application for a warrant to search the defendant's residence, along with its denial of the defendant's motion to admit reverse-Spreigl evidence and his request to cross-examine a lead investigator as to whether police had investigated unnamed suspects from a prior shooting. Security footage depicting the defendant having an "animated exchange" with the victim at a bar, monitoring the victim inside the bar, going outside to an idling vehicle and reaching inside, climbing into a car across the street and turning off the headlights, the victim walking toward the car and the victim's subsequent collapse in the street near the car was sufficient to establish probable cause to arrest the defendant for the victim's murder. The district court also did not clearly err in finding that police's description of this interaction as a "confrontation" in their search warrant application was not reckless misrepresentation. The district court also did not abuse its discretion in finding that prior crimes of another person in the car and at the scene were not relevant to this case and in excluding that evidence, since there are few similarities between those crimes and this one, or in denying the request to question the lead investigator, since it properly cited concerns about the risk of creating unfair prejudice or impugning the victim's character and about a lack of relevance. Affirmed.
Court: Minnesota Supreme Court, Judge: Procaccini, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: A23-0154, Categories: Confrontation, Evidence, Murder
Per curiam, the Minnesota Supreme Court reverses the defendant's first-degree premeditated murder, attempted first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree intentional murder and kidnapping convictions, each premised on aiding-and-abetting theories of liability. While a search warrant application for a search of the defendant's cell phone was sufficiently supported by probable cause, the district court erred in instructing the jury that the defendant "or another (or others)" satisfied each element of each offense. These "hybrid instructions" misstated the law in a way that was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Reversed.
Court: Minnesota Supreme Court, Judge: Per curiam, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: A22-1281, Categories: Murder, Accomplice Liability, Jury Instructions
J. Lewis finds a lower court properly denied a group of Afghan citizens' motion to remain in the U.K. The Afghan citizens argued that they are entitled to relocation. However, the government sufficiently showed in court that they failed to establish a relationship with a relevant government department and have not made a positive contribution to the U.K. military. Affirmed.
Court: Her Majesty's Court of Appeal, Judge: Lewis, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: CA-2023-1534, Categories: Government, Immigration
J. Dugan rules a Black female employee may pursue race and sex discrimination claims against a chemical manufacturing distributor. The female employee sufficiently showed in court that she may have been passed over for a promotion to serve as a general foreman, which was handed down to white, male co-worker.
Court: USDC Southern District of Illinois, Judge: Dugan, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 3:21cv1357, NOS: Employment - Civil Rights, Categories: Civil Rights, Employment, Employment Discrimination
J. Peterson grants the rubber flooring manufacturer's motion for attorney fees and costs in a breach of contract suit it faced from the flooring retailer. In part because the billing records the manufacturer submitted for its national counsel contain redactions that do not jibe with federal court requirements and do not make it possible to determine whether the fees requested are reasonable, the manufacturer's request for attorney fees is reduced by $20,089. In total, the manufacturer is awarded $60,701 in attorney fees plus $4,619 in expenses and costs.
Court: USDC Western District of Wisconsin, Judge: Peterson, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 3:22cv244, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: Attorney Fees, Contract
J. Brimmer grants the insurer summary judgment on the homeowner's complaint alleging the foundation of his home was damaged by a water leak and he was due insurance coverage. Engineering reports concluded that the damage to the insured's house was caused by movement of the earth, which was excluded from coverage under the terms of his policy.
Court: USDC Colorado, Judge: Brimmer, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 1:22cv2906, NOS: Insurance - Contract, Categories: Insurance
J. Robinson finds that the district court improperly found in favor of the employer on claims of discriminatory termination brought by a food services company manager who alleges she was subjected to a sex-based hostile work environment. She sufficiently alleges that her termination was part of an "unrelenting course of mistreatment" that, under the continuing violation doctrine, created a hostile environment in which she was subjected to sex-based animus. Therefore, these claims are not time-barred. However, her state claims were properly dismissed because her primary work territory was in Virginia and West Virginia and her connection to New York was only tangential when she received permission to work from home for a time. Vacated in part.
Court: 2nd Circuit, Judge: Robinson, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 22-1237, Categories: Employment Discrimination