19 results for 'judge:"Grant"'.
J. Grant finds that the district court improperly dismissed the nonprofit's action for lack of standing on its claim that the Corps issued a dock permit for one of Georgia's barrier islands without full environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The nonprofit's members alleged that they suffered an aesthetic injury from viewing the dock and alleged they suffered procedural harm when the Corps failed to complete the full review process. Although the dock has already been built, relief for the nonprofit's alleged procedural harm is still possible. Review could still occur and the Corps could reconsider the decision to allow the dock. The district court correctly dismissed the nonprofit's claim alleging a violation of the Cumberland Island National Seashore Act. Reversed in part.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: May 2, 2024, Case #: 22-11079, Categories: Environment
J. Grant finds that the district court properly awarded the store $62,000 in attorney fees as sanctions in an action against the shopping center owner arising after the store's request to exercise its option to extend the terms of its lease was denied. The owner acted in bad faith since it had knowledge of the lack of diversity jurisdiction in the case but delayed disclosing the information for more than a year. The sanction award was limited to two-thirds of the attorney fees incurred by the store after the owner discovered its diversity-destroying citizenship. The district court correctly struck the store's affidavit claiming its attorney did not act in bad faith as untimely and irrelevant. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 22-12461, Categories: Sanctions, Attorney Fees
J. Grant finds that the district court properly denied the father's petition seeking the return of his son under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the International Child Abduction Remedies Act. The mother took the child from Venezuela without the father's knowledge or permission and moved to Florida. The district court correctly found that the Convention did not require the child's return because the father filed the petition more than a year after the child was removed from Venezuela and the child is settled in his new environment. Although the outcome of the mother's asylum petition has not yet been decided, that fact does not outweigh the evidence of the child's connections to his new community. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 23-12566, Categories: Immigration
J. Grant finds that the district court improperly dismissed the company's breach of contract and trade secrets action against the ex-employee and the competitor arising after they allegedly stole trade secrets about the company's government contract to improve the competitor's bid for the same contract. The company and the competitor are both tribally-owned businesses. Since the competitor's alleged misconduct is related to its participation in the business development program, the company's trade secrets claims fall under the scope of the competitor's sovereign immunity waiver. The district court incorrectly failed to consider the enforceability of the forum selection clause naming an allegedly nonexistent tribal court as the proper forum before dismissing the breach of contract claim against the ex-employee. Reversed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: May 1, 2024, Case #: 22-12669, Categories: Trade Secrets, Contract
J. Grant finds that the district court properly sentenced defendant to 120 months in prison following his guilty plea to possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The upward variance doubling the sentence recommended by the sentencing guidelines was appropriate in light of the district court's findings that defendant sold drugs which caused one person's overdose death and possessed Suboxone for distribution while in jail awaiting sentencing. The district court was entitled to infer from the warden's testimony that he could recognize the substance seized from defendant as Suboxone. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: March 20, 2024, Case #: 22-11799, Categories: Sentencing
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J. Grant finds that the district court properly granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the companies and blocked enforcement of a provision of Florida's Individual Freedom Act which sought to bar employers from holding mandatory workplace meetings if those meetings endorsed viewpoints related to race and inequality which the state found offensive. The provision violates the First Amendment because it targets speech based on its content and penalizes certain viewpoints. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: March 4, 2024, Case #: 22-13135, Categories: First Amendment
J. Grant finds that the district court properly convicted defendant of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute meth and correctly denied defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal. The district court correctly instructed the jury that the government only had to show that defendant knew he possessed a controlled substance, not that he knew he possessed meth. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: February 29, 2024, Case #: 22-13516, Categories: Drug Offender
J. Grant finds that the district court improperly granted defendant habeas relief from his murder conviction based on a determination that the trial court incorrectly refused to suppress incriminating statements defendant made to a fellow suspect when police put the two men in an interrogation room together even after defendant had invoked his right to counsel. A reasonable jurist could conclude that the officer's decision to put defendant in the interrogation room with the other suspect was not a violation of defendant's Miranda rights. The officer's move was a "strategic use of a neutral situation," not a "coercive psychological ploy." Reversed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: February 15, 2024, Case #: 22-11744, Categories: Habeas, Miranda, Murder
[Consolidated.] J. Grant finds that the district courts properly denied defendant's habeas petitions seeking to vacate several of his life sentences following his guilty plea to charges including arson and use of a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence. Defendant was responsible for a string of bombings in Georgia and Alabama in the late 1990s, including the bombing of the 1996 Centennial Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. Defendant's motions are collateral attacks on his sentences and are barred by the appeal waiver in his plea agreement. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: February 12, 2024, Case #: 21-12828, Categories: Habeas, Arson
J. Grant finds that the district court improperly ruled in favor of the city with respect to an activist's First Amendment claim in a civil rights action arising after he was banned from city council meetings and arrested for disorderly conduct. The city violated the activist's rights when it indefinitely barred him from city hall, preventing him from attending city council meetings which are a designated public forum. However, the district court correctly found that the officer who enforced the city's ban was entitled to qualified immunity. The officers were not entitled to qualified immunity from the activist's false arrest claims because the activist's actions in yelling, cursing and grabbing his crotch did not amount to probable cause for a disorderly conduct arrest. The city had probable cause to arrest the activist for cyberstalking based on his online posts to a law enforcement blog. Reversed in part.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: January 10, 2024, Case #: 22-11421, Categories: Civil Rights, Immunity, First Amendment
J. Grant finds that the district court properly found in favor of the employee in a race and sex discrimination action and correctly denied the employer's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial. The employee, a Black woman, alleged that white and male employees were treated differently and that the employer's reasons for firing her were pretextual. The jury found that the employer intentionally discriminated against the employee. The employer failed to show why the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict and instead merely argued that the employer's comparators were inadequate. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: December 12, 2023, Case #: 21-13245, Categories: Employment Discrimination
J. Grant finds in an opinion which was originally non-published in August, that the district court properly convicted defendant of drug offenses. The Covid-19 accommodations which required grand jurors to meet in three separate courthouses and use videoconferencing to connect with each other did not introduce any fundamental error into defendant's prosecution or affect defendant's indictment. The district court correctly denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained via wiretaps of his phone. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: September 8, 2023, Case #: 22-11809, Categories: Drug Offender
J. Grant finds that the district court properly ruled in favor of the employer in a race discrimination action brought by the meteorologist alleging that his termination for violating sexual harassment policies was pretextual and that he was actually fired because he is white. A termination request form filled out by the managers which included the employee's race and data on the race of weather employees at the news station does not prove that the employee was terminated because of his race. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: September 8, 2023, Case #: 22-11462, Categories: Employment Discrimination
J. Grant finds that the district court properly dismissed the customers' putative negligence, civil conspiracy and breach of fiduciary duty class action arising after Robinhood restricted their ability to buy shares of "meme stocks." The customers' agreement with Robinhood gave the company the right to restrict their ability to trade securities and to refuse to accept transactions or execute trade requests for any reason. Robinhood also had no duty not to cause economic loss to the customers and the customers failed to allege that the company took specific actions to intentionally cause harm. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: August 10, 2023, Case #: 22-10669, Categories: Fiduciary Duty, Negligence, Class Action
J. Grant finds that the district court improperly ruled in favor of the government in an action brought by the individual under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The individual sought damages for injuries he allegedly suffered in an accident with a U.S. Postal Service truck. The district court incorrectly excluded the individual's experts under a rule governing pretrial disclosures. The doctors who were the individual's expert witnesses were non-retained experts rather than retained experts and were not required to file full disclosure reports. However, the district court correctly rejected the individual's motion for partial summary judgment on liability. Vacated.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: August 4, 2023, Case #: 21-12661, Categories: Negligence, Experts
[Consolidated.] J. Grant finds that the district court properly dismissed the construction company's petitions under the Limitation Act seeking to limit its liability for damages caused by Pensacola Bay barges which became unmoored during Hurricane Sally. The barges slammed into the Pensacola Bay Bridge, forcing the bridge to close for months and leading to economic losses for nearby businesses. The district court correctly found that the company could not establish a lack of privity or knowledge because its executives made the decision not to move the barges to safety. Therefore, the company had no right to limit its liability and the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the proceedings. The district court also correctly imposed spoliation sanctions on the company for failing to back up employees' phones and failing to suspend data destruction policies. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: August 2, 2023, Case #: 21-13850, Categories: Maritime, Sanctions
J. Grant finds that the district court properly ruled in favor of the Muslim inmate in a civil rights action seeking a religious exemption to a Florida Department of Corrections rule prohibiting beards longer than a half inch in length. The inmate claimed that his religious beliefs required him to grow a fist-length beard and that the policy against doing so violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Florida's grievance procedures do not require Inmates to file a petition to initiate rulemaking to be entitled to proceed with judicial remedies. Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: July 31, 2023, Case #: 19-13745, Categories: Civil Rights, Prisoners' Rights
J. Grant finds the lower court properly denied defendant’s habeas petition. While appellate counsel may have failed to make a particular argument that may have succeeded at the time of his appeal, “it fails under current Florida law.” Affirmed.
Court: 11th Circuit, Judge: Grant, Filed On: July 14, 2023, Case #: 20-14181, Categories: Habeas