The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of defendant's motion for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50. In this action asserting breach of contract, the court held that, assuming without deciding that the motion did not sufficiently apprise plaintiff of deficiencies in proof and that the district court therefore erred in granting defendant's Rule 50 motion, under a de novo standard of review, plaintiff failed to establish that the error was harmless. In this case, plaintiff could not have presented legally sufficient evidence to support his claim for breach of contract. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its exceedingly wide discretion by denying plaintiff's motion for a continuance. View "Kelso v. Butler" on Justia Law

Under Federal Rule of Evidence 201, a court may take judicial notice of matters of public record without converting a motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment, but a court cannot take judicial notice of disputed facts contained in such public records. The incorporation-by-reference doctrine prevents plaintiffs from selecting only portions of documents that support their claims, while omitting portions of those very documents that weaken or doom their claims. The Ninth Circuit addressed and clarified when and how the district court should consider materials extraneous to the pleadings at the motion to dismiss stage via judicial notice and the incorporation-by-reference doctrine. In this case, plaintiffs appealed the district court's dismissal of an action under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The panel held that the district court erred in part by judicially noticing some facts, but properly took notice of the date of Orexigen's international patent application for Contrave. Therefore, the panel reversed and remanded for clarification on Exhibit D, reversed the district court's judicial notice of Exhibit E, and affirmed the judicial notice of Exhibit V. The panel also that the district court abused its discretion by incorporating certain documents into the complaint and properly incorporated others. The panel reversed the district court's incorporation-by-reference of Exhibits B, C, F, H, R, S, and U, and affirmed the incorporation of Exhibits A, I K, L, N, O, P, and T. The panel affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded as to the remaining claims. View "Khoja v. Orexigen Therapeutics, Inc." on Justia Law

The warrant application was supported by statements from “Doe,” that for the previous six months she regularly bought heroin from T (Doe only knew him by sight and street name) in a house, which she identified while driving with the police. A judge questioned Doe under oath and issued the warrant. Executing the warrant, officers found Walker in a house that looked like a drug house. Walker stated that she had a gun but could not remember where it was. The search took 90-120 minutes. Officers left without drugs or evidence of T’s whereabouts. Walker sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The district court granted defendants summary judgment; more than 16 months passed before the judge released her opinion. Walker appealed that day. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, first noting that under Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(7)(A)(ii), a judgment is deemed to be entered on the earlier of the Rule 58 judgment or 150 days after a dispositive order is entered. “Deferring the opinion until after the time allowed by Rule. 4(a)(7)(A)(ii) is never appropriate, as it can spell disaster for a litigant not versed in the appellate rules.” Addressing the merits, the court stated that Walker’s goal was to have a jury decide whether the state judge should have issued the warrant but with the benefit of “great deference” the state judge’s probable-cause evaluation must prevail. Nothing was concealed from the judge and, under the circumstances, a two-hour search was not unreasonable. View "Walker v. Weatherspoon" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Wayne Clark appealed the grant of summary judgment on statute of limitations grounds to defendant Richard DiStefano in connection with Clark’s claim to collect on a promissory note. Clark argued the court erroneously applied a six-year statute of limitations for demand notes found in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), 9A V.S.A. § 3-118(b), rather than the fourteen-year statute of limitations for witnessed promissory notes, located in 12 V.S.A. 508. Finding no reversible error, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed. View "Clark v. DiStefano" on Justia Law

The First Circuit dismissed this appeal in part for want of appellate jurisdiction and otherwise affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the underlying action asserting a claim under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), 28 U.S.C. 1350, and common-law claims for negligence and civil conspiracy, holding that this Court lacked jurisdiction to consider two of Defendant's claims on appeal. Plaintiff’s complaint premised jurisdiction both on the ATS and on diversity of citizenship. Plaintiff also invoked the district court’s supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims. The district court dismissed the ATS claim for want of subject-matter jurisdiction and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims. Defendant appealed. The First Circuit held (1) this Court lacked jurisdiction to consider Defendant’s request to purge certain unflattering comments from the district court’s opinion; (2) judicial estoppel barred Defendant’s argument that the district court, even after dismissing the ATS claim, had an alternative basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction; (3) the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s state-law claim; and (4) this Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain Defendant’s claim that the district court erred in declining to grant his first motion to dismiss. View "Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Lively" on Justia Law

Petitioner Eric McAndrews appealed an order recommended by a Marital Master (DalPra, M.) and approved by the Circuit Court which dismissed his petition to modify a parenting plan on inconvenient forum grounds. The parenting plan pertained to petitioner’s child with whom he shares custody with respondent Sachet Woodson. On appeal, petitioner argued that the trial court erred in dismissing his petition because it conducted an improper and incomplete inconvenient forum analysis pursuant to RSA 458-A:18 (Supp. 2017), a provision of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA). In vacating the circuit court's order, the New Hampshire Supreme Court found the order lacked a meaningful discussion of the factors that it relied upon in reaching its conclusion and its failure to address each specific factor required by the UCCJEA was untenable and unreasonable to the prejudice of petitioner’s case, and, therefore, its decision that Indiana is the more convenient forum constituted an unsustainable exercise of its discretion. View "In the Matter of McAndrews and Woodson" on Justia Law

Defendant moved to rescind a settlement from a lawsuit about golf carts and to vacate the dismissal under state contract law. The Fifth Circuit held that the district court did not have jurisdiction to resolve the motion on state law terms because the parties' unconditional dismissal deprived it of subject matter jurisdiction. The court explained that, to reopen this case, defendant must lean on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 60(b), but that Rule 60(b)'s six grounds to relieve a party from a final judgment, order, or proceeding were unavailable to defendant. View "National City Golf Finance v. Scott" on Justia Law

This matter stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the State of Mississippi against the defendant pharmacies. The State alleged deceptive trade practices and fraudulent reporting of inflated “usual and customary” prices in the defendant’s reimbursement requests to the Mississippi Department of Medicaid. The State argued that Walgreens, CVS, and Fred’s pharmacies purposefully misrepresented these prices to obtain higher prescription drug reimbursements from the State. Finding that the circuit court was better equipped to preside over this action, the DeSoto County Chancery Court transferred the matter to the DeSoto County Circuit Court in response to the defendants’ request. Aggrieved, the State timely filed an interlocutory appeal disputing the chancellor’s decision to transfer the case. After a thorough review of the parties’ positions, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that though the chancery court properly could have retained the action, the chancellor correctly used his discretion to transfer the case, allowing the issues to proceed in front of a circuit-court jury. As a result, the Supreme Court affirmed the chancellor’s decision. View "Mississippi v. Walgreen Co." on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action brought by for-hire drivers challenging a Seattle ordinance that establishes a multistep collective bargaining process between "driver-coordinators," such as Uber and Lyft, and for-hire drivers who contract with those companies. The panel held that the drivers' claims under the National Labor Relations Act were unripe because they failed to allege an injury in fact that was concrete and particularized. In this case, even assuming arguendo that the disclosure of drivers' personal information to the union under the ordinance was imminent, the disclosure was neither a concrete nor a particularized injury. Furthermore, no contract or agreement was imminent. The court also held that the drivers' First Amendment claims were unripe for the same reasons. View "Clark v. City of Seattle" on Justia Law

The central issue in this case was whether the administrative exhaustion rule found in the Land Use Petition Act (LUPA) applies to all tort claims that arise during the land use decision-making process. In late 2009, Maytown purchased real property in Thurston County, Washington from the Port of Tacoma (Port) for the express purpose of operating a mine. The property came with an approved 20-year special use permit (permit) from Thurston County (County) for mining gravel. Maytown and the Port claimed the County's board of commissioners (Board) succumbed to political pressure from opponents to the mine and directed the County's Resource Stewardship Department to impose unnecessary procedural hurdles meant to obstruct and stall the mining operation. Because the property had been designated by the County as "mineral land of long term commercial significance," the County was obligated to balance the protection of the mineral land with the protection of critical areas. Other issues raised by this case centered on whether the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's finding of a substantive due process violation 42 U.S.C. 1983; whether an aggrieved party can recover prelitigation, administrative fora attorney fees intentionally caused by the tortfeasor under a tortious interference claim; and, whether the Court of Appeals erred in awarding a request under RAP 18.1(b) for appellate attorney fees that was not made in a separate section devoted solely to that request. The Washington Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals on all but the third issue raised: the tortious interference claims pled in this case did not authorize recovery of prelitigation, administrative fora attorney fees. The Supreme Court therefore affirmed in part, and reversed in part. View "Maytown Sand & Gravel, LLC v. Thurston County" on Justia Law