Justia U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

After moving to Tennessee, Doyle was charged with failure to register as a sex offender, 18 U.S.C. 2250(a), to which he pleaded guilty without a plea agreement. The district court sentenced Doyle to three years and one month in prison followed by ten years of supervised release, upon which the district court imposed special conditions, forbidding Doyle from: possessing any pornography, even legal pornography; from having any direct or indirect contact with any child under the age of 18; loitering near school yards, playgrounds, swimming pools, arcades or other places frequented by children; from using sexually-oriented telephone numbers or computer services; or from possessing or using any computer with access to any “on-line service” or other forms of wireless communication at any location (including employment) without the prior approval of the Probation Officer. The Sixth Circuit vacated the sentence, finding that the district court erred procedurally by failing to explain its reasons for imposing the special conditions, and that the record did not otherwise illuminate the reasons. View "United States v. Doyle" on Justia Law

The Whites were dealers of Kinkade’s artwork. The parties agreed to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association. In 2002, they commenced arbitration in which Kinkade claimed that the Whites had not paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the Whites counterclaimed that they had been fraudulently induced to enter the agreements. Kinkade chose Ansell as its arbitrator; the Whites chose Morganroth. Together Ansell and Morganroth chose Kowalsky as the neutral who would chair the panel. The arbitration dragged on; in 2006, Kinkade discovered that the Whites’ counsel, Ejbeh, had surreptitiously sent a live feed of the hearing to a hotel room. Ejbeh’s replacement departed after being convicted of tax fraud. The Whites did not comply with discovery requests, but after closing arguments and over objections, the panel requested that the Whites supply additional briefs. The Whites and their associates then began showering Kowalsky’s law firm with business. Kinkade objected, to no avail. A series of arbitration irregularities followed, all favoring the Whites. Kowalsky entered a $1.4 million award in the Whites’ favor. The district court vacated the award on grounds of Kowalsky’s “evident partiality.” The Sixth Circuit affirmed. View "Thomas Kinkade Co. v. White" on Justia Law

A victim, who knew Daws, told deputies that Daws had crashed a shotgun barrel through a window and charged into his house. Daws thrust the gun in his face, took cash, and warned that if the victim called police, Daws would “come back and kill him.” Officers received a second call and went to another house. The occupant said that Daws and another man had come over asking to hide a weapon. The man turned Daws away. Deputies knew Daws had previous weapons convictions and served time for aggravated burglary after holding a gas station attendant at gunpoint and threatening to kill him. They wore body armor and approached Daws’s rural house, finding his friend outside, confessing on the phone that he and Daws had “done something bad.” Deputies apprehended the man, who told them Daws was inside. Deputies entered through an open door and found Daws asleep. After apprehending him, they performed a protective sweep and found Daws’s shotgun. Daws pled guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g) and was sentenced to 210 months, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that a public safety exigency justified a warrantless search. View "United States v. Daws" on Justia Law

MedQuest is a diagnostic testing company that operates more than 90 testing facilities in 13 states. In 2006 a former MedQuest employee, brought a qui tam suit against MedQuest alleging violations of the False Claims Act. The United States intervened and obtained summary judgment ($11,110,662.71) that MedQuest used supervising physicians who had not been approved by the Medicare program and the local Medicare carrier to supervise the range of tests offered at the Nashville-area sites, and after acquiring one facility, MedQuest failed to properly re-register the facility to reflect the change in ownership and enroll the facility in the Medicare program, instead using the former owner’s payee ID number. The Sixth Circuit reversed, stating that the Medicare regulatory scheme (42 U.S.C. 1395x) does not support FCA liability for failure to comply with the supervising-physician regulations. MedQuest’s failure to satisfy enrollment regulations and its use of a billing number belonging to a physician’s practice it controlled do not trigger the hefty fines and penalties created by the FCA. View "United States v. MedQuest Assocs, Inc." on Justia Law

During her second grade year and after three years of disagreement between school officials and her parents over requests for certain disability accommodations for A.C., a minor with Type 1 diabetes,the principal made reports to Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services alleging that the parents were medically abusing A.C. The parents filed suit, claiming that the principal’s reports were made in retaliation to their disability accommodation requests and violated the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, 2 U.S.C. 12203 and 29 U.S.C. 794(a). The district court found that the parents did not prove a prima facie element of their case and could not prove that the reasons given for making the child-abuse reports were a pretext for retaliation. The Sixth Circuit reversed, stating that the district court prematurely placed on the parents the burden of rebutting the school’s stated reasons for its actions. Evidence of falsity in the reports of abuse coupled with the temporal proximity of those reports to requests for accommodations is sufficient to permit an inference of causation. View "A.C.v. Shelby Cnty. Bd. of Educ." on Justia Law

Berrien worked for a civilian contractor (TECOM) at a military base in Michigan. He was fatally injured by a gutter that fell from the liquor store on the base while he was working alone, behind the store. The district court awarded $1.18 million in damages for failure to warn, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 1346(b)(1). The Sixth Circuit reversed. Because the Act does not waive the immunity of the United States for acts of independent contractors, liability could only be based on the negligence of government employees. There was no evidence that government employees actually knew of the dangerous condition of the liquor store, so that, under applicable Michigan law, any liability for failure to warn an invitee of a dangerous condition would have to have been based on a negligent failure to discover the dangerous condition. Even though the United States retained the right to conduct spot checks under its contract with TECOM, this right does not subject it to FTCA liability. View "Berrien v. United States" on Justia Law

G.C. began attending school in the Owensboro Public School District as an out-of-district student in 2005. In 2009, G.C. was caught sending text messages in class. School officials confiscated his cell phone and read the text messages. Because this was the last in a series of disciplinary infractions, Superintendent Vick revoked G.C.’s out-of-district status, barring him from attending Owensboro High School. G.C. filed suit, raising federal and state-law claims. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The Sixth Circuit reversed, based on a due process claim that G.C. was denied a hearing prior to expulsion as required by Kentucky statute and a Fourth Amendment claim based on the 2009 search, in which G.C. contends that school officials violated his constitutional rights when they read text messages on his phone without the requisite reasonable suspicion. The court affirmed rejection of a Rehabilitation Act claim that the defendants failed to identify G.C. as disabled under section 504. View "Cain v. Owensboro Pub. Schs." on Justia Law

After a Tennessee state court jury convicted Lovins of second-degree murder, the state trial court judge made additional factual findings, employing procedures that the Supreme Court later found unconstitutional, and enhanced Lovins’s sentence from 20 to 23 years based on those findings. After Lovins exhausted state post-conviction procedures, the federal district court denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Sixth Circuit reversed and conditionally granted the writ unless the state initiates proceedings within 180 days to either reset Lovins’s sentence to the presumptive statutory sentence of 20 years, or provide Lovins a new sentencing hearing under a sentencing procedure that satisfies the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, citing Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), and reasoning that the sentence was enhanced based on facts that were not found by a jury. Lovins’s direct appeal was not final until almost three years after the Blakely decision, and therefore Blakely applies to his case under clearly-established retroactivity rules. View "Lovins v. Parker" on Justia Law

NHTSA is a federal agency within the Department of Transportation that writes and enforces safety standards for motor vehicles. NTEA is a trade organization representing manufacturers who customize bodies for special-purpose commercial vehicles. In 2005, NHTSA initiated a rulemaking proceeding at Congress’s behest to upgrade the safety standard establishing strength requirements for passenger compartment roofs in certain vehicles. NHTSA proposed, among other things, extending the scope of the safety standard to include a previously unregulated class of vehicles, many of which are produced by NTEA’s members. NTEA objected, but in 2009, NHTSA promulgated Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 216a. The Sixth Circuit denied review. “To ask for more process in a situation like this would render NHTSA’s standard-setting mission a practical impossibility.” The standard complies with “minimum substantive criteria” specified by Congress: that any new safety standard “shall be practicable, meet the need for motor vehicle safety, and be stated in objective terms.” View "Nat'l Truck Equip. Assoc v. Nat'l Hwy. Traffic Safety Admin." on Justia Law

AT&T and Intrado, rival telecommunications carriers, submitted to an arbitration conducted by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to determine how to interconnect their networks to service 9-1-1 calls. AT&T insisted that all points of interconnection be on its network, relying on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C 251(c), a provision only applicable to incumbent carriers like AT&T. The Commission rejected this request, relied on the general provisions of Section 251(a), and ordered the carriers to establish interconnection points on both AT&T’s and Intrado’s networks. The district court and Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that the Commission exceeded its arbitral authority by applying Section 251(a) because Intrado had petitioned for interconnection only under Section 251(c). The Commission properly interpreted an incumbent carrier’s interconnection duties under the Act. View "OH Bell Tel. Co. v. Pub. Utils Comm'n of OH" on Justia Law