Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Defendant was sentenced to a 17-year prison term pursuant to a plea agreement. Two years later, defendant filed a motion to reduce his sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), which the district court granted. While this case was pending, the United States Supreme Court decided Freeman v. United States. The court concluded that Justice Sotomayor's concurrence in Freeman controlled this case because defendant's plea agreement was a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement. Applying her opinion, the court held that the district court lacked jurisdiction to reduce defendant's sentence because the imposed 17-year sentence was "based on" the parties' plea agreement and not on "a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission."

Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that the district court incorrectly interpreted an earlier ruling by the California Supreme Court on one of his state habeas petitions. At issue was whether, when the the California Supreme Court denied a habeas petition with citations to Ex parte Swain, the denial was necessarily based on untimeliness. The court agreed with petitioner that the answer was no and that the district court did not correctly apply California law in determining that the California Supreme Court's denial of his petition with citation to Swain and People v. Duvall meant that petitioner's petition before the California Supreme Court was untimely. Because the federal statute of limitations was tolled during the pendency of timely filed state petitions, petitioner's federal petition was therefore timely, and the court reversed and remanded to the district court to consider the petition on the merits.

This case involved intellectual property related to the Superman character created by writer Jerome Siegel and illustrator Joe Schuster. In 2010, D.C. Comics filed a lawsuit against Marc Toberoff, owner of a joint venture with the heirs of Shuster and Siegel (Heirs), the Heirs, and three entities in which Toberoff owned a controlling interest (collectively, petitioners), claiming that Toberoff interfered with its contractual relationships with the Heirs. Toberoff had hired lawyer David Michaels to work for one of his companies. Michaels remained in Toberoff's employ for only about three months before absconding with copies of several documents from the Siegel and Shuster files. These documents formed the basis of this lawsuit. About a month after the suit was filed, Toberoff asked the U.S. Attorney to investigate Michaels and, in response, the U.S. Attorney's Office issued a grand jury subpoena for the documents at issue as well as a letter stating that if Toberoff voluntarily complied with the subpoena, the Government would "not provide the...documents...to non-governmental third parties except as may be required by law or court order." At issue was whether a party waived attorney-client privilege forever by voluntarily disclosing privileged documents to the federal government. Given that Congress has declined broadly to adopt a new privilege to protect disclosures of attorney-client privileged materials to the government, the court would not do so here. The court also rejected petitioner's assertion that even if the court rejected selective waiver as a general matter, the court should enforce a purported confidentiality agreement based upon the letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office where petitioners have provided no convincing reason that post hoc contracts regarding how information could be revealed encouraged frank conversation at the time of the advice. The court further rejected petitioners' remaining claims and denied the petition for mandamus.

This case stemmed from a class action that began more than a quarter century ago where Idaho state prisoners at the Idaho State Correctional Institution (ISCI) prevailed on their claims that, inter alia, because of deliberate indifference, without any connection to a legitimate penological purpose, the inmates were subjected to needless pain and suffering on account of inadequate medical and psychiatric care. The district court issued an injunction to remedy the constitutional violations and the injunctions remained in effect in 2008 and 2009 when the facts giving rise to this case occurred. The Portland law firm of Stoel Rives, LLP was appointed to represent the prisoner class. At issue on appeal was whether Stoel Rives was entitled to an attorneys' fee award in the class action under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. 1997e. The court held that, in this case, the judge had discretion to consider whether Stoel Rives's work on a motion to compel conformity to the injunction was "directly and reasonably incurred in enforcing the relief." The district court acted within the bounds of its discretion in awarding fees in a reasonable amount for bringing about that conformity with the injunction. Here, Stoel Rives's work was what one would expect of a lawyer working for a client that could afford its efforts but that was not indifferent to the cost. The firm showed no evidence of milking the case, and the fees were "directly and reasonably incurred." Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Proposition 200, Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-166(F)(the registration provision), required prospective voters in Arizona to provide proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote and required registered voters to show identification to cast a ballot at the polls, Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-579(A)(the poll place provision). At issue on appeal was whether Proposition 200 violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 42 U.S.C. 1973, was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment or Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution, or was void as inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), 42 U.S.C. 1973gg et seq. The court upheld Proposition 200's requirement that voters show identification at the polling place, but concluded that the NVRA superseded Proposition 200's registration provision as that provision was applied to applicants using the National Mail Voter Registration Form to register to vote in federal elections.

Defendant pled guilty to Abusive Sexual Contact where the victim was his wife's minor niece who had been staying with the couple. On appeal, defendant appealed his sentence of 151 months' imprisonment and the imposition of a two-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2A3.1(b)(3), claiming that he was not entrusted with custody, care, or supervisory control of the victim. The court held that the district court's application of the enhancement was fully supported and that court did not err in applying the enhancement in this case.

Plaintiffs brought several state causes of action in Arizona state court against Medtronic for injuries sustained by Richard Stengel from his use of a pain pump manufactured by Medtronic. Medtronic timely removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona and the district court dismissed plaintiffs' claims as preempted by federal law. The court held that even if some of plaintiffs' claims could be interpreted to escape express preemption, they could not be interpreted to escape implied preemption. Therefore, the district court correctly held that plaintiffs' proposed amendment was futile and thus did not abuse its discretion in denying leave to amend.

Defendants, two priests, an eighty-year-old nun, and two grandmothers, were longtime peace and disarmament activists who cut their way through two fences into a secure area of a naval base. Defendants were subsequently convicted of charges related to their acts of symbolic protest, on the naval base, against nuclear weapons. On appeal, defendants challenged the district court's refusal to dismiss the indictment. The court affirmed the convictions and held that the Hague Convention neither conflicted with nor superseded 18 U.S.C. 1361, 1363, and 1382 and the district court properly refused to dismiss the indictment. The court also held that the jury instructions accurately presented the law to the jury and that a jury could easily have found beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants cut the fences intending to destroy or injure them under 18 U.S.C. 1363. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant appealed her sentence of 37 months in custody, three years of supervised release, and restitution, imposed following her guilty plea to assault resulting in substantial bodily injury. The victim was defendant's daughter. The court held that the district court properly applied the four-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2A2.2(b)(2)(B) because the belt used by the victim's father to beat her with was employed as a "dangerous weapon." The court held that there was no abuse of discretion in adding the two-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. 3B1.4 because it was reasonably foreseeable to defendant that her husband would use K.H., a minor, to avoid being held responsible for the victim's murder. Because both enhancements were reasonable, the court rejected defendant's claim that her sentence was unreasonable under 18 U.S.C. 3553(a). However, defendant's sentence for the misprision of felony offense exceeded the statutory minimum in 18 U.S.C. 4 and therefore, the court vacated the sentence in part. Nor did either party alert the court to another error that could have occurred in calculating the combined offense level under U.S.S.G. 3D1.4.

This case arose when the FCC found that Minority had "willfully and repeatedly" violated 47 U.S.C. 399b when it broadcasted paid promotional messages on its radio station from for-profit corporations. The statute was a a content-based ban on speech: public broadcasters could transmit many types of speech, but, unlike most other stations, they could not transmit three classes of advertising messages. Minority contended that section 399b was an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech because it banned all paid public issue and political speech while permitting promotional messages by non-profits. The court applied intermediate scrutiny and upheld the ban on the transmission of advertisements for goods and services by for-profit entities, but the court struck down as unconstitutional the ban on public issue and political advertisements.