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

Defendant appealed the district court's grant of the government's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the government provided clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence that left no issue in doubt that defendant, a naturalized citizen, obtained his citizenship illegally. The court held that the district court improperly weighed the evidence in concluding that there were no genuine issues of material fact as to whether the government could strip defendant of his citizenship. The existence and nature of the cooperation agreement were the subjects of pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, requests, and further evidence should have been allowed. Because of the importance of citizenship, which in turn conferred significant rights and responsibilities, the government bore a heavy burden when it sought to take away an individual's citizenship. The court also vacated the district court's denial of defendant's motion to dismiss for improper venue, and remanded with instructions that the district court conduct the proper inquiry consistent with the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(33).

This case involved an Oregon statute which adopted a special statute of limitations for abuse victims. Under the statute, an action must be commenced before the person reached age 40 or within five years of discovery of the causal connection between the abuse and the injury. At issue was the effect of this statute on plaintiff's federal civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. 1983 that he was beaten by teachers at his elementary school from 1986-1988. The court concluded that Oregon's general statute of limitations, rather than the specialized abuse statute, governed plaintiff's claims and that federal, not state law, governed accrual of his claims.

Plaintiff commenced this action against Burger King, raising claims under Oregon law for product liability, negligence, and vicarious liability after plaintiff discovered that a Burger King employee had spit into his Whopper. Plaintiff subsequently appealed from a final judgment on the pleadings dismissing his diversity action against defendants. This order certified to the Supreme Court of Washington the dispositive and unsettled question of Washington state law at issue in this appeal, namely, whether the Washington Products Liability Act (WPLA), Wash. Rev. Code 7.72.010, permitted relief for emotional distress damages, in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff purchaser, caused by being served and touching, but not consuming a contaminated food product.

Defendant appealed the sentence imposed after he pled guilty to being a deported alien found in the United States. Defendant contended that the government breached the plea agreement, notwithstanding the government's later admission that it made a mistake in its initial sentencing recommendation and its substitution of the recommendation to which defendant and the government had agreed in the plea agreement. The court vacated and remanded for resentencing, holding that the government breached the plea agreement and the sentence must be vacated to give defendant the benefit of his bargain, specific performance on the plea agreement.

Vegas Diamond and Johnson Investments appealed from the district court's order granting the Ex Parte Motion to Dissolve Temporary Restraining Order filed by the FDIC as receiver for La Jolla Bank. The district court determined that 12 U.S.C. 1821(j), the anti-injunction provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 precluded a court from enjoining the FDIC from conducting a trustee's sale of the real properties. The court held that the appeal was moot because the real properties were sold during the pendency of the appeal.

Defendant was convicted of six counts of mailing threatening communications where he addressed four envelopes to media outlets and two to music-related websites. In the envelopes, defendant allegedly threatened to shoot people outside of the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, site of Super Bowl XLII. Defendant eventually had a change of heart and turned himself into law enforcement. At issue was the meaning of "person" and of "addressed to" in 18 U.S.C. 876(c), which prohibited the mailing of communications "addressed to any other person and containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of the addressee or of another." The court held that section 876(c) referred exclusively to an individual, or to a natural, person. Therefore, the statute required that the threatening communications be addressed to a natural person. The court also held that in order to identify the addressee, a court was not limited to the directions for delivery on the outside of the envelope or on the packaging, but also could look to the content of the communications. Because defendant's communications were not addressed to natural persons, the court reversed.

Defendant appealed from the district court's denial of his motion to suppress 700 Oxycodone pills found in his underwear after a warrantless search by officers in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. At issue was the scope of a voluntary consent to search at an airport. The court concluded that defendant voluntarily consented to a search of his person, and that the arresting officer's full-body pat-down including the groin area outside defendant's pants, was reasonable and did not exceed his consent. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of the motion to suppress.