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

The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs in an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) action. The panel held that the plan comprised of two documents: the Trust Agreement and the Summary Plan Description (SPD). The Supreme Court's decision in CIGNA Corp. v. Amara, 563 U.S. 421 (2011), was not to the contrary. An SPD may constitute a formal plan document, consistent with Amara, so long as the SPD neither adds to nor contradicts the terms of existing plan documents. In this case, the SPD was a part of the plan itself, and there was no conflict between the SPD and the Trust Agreement. Therefore, Amara did not prohibit this type of arrangement, and the district court erred in concluding that the SPD was not part of the plan. The panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Mull v. Motion Picture Industry Health Plan" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the denial of disability insurance benefits, holding that the ALJ failed to reconcile an apparent conflict between the testimony of the vocational expert and the Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). Because the panel could not determine from the record, the DOT, or the panel's common experience whether the jobs in question require both hands, the panel could not say that the ALJ's failure to inquire was harmless. Accordingly, the panel remanded the case to permit the ALJ to follow up with the vocational expert. View "Lamear v. Berryhill" on Justia Law

In this case, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its previous opinion, denied as moot a petition for rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc; and filed a superseding opinion.Petitioner appealed the district court's denial of all but one of the claims raised in his petition for writ of habeas corpus and the state cross-appealed the district court's grant of relief on petitioner's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase of his capital murder trial. The panel dismissed as unripe the claim the district court certified for appeal, and denied petitioner's motion to expand the certificate of appealability to include uncertified claims. The panel reversed the district court's grant of relief on the ineffective assistance of counsel claim because, under 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), the California Supreme Court did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent in concluding that petitioner was not prejudiced by any deficient performance by his counsel. View "Andrews v. Davis" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's convictions for strangling and assaulting his wife, holding that the trial court did not err by compelling defendant's wife from testifying against him. The panel rejected defendant's argument that the Supreme Court in Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40 (1980), dramatically altered the spousal privilege landscape. Rather, Wyatt v. United States's, 362 U.S. 525 (1960), "spouse as victim" holding dictates that the district court correctly compelled the testimony of defendant's wife. View "United States v. Seminole" on Justia Law

The County of Los Angeles may not enforce a lien on the personal property of a Chapter 11 debtor in possession when the County has failed to perfect the lien as against a bona fide purchaser. In this case, the Ninth Circuit rejected Mainline's argument that this appeal was mooted by the disbursal of Mainline's bankruptcy estate and dismissal of the Chapter 11 case; 11 U.S.C. 545(2) allows a Chapter 11 debtor in possession to set aside liens against its estate; under section 545(2), Mainline may avoid the County's liens; and Cty. of Humboldt v. Grover (In re Cummins), 656 F.2d 1262 (9th Cir. 1981), remained good law. View "Los Angeles County Treasurer & Tax Collector v. Mainline Equipment, Inc." on Justia Law

The Republic of the Marshall Islands filed suit seeking a declaration that the United States breached its obligations pursuant to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and ordering the United States to engage in good-faith negotiations. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the suit, holding that the claims were nonjusticiable. Article VI of the Treaty was not directly enforceable in federal court, the Marshall Islands' asserted injuries were not redressable, and the claims raised nonjusticiable political questions. The panel noted that, at bottom, the suit was doomed because diplomatic negotiations among parties to the Treaty fell quintessentially within the realm of the executive, not the judiciary. View "Republic of the Marshall Islands v. United States" on Justia Law

After plaintiff was raped by a co-worker at the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC), she filed suit against the IDOC and others. The Ninth Circuit vacated summary judgment in favor of defendants on plaintiff's Title VII hostile work environment claim. The panel held that, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, a reasonable trier of fact could find that the IDOC's actions were sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment. The panel noted that if the jury finds that the IDOC supervisors created a hostile work environment, the IDOC would also be liable. View "Fuller v. Idaho Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed this would-be class action on behalf of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired the common stock of QSI, alleging that during the Class Period, QSI and its officers made false or misleading statements about the current and past state of QSI's sales "pipeline," and used those statements to support public guidance to investors about QSI's projected growth and revenue. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of the complaint and remanded for further proceedings. The panel held that some of defendants' statements were mixed statements, containing non-forward-looking statements as well as forward-looking statements of projected revenue and earnings; a defendant may not transform non-forward-looking statements into forward-looking statements that are protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA), 15 U.S.C. 78u-5, by combining non-forward-looking statements about past or current facts with forward-looking statements about projected revenues and earnings; many of defendants' non-forward-looking statements were materially false or misleading; and some of defendants' forward-looking statements were materially false or misleading, were not accompanied by appropriate cautionary statements, and were made with actual knowledge of their false or misleading nature. View "City of Miami Fire Fighters' and Police Officers' Retirement Trust v. Quality Systems, Inc." on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit took this case en banc to revisit the divisibility of California drug statutes. Defendant was convicted of illegal reentry following deportation in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1326. The en banc court held that California Health and Safety Code 11352 is divisible with regard to both its controlled substance requirement and its actus reus requirement. Therefore, the district court properly applied the modified categorical approach and correctly found that defendant pled guilty to selling cocaine, which qualified as a drug trafficking offense under the federal sentencing guidelines and subjected defendant to a 16-level enhancement to his base offense level. Furthermore, the 77-month sentence, based on a properly calculated guidelines range of 70 to 87 months, was substantively reasonable. View "United States v. Martinez-Lopez" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit dismissed for lack of jurisdiction relators' appeal of the district court's dismissal of their qui tam suit against UOPX. The panel held that the appeal was untimely because relators' post-judgment motion, although styled as a Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) motion, was in substance a motion only to stay the entry of judgment, which did not toll the time to file a notice of appeal. View "United States ex. rel. Hoggett v. University of Phoenix" on Justia Law