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

This case involves alleged violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA). Plaintiff Cottonwood Environmental Law Center (Cottonwood) filed suit against Defendants Big Sky County Water & Sewer District No. 363 (the District) and Boyne USA, Inc. (Boyne) for their alleged discharge of treated wastewater into the West Fork of the Gallatin River (the West Fork) without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. The district court ruled that Cottonwood could not advance a direct-discharge theory of CWA liability against the District at trial. The district court also dismissed Cottonwood’s claim against Boyne for lack of proper notice.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment. Affirming in part, the panel held that the district court properly ruled, in orders denying summary judgment, that Cottonwood could not advance a direct-discharge theory of liability against the District at trial. The panel held that it had jurisdiction to review the district court’s orders denying summary judgment to Cottonwood because, in those orders, the district court rejected Cottonwood’s direct-discharge theory as a matter of law. The panel affirmed the district court’s holding that the District could not be liable on a direct-discharge theory because an underdrain pipe below but not connected to the District’s holding ponds did not transfer pollutants between meaningfully distinct water bodies and thus was not a “point source” of pollution. Reversing the district court’s dismissal of Cottonwood’s Clean Water Act the panel held that Cottonwood’s letter to Boyne provided sufficient notice of Cottonwood’s indirect-discharge theory of liability. View "COTTONWOOD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER, ET AL V. RON EDWARDS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Officers Timothy Wright and Brett Willey responded to a domestic violence call where they shot and killed Robert Anderson. Anderson’s estate and family sued Wright, Willey, and the County of Lyon under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and Nevada law. Defendants moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted qualified immunity to the officers on the Section 1983 claims.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment excessive force claim because Plaintiffs’ rights were not clearly established. First, it was not obvious that defendants were constitutionally precluded from firing given that they were responding to an active domestic violence situation, lacked the benefit of having time to fully assess the circumstances, and needed to make split-second decisions as they were being charged. Second, Plaintiffs failed to show controlling authorities (or a consensus of persuasive ones) that would have put every reasonable officer on notice that defendants’ conduct violated the Fourth Amendment. Distinguishing this case from other cases, the panel noted that Anderson was in a narrow hall and rapidly approaching the officers, with no barrier between them. He could have accessed the officers’ weapons at any time or otherwise harmed them. Further, if the officers took the option to retreat to the house’s entryway, they would have left Jennifer Anderson—for whom they had just called an ambulance—alone with her husband or risked injury themselves if Anderson obtained a weapon from somewhere in his home. View "FREDRICK WAID, ET AL V. COUNTY OF LYON, ET AL" on Justia Law

For several years, Defendant, Shannon Poe, engaged in instream suction dredge mining in Idaho’s South Fork Clearwater River (the South Fork) without a National Pollutant Discharge Eliminating System (NPDES) permit. Plaintiff Idaho Conservation League (ICL) sued Poe, arguing that he violated the CWA each time he operated a suction dredge on the South Fork without an NPDES permit. Poe countered that (1) his suction dredge mining did not add pollutants to the South Fork and therefore did not require an NPDES permit, and (2) even if his suction dredge mining did add pollutants, those pollutants are “dredged” or “fill” material regulated exclusively pursuant to Section 404, not Section 402, of the CWA. The district court granted summary judgment to ICL. Poe appealed the judgment as to liability.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that to establish a violation of the Clean Water Act’s NPDES requirements, also referred to as Section 402 permitting, a plaintiff must prove that the defendant (1) discharged, i.e., added (2) a pollutant (3) to navigable waters (4) from (5) a point source. As to the first element, the panel held that Poe’s suction dredge mining “added” a pollutant to the South Fork. The panel followed Rybachek v. EPA, 904 F.2d 1276 (9th Cir. 1990), which upheld Environmental Protection Agency regulations interpreting the Clean Water Act. The panel further held that the processed material discharged from Poe’s suction dredge mining was a pollutant, not dredged or fill material, and therefore required an NPDES permit under Section 402 of the Clean Water Act rather than a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers under Section 404. View "IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE V. SHANNON POE" on Justia Law

Plaintiff first applied for disability insurance benefits on September 3, 2019, alleging a disability onset date of December 1, 2017. His date last insured for the purpose of benefits eligibility was June 30, 2018. The Social Security Administration (“SSA”) denied his application initially and on reconsideration, and he requested an administrative hearing. After the December 14, 2020, hearing, the ALJ determined that Plaintiff was not disabled. The Social Security Appeals Council denied Plaintiff’s request for review. Plaintiff then sought review in the district court, and the district court granted the Commissioner’s motion for summary judgment. This appeal followed.   The Ninth Circuit reversed. The panel explained that at step two of the sequential analysis, claimants need only make a de minimis showing for the ALJ’s analysis to proceed past this step and that properly denying a claim at step two requires an unambiguous record showing only minimal limitations. The seven-month period for which Plaintiff seeks disability benefits falls within a two-and-a-half-year gap in his medical treatment records. The panel held that Plaintiff made the requisite showing to meet step two’s low bar, where he submitted evidence that he suffered from multiple chronic medical conditions that both preceded and succeeded the gap in his treatment. The panel concluded that this cumulative evidence was enough to establish that Plaintiff’s claim was nonfrivolous and to require the ALJ to proceed to step three. Therefore, the ALJ’s denial of Plaintiff’s claim at step two was premature. View "BRIAN GLANDEN V. KILOLO KIJAKAZI" on Justia Law

Complainant, a pro se litigant, has filed a complaint of judicial misconduct against a district judge. Review of this complaint is governed by the Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings (“Judicial-Conduct Rules”), the federal statutes addressing judicial conduct and disability, and relevant prior decisions of the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council.   The Ninth Circuit dismissed the complaint. The court held that complainant provided no objectively verifiable evidence of misconduct in this matter. The court held that a review of the record reveals that the disciplinary proceedings were conducted pursuant to the local rules of the district court, and the district judge explained that the district court did not have appellate jurisdiction over the State Bar’s decisions. View "IN RE COMPLAINT OF JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT" on Justia Law

Amyris is a publicly traded biotechnology company that operates out of California. John Doerr is a member of the Amyris board of directors. Doerr and his wife, Ann Doerr, are also trustees of Vallejo Ventures Trust (Vallejo), which is a member of Foris Ventures, LLC (Foris). Doerr indirectly owns all membership interests in Foris. Foris and Amyris entered into several transactions involving Amyris stock, warrants, and debt between April 2019 and January 2020. The Amyris board of directors approved each of those transactions. The following year, Andrew Roth, an Amyris shareholder, filed a derivative lawsuit on behalf of Amyris against the Doerrs, Foris, and Vallejo, alleging that those transactions violated Section 16(b) and seeking disgorgement of profits. Defendants moved to dismiss. The district court denied the motion. The district court subsequently granted a certificate of interlocutory appealability on the sole issue of whether Rule 16b-3 requires a board of directors to explicitly approve transactions for the purpose of exempting them under the Rule.   The NInth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s order denying defendants’ motion to dismiss. The panel held that the district court erred by imposing a purpose-specific approval requirement. However, the district court did not err in finding that the Amyris board was aware that defendant John Doerr had an indirect pecuniary interest in the challenged transactions when it approved them. The panel left it for the district court on remand to address whether defendant Foris Ventures, LLC, a beneficial owner of Amyris, was a director by deputation and thus eligible for the Rule 16b-3(d)(1) exemption. View "ANDREW ROTH V. FORIS VENTURES, LLC, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendant participated in a drug distribution operation in Hawaii and charged with possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and heroin. On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court should not have applied the leader-or-organizer enhancement under Section 3B1.1(c) of the Sentencing Guidelines because no evidence suggests that he “exercised control over others” in the organization.The Ninth Circuit affirmed, finding that the level of control required to be an organizer is only “the ability and influence necessary to coordinate the activities of others to achieve the desired result.” United States v. Doe, 778 F.3d 814, 824 (9th Cir. 2015). View "USA V. DANIEL VINGE" on Justia Law

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) identified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans. That conclusion is not shared by a consensus of the scientific community. As a result, Certain businesses whose products expose consumers to glyphosate were required to provide a Prop 65 warning that glyphosate is a carcinogen. Plaintiffs, a coalition of agricultural producers and business entities, asserted that Prop 65’s warning violated their First Amendment rights to be free from compelled speech. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Plaintiffs.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel concluded that the government’s proposed Prop 65 warnings as applied to glyphosate were not purely factual and uncontroversial and thus were subject to intermediate scrutiny. The proposed warning that “glyphosate is known to cause cancer” was not purely factual because the word “known” carries a complex legal meaning that consumers would not glean from the warning without context, and thus the word was misleading. As to the most recent warning proposed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), the panel held that the warning still conveys the overall message that glyphosate is unsafe, which is, at best, disputed. The panel held that because none of the proposed glyphosate Prop 65 warnings were narrowly drawn to advancing California’s interest in protecting consumers from carcinogens, and California had less burdensome ways to convey its message than to compel Plaintiffs to convey it for them, the Prop 65 warning requirement as applied to glyphosate was unconstitutional. View "NAWG, ET AL V. ROB BONTA, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs Coronavirus Reporter, CALID, Inc., Primary Productions LLC, and Dr. Jeffrey D. Isaacs sued Defendant Apple for its allegedly monopolist operation of the Apple App Store. The district court dismissed the claims with prejudice for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) and denied the remaining motions as moot. Plaintiffs-Appellants appealed.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that Plaintiffs failed to state an antitrust claim under Section 1 or Section 2 of the Sherman Act, arising from Apple’s rejection of their apps for distribution through the App Store, because they did not sufficiently allege a plausible relevant market, either for their rejected apps as compared to other apps, or for apps in general. The panel held that Plaintiffs failed to state a claim for breach of contract under California law because they did not identify relevant specific provisions of Apple’s Developer Agreement or Developer Program License Agreement or show that Apple breached a specific provision. View "CORONAVIRUS REPORTER, ET AL V. APPLE, INC., ET AL" on Justia Law

Choreographer Kyle Hanagami claimed that Epic Games, Inc., the creator of the videogame Fortnite, infringed the copyright of a choreographic work when the company created and sold a virtual animation, known as an “emote,” depicting portions of the registered choreography. The district court dismissed his action under the Copyright Act and remanded for further proceedings on claims of direct and contributory infringement of a choreographic work.   The Ninth Circuit reversed. The panel held that, under the “extrinsic test” for assessing substantial similarity, Hanagami plausibly alleged that his choreography and Epic’s emote shared substantial similarities. The panel held that, like other forms of copyrightable material such as music, choreography is composed of various elements that are unprotectable when viewed in isolation. What is protectable is the choreographer’s selection and arrangement of the work’s otherwise unprotectable elements. The panel held that “poses” are not the only relevant element, and a choreographic work also may include body position, body shape, body actions, transitions, use of space, timing, pauses, energy, canon, motif, contrast, and repetition. The panel concluded that Hanagami plausibly alleged that the creative choices he made in selecting and arranging elements of the choreography—the movement of the limbs, movement of the hands and fingers, head and shoulder movement, and tempo—were substantially similar to the choices Epic made in creating the emote. The panel held that the district court also erred in dismissing Hanagami’s claim on the ground that the allegedly copied choreography was “short” and a “small component” of Hanagami’s overall work. View "KYLE HANAGAMI V. EPIC GAMES, INC., ET AL" on Justia Law