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

Defendant appealed the district court’s denial of leave to amend his motion to vacate his convictions under 28 U.S.C. Section 2255. He argued that neither witness tampering by attempting to kill a witness nor witness tampering by use of force is a crime of violence as defined by 18 U.S.C. Section 924(c)(3)(A).   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Applying the categorical approach, the panel held that Section 1512, as a whole, is not categorically a crime of violence because it criminalizes conduct that does not necessarily require physical force. The panel then applied the modified categorical approach because Section 1512 contains several, alternative elements of functionally separate crimes that carry different penalties, and the statute therefore is “divisible.” The panel held that Dorsey was convicted under a divisible part of the witness-tampering statute that qualifies as a crime of violence under Section 924(c)’s elements clause: either attempted killing in violation of Section 1512(a)(1) or use of force in violation of 1512(a)(2). The panel also held that the use of physical force in violation of Section 1512(a)(2) is a categorical match with Section 924(c)’s elements clause because it requires proving that the defendant intentionally used physical force against another. View "DEVAUGHN DORSEY V. USA" on Justia Law

Appellant, former Chief Financial Officer of Convergence Ethanol, Inc., and former employee of Convergence and its subsidiary California MEMS USA, Inc., challenged his liability for the unpaid payroll taxes of California MEMS. The bankruptcy court denied both sides’ motions for summary judgment on the issue of whether Appellant was a “responsible person” regarding the payroll taxes under 26 U.S.C. Section 6672. Rather than proceed to trial, Appellant agreed to a stipulated judgment allowing the Internal Revenue Service’s claim, but he made clear on the record that his consent was subject to his stated intention to appeal that judgment on the grounds that his motion for summary judgment should have been granted.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order affirming the bankruptcy court’s judgment in favor of the United States. The panel concluded that the bankruptcy court’s judgment was sufficiently “final” under Section 158(d)(1) because it fully disposed of the claims raised by Appellant’s adversary complaint. The panel held that jurisdiction was not precluded by the holding of Ortiz v. Jordan, 562 U.S. 180 (2011), and Dupree v. Younger, 598 U.S. 729 (2023), that, on appeal from a final judgment after a trial on the merits, an appellate court may not review a pretrial order denying summary judgment if that denial was based on the presence of a disputed issue of material fact. The panel held that the bankruptcy court correctly concluded that Appellant failed to show that, viewing the summary judgment record in the light most favorable to the IRS, a rational trier of fact could not reasonably find in the IRS’s favor. View "IN RE: RICHARD YORK, ET AL V. USA" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying Petitioner’s motion to reopen. The Board denied reopening based, in part, on Petitioner’s failure to include a new application for relief, as required by 8 C.F.R. Section 1003.2(c)(1).   The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review and remanded to the BIA for further proceedings. The panel explained that the changed circumstances Petitioner presented were entirely outside of his control and thus were properly understood as changed country conditions, not changed personal circumstances. The panel also held that these changed circumstances were material to Petitioner’s claims for relief because they rebutted the agency’s previous determination that Petitioner had failed to establish the requisite nexus between the harm he feared and his membership in a familial particular social group.   The panel explained that the Board’s previous nexus rationale was undermined by the fact that the threats, harassment, and violence persisted despite the lack of any retribution by Petitioner family against his uncle’s family for at least fourteen years after Petitioner’s father’s murder, and where multiple additional family members were targeted, including elderly and young family members who would be unlikely to carry out any retribution. Thus, the panel held that the Board abused its discretion in concluding that Petitioner’s evidence was not qualitatively different than the evidence at his original hearing. The panel also declined to uphold the Board’s determination that Petitioner failed to establish prima facie eligibility for relief. View "FRANCISCO REYES-CORADO V. MERRICK GARLAND" on Justia Law

USA Sales, a California tobacco distributor, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016. As a Chapter 11 debtor in a UST district, federal law required USA Sales to pay quarterly fees to the UST. 28 U.S.C. Section 1930(a)(6). USA Sales sued for a refund of all excess fees paid, arguing that the 2017 Act violated the Bankruptcy Clause and also that the 2017 Act did not apply because USA Sales had filed for bankruptcy before the Act took effect. The district court agreed with both arguments and ordered a refund.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s refund order, the panel held that USA Sales, Inc., was entitled to a refund for the unconstitutional statutory fees it paid as a bankruptcy debtor under the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2017. The panel held that the 2017 Act applied to USA Sales’s bankruptcy proceeding, even though its case was already pending when the Act took effect. Turning to the remedy, and agreeing with other circuits, the panel held that U.S. Trustee district debtors are entitled to a refund of excess fees paid during the nonuniform period of statutory rates. Accordingly, USA Sales was entitled to a refund of the unconstitutional fees it paid in excess of those it would have paid in a Bankruptcy Administrator district from January 2018, when the 2017 Act fee provision took effect, to November 2019, when the bankruptcy court approved a structured dismissal of USA Sales’s case. View "USA SALES, INC. V. OFFICE OF THE U.S. TRUSTEE" on Justia Law

Defendant, a Syrian national, appealed his conviction after a jury trial for participating in a conspiracy that targeted U.S. military personnel and property in Iraq. The jury delivered a mixed verdict on the six-count indictment. It convicted Defendant for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (Count One), conspiring to damage U.S. government property (Count Two), and conspiring to possess a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence and aiding and abetting the same (Counts Three and Four). The jury acquitted Defendant of conspiring to murder Americans (Count Five) and providing material support to terrorists (Count Six).   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the conviction. Reversing in part, the panel agreed with the parties that Defendant’s convictions on Counts Three and Four, for conspiring to possess a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence and aiding and abetting the same, could not stand after the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019). On those counts, the panel remanded with direction to the district court to vacate the convictions. The panel affirmed Defendant’s convictions on Counts One and Two for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiring to damage U.S. Government property by means of an explosive. As to Count Two, the panel held that 18 U.S.C. Section 844(f) and (n) applied to Defendant’s extraterritorial conduct. The panel held that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to criminal statutes as well as to civil statutes. View "USA V. AHMED ALAHMEDALABDALOKLAH" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed from the district court’s partial judgment granting a motion to dismiss in favor of Defendant, Reward Zone USA, LLC (Reward Zone), in a putative class action lawsuit brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In Plaintiff’s second cause of action, which is the subject of this opinion, Plaintiff alleged a violation of the TCPA because she received at least three mass marketing text messages from Reward Zone which utilized “prerecorded voices.”   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal. The court held the text messages did not use prerecorded voices under the Act because they did not include audible components. The panel relied on the statutory context of the Act and the ordinary meaning of voice, which showed that Congress used the word voice to include only an audible sound, and not a more symbolic definition such as an instrument or medium of expression. The panel addressed Plaintiff’s appeal of the district court’s dismissal of another cause of action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in a simultaneously-filed memorandum disposition. View "LUCINE TRIM V. REWARD ZONE USA LLC, ET AL" on Justia Law

Relator John Hendrix and five public-agency exemplar plaintiffs claim that J-M Manufacturing Co. (“J-M”) violated the federal and various state False Claims Acts (“FCAs”) by representing that its polyvinyl chloride (“PVC”) pipes were compliant with industry standards. In Phase One of a bifurcated trial, a jury found that J-M knowingly made false claims that were material to the public agencies’ decisions to purchase J-M pipe. After the jury was unable to reach a verdict in Phase Two, the district court granted J-M judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”) on actual damages and awarded one statutory penalty for each project involved in plaintiffs’ claims.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that sufficient evidence of falsity, materiality, and scienter supported the Phase One verdict. A reasonable jury could conclude that plaintiffs received some pipe not meeting industry standards. Further, the jury reasonably found that plaintiffs would not have purchased or installed J-M pipe had they been told the truth that J-M knew it had stopped producing pipes through processes materially similar to those used at the time of compliance testing and also knew that a significant amount of the pipe later produced did not meet industry standards. Plaintiffs’ failure to prove that any individual stick of pipe that they received was non-compliant did not mean that they failed to establish scienter. The panel held that the district court properly awarded JM judgment as a matter of law on actual damages under the federal False Claims Act. Plaintiffs did not establish actual damages by showing that they would not have bought the pipe had they known the truth. View "JOHN HENDRIX, ET AL V. J-M MANUFACTURING CO., INC., ET AL" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Mexico, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denial of his motion to reopen. Petitioner sought to reopen his immigration proceedings to apply for cancellation of removal. The BIA found that he failed to establish prima facie eligibility for cancellation of removal because he did not submit new evidence that would likely change the result in his case. The parties disagree on a threshold issue—whether the BIA applied the correct burden of proof.   The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review. The panel clarified any possible confusion in this circuit’s case law regarding a petitioner’s burden of proof in a motion to reopen. Prima facie eligibility for relief requires only a threshold showing of eligibility—a “reasonable likelihood” that the petitioner would prevail on the merits if the motion to reopen was granted. To be eligible for a discretionary grant of relief, a petitioner must present new evidence that “would likely change” the result in the case. Because the BIA erred by applying the wrong legal standard, the panel remanded to the BIA to adjudicate the motion to reopen under the proper standard. View "MARIO FONSECA-FONSECA V. MERRICK GARLAND" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit in federal district court against the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, alleging fraud under California law. Plaintiff is a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (The Corporation is the legal entity behind the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We refer to both the Corporation and the Church as “the Church.”) Plaintiff alleged that, from 1993 until 2015, he contributed substantial amounts of cash and corporate shares to the Church as tithes. He alleged that during at least some of that time, he relied on false and misleading statements by the Church about its use of tithing money. The district court granted the Church’s motion for summary judgment. It held that no reasonable juror could find that the Church had fraudulently misrepresented how tithing funds were used.   The Ninth Circuit reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded. The court held that there is evidence in the record from which a reasonable juror could conclude that the Church knowingly misrepresented that no tithing funds were being or would be used to finance the development of the shopping mall and that Huntsman reasonably relied on the Church’s misrepresentations. The panel rejected the Church’s argument that Plaintiff’s fraud claims are barred by the First Amendment. The panel held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine did not apply because the questions regarding the fraud claims were secular and did not implicate religious beliefs about tithing itself. Nor was the panel required to examine Plaintiff’s religious beliefs about the appropriate use of church money. View "JAMES HUNTSMAN V. CORPORATION OF THE PRESIDENT, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendants were convicted of various offenses stemming from an eight-person conspiracy to fraudulently obtain and launder millions of dollars in federal Covid-relief funds that were intended to assist businesses impacted by the pandemic. On appeal, Defendants challenged their restitution obligations on both legal and factual grounds.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendants’ restitution obligations, except that the court vacated and remanded for one Defendant’s judgment and commitment order to be amended to specify that, as all parties agree, his restitution obligation runs jointly and severally with those of his trial co-defendants. The panel held that, under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), the district court properly imposed restitution in the full amount of the loss caused by the conspiracy instead of just the loss caused by the fraudulent loan applications Defendants personally played a role in submitting. In separately filed memorandum dispositions, the panel affirmed Defendants’ jury convictions, affirmed the district court’s application of the Sentencing Guidelines to one defendant, and vacated and remanded for that defendant’s resentencing. View "USA V. ARTUR AYVAZYAN" on Justia Law