Justia U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff-Appellant Neil Hall appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendant-Appellee Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company (Allstate) on his claim for underinsured motorist benefits. Hall challenged the district court’s determination that Allstate successfully asserted the affirmative defense of failure to cooperate, and that his bad faith claim also failed as a result. Hall was injured in a car accident caused by underinsured motorist Teri Johnson. Johnson only carried $25,000 in liability insurance coverage. Hall carried underinsured motorist coverage through Allstate. Allstate gave Hall permission to settle with Johnson for her $25,000 limit. Hall’s counsel submitted a request for benefits to Allstate asserting that he was entitled to more than the $25,000 he had received. An Allstate claims adjuster reviewed the medical expenses in the letter and determined that the reasonable amount of expenses was $25,011.68. Allstate sent Hall’s counsel a payment of $11.68 along with a letter that stated: “I will be in contact with you to resolve the remaining components of your client’s claim.” Counsel did not respond to any of the five attempts over three months: two voicemails and three letters. Without any prior notice to Allstate, Hall filed suit against Allstate for breach of contract, statutory unreasonable delay or denial of payment of benefits, and common law bad faith. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court, finding that because the district court found the insured's failure to cooperate resulted in a material and substantial disadvantage to the insurer, the insurer properly denied coverage on this ground, and summary judgment was proper as to the insured's bad faith claim. View "Hall v. Allstate Fire" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant Viktorya Reznik appealed the district court’s dismissal of her Title VII retaliation action against her former employer, Defendant-Appellee inContact, Inc. (inContact). From January 2018 to May 2019, Reznik worked as a Director of Project Management for inContact, a Utah-based corporation offering cloud-based services to companies using call centers. In April 2019, Reznik received internal complaints about racial slurs in the workplace from two native Filipino employees who worked in the company’s Manila, Philippines office. They claimed that an inContact manager, Scott Mendenhall, had repeatedly subjected them and other native Filipino employees to racial slurs, calling them “monkeys” and “not human.” Mendenhall worked in the same Salt Lake County facility as Reznik. Weeks after Reznik reported the harassment to company management, she was terminated as "not a good culture fit" and "not a good fit." Following Reznik’s termination and administrative exhaustion, she filed her Title VII complaint in federal district court. inContact moved to dismiss and the district court granted the motion. According to the district court, Reznik failed to state a claim because she did not show an objectively reasonable belief that she opposed conduct unlawful under Title VII. Finding Reznik's belief she was opposing conduct unlawful under Title VII was objectively reasonable, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal. View "Reznik v. inContact" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Nicholas Roberts appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendants James Winder, Rosie Rivera (solely in her official capacity as Salt Lake County Sheriff), and the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake (“UPD”) (collectively, “Defendants”) on Roberts’ 42 U.S.C. 1983 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) claims. All of his claims arose from his removal as Range Master-Firearms Instructor (“Range Master”). On March 1, 2017, at Winder’s request, Undersheriff Scott Carver and Chief Deputy Shane Hudson met with Roberts and informed him that the Range Master position was being eliminated. Hudson told Roberts he would be reassigned to patrol duties and his pay would be reduced. On March 9, Roberts, through counsel, sent a letter to Winder objecting to his removal, reassignment, and pay reduction. Winder treated Roberts’ letter as a grievance and rejected the grievance, explaining that the Range Master was subject to transfer under Merit Commission Policy 3140, Range Master was a specialist position, and Roberts’ merit rank was “sergeant.” The UPD Board later ratified Winder’s decision to remove Roberts as Range Master and reassign him to patrol duties as a sergeant. Winder later assigned Todd Griffiths, a merit rank Lieutenant four years younger than Roberts, to oversee the shooting range. Roberts did not appeal his grievance, and instead filed this complaint in the district court. In June 2017, after Roberts initiated this lawsuit, the UPD conducted two investigations of Roberts’ management of the Range. Both investigations described failures in Roberts’ performance as Range Master. The district court granted partial summary judgment to Defendants on Roberts’ declaratory judgment and due process claims, finding that Roberts did not have a property interest in his position as Range Master, and thus his reassignment did not violate due process. Alternatively, the district court held that Roberts waived his due process claims by failing to appeal Winder’s decision to the Merit Commission. After review, the Tenth Circuit found no reversible error and affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants. View "Roberts v. Winder, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff-appellant John Tompkins worked as a physician at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for thirty years. From 2012 through 2016, he served as Chief of Surgery. In 2017, he was terminated from his position as a physician based on administrative deficiencies during his tenure as Chief of Surgery. After exhausting the VA’s administrative remedies, Tompkins filed suit claiming entitlement to: (1) review under the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”); and (2) relief under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Tompkins appealed a district court order dismissing his complaint without prejudice based on his failure to identify an applicable waiver of the government’s sovereign immunity. After review, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals found no error in the district court's dismissal of Tompkins' complaint for lack of jurisdiction, and affirmed. View "Tompkins v. DOVA, et al." on Justia Law

Animal rights organization Friends of Animals served a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) seeking disclosure of form 3-177s submitted by wildlife hunters and traders seeking to import elephant and giraffe parts. FWS disclosed the forms with redactions. Most relevant here, it withheld the names of the individual submitters under FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C), which prevent disclosure of information when a privacy interest in withholding outweighs the public interest in disclosure, as well as information on one Form 3-177 under Exemption 4, which prevents the disclosure of material that is commercial and confidential. Friends of Animals challenged these redactions in the district court, which granted summary judgment in favor of FWS, upholding the redactions. The Tenth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, finding the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of FWS as to the withholdings in the Elephant Request under Exemptions 6 and 7(C) and as to the withholdings under Exemption 4. The Court affirmed summary judgment as to the withholdings in the Giraffe Request. View "Friends of Animals v. Bernhardt, et al." on Justia Law

Over 300 call-center representatives (CCRs) who worked at call centers operated by Nelnet Diversified Solutions, LLC (Nelnet) alleged Nelnet failed to pay them for time devoted to booting up their work computers and launching certain software before they clock in. The district court concluded these activities were integral and indispensable to the CCRs’ principal activities of servicing student loans by communicating and interacting with borrowers over the phone and by email and therefore constitute compensable work under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. But it nevertheless denied the CCRs’ claim, finding that the de minimis doctrine applied to excuse Nelnet’s obligation to pay the CCRs for this work. After granting summary judgment to Nelnet, the district court awarded costs to Nelnet as the prevailing party. The CCRs appealed the district court’s de minimis ruling, and separately appealed the district court’s order awarding prevailing-party costs to Nelnet. The Tenth Circuit agreed with the district court that the CCRs’ preshift activities were compensable work under the FLSA. But its application of the three-factor de minimis doctrine leads it to a different result: the Tenth Circuit concluded that although the CCRs’ individual and total aggregate claims were relatively small, Nelnet failed to establish the practical administrative difficulty of estimating the time at issue, which occured with "exceeding regularity." Therefore, in Appeal No. 19-1348, the district court’s order awarding summary judgment to Nelnet was reversed. And because the Court reversed on the merits, Nelnet was no longer the prevailing party. Accordingly, in Appeal No. 20-1217, the district court's order awarding costs to Nelnet was reversed, and CCR's costs appeal was dismissed as moot. View "Peterson v. Nelnet Diversified Solutions" on Justia Law

The issue on appeal in this case stemmed from an insurance claim filed by Bonbeck Parker, LLC and BonBeck HL, LC (collectively, BonBeck) for hail damage. The Travelers Indemnity Company of America (Travelers) acknowledged that some of the claimed damage to BonBeck’s property was caused by a covered hailstorm, but argued the remaining damage was caused by uncovered events such as wear and tear. BonBeck requested an appraisal to determine how much damage occurred, but Travelers refused this request unless BonBeck agreed the appraisers would not decide whether the hailstorm in fact caused the disputed damage. When BonBeck rejected this condition, Travelers filed suit, seeking a declaration that the appraisal procedure in BonBeck’s policy did not allow appraisers to decide the causation issue. The district court disagreed, ruling that the relevant policy language allowed appraisers to decide causation. After the appraisal occurred, the district court granted summary judgment to BonBeck on its breach of contract counterclaim, concluding that Travelers breached the policy’s appraisal provision. Travelers appealed. Applying Colorado law, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed: the disputed policy provision allowed either party to request an appraisal on “the amount of loss,” a phrase with an ordinary meaning in the insurance context that unambiguously encompassed causation disputes like the one here. "And contrary to Travelers’ view, giving effect to this meaning aligns both with other related policy language and with the appraisal provision’s purpose of avoiding costly litigation. For these reasons, the district court appropriately allowed the appraisers to resolve the parties’ causation dispute and granted summary judgment for BonBeck on its breach of contract claim." View "BonBeck Parker, et al. v. Travelers Indemnity" on Justia Law

This case arose from the cancellation of long-term-care Medicaid benefits for two claimants when an Oklahoma agency concluded that the claimants’ resources exceeded the regulatory cap for eligibility. One claimant, Idabelle Schnoebelen died, mooting her claim. The eligibility of the other claimant, Nelta Rose, turned on whether her resources included a 2018 promissory note. In 2017 and 2018, Rose loaned money to her daughter-in-law in exchange for three promissory notes. The daughter-in-law provided the first two promissory notes in 2017 (before Rose applied for Medicaid benefits). The Oklahoma Department of Human Services initially approved Rose for Medicaid, declining to regard the 2017 promissory notes as resources. In 2018, the daughter-in-law provided the third promissory note. But the Department of Human Services concluded that the 2018 promissory note: (1) was a resource because the payment to the daughter-in-law did not constitute a bona fide loan; and (2) was a deferral that turned the 2017 promissory notes into resources. The extra resources put Rose over the eligibility limit for Medicaid, so the Department of Human Services cancelled Rose’s benefits. A district court concluded that the agency’s conclusion did not conflict with federal law. In the Tenth Circuit's view, however, a reasonable factfinder could disagree. Summary judgment was reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings. View "Baker, et al. v. Brown, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellee Southwest Airlines graded its new hires based on two overarching categories of criteria: Attitude and Aptitude. By all accounts, Plaintiff-appellant Krista Edmonds-Radford had the necessary Attitude for her position as a Southwest Customer Service Agent. Unfortunately, she failed to exhibit the necessary Aptitude, and Southwest terminated her for failing to meet expectations. That termination led to this disability-based lawsuit, in which Edmonds-Radford sued Southwest for disparate treatment, failure to accommodate, and retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Southwest on all claims, and Edmonds-Radford appealed. After review, the Tenth Circuit determined: (1) Edmonds-Radford failed to establish her prima facie case or that Southwest’s proffered reason for her termination was pretextual; (2) Edmonds-Radford failed to present evidence she requested any accommodations in connection with her disability (in any event, Southwest provided all requested accommodations); and (3) because there was no proof she made any disability-based accommodation requests, Edmonds-Radford's retaliation claim based on such requests was doomed. "But even if Edmonds-Radford had made disability-based accommodation requests, her retaliation claim would still fail in light of our conclusions that Edmonds-Radford failed to establish that her disability was a determining factor in her termination, or that Southwest’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the termination was pretextual. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Southwest on all claims. View "Edmonds-Radford v. Southwest Airlines" on Justia Law

This appeal stemmed from Alfred Brown’s lawsuit under the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. secs. 701–796l, against his former employer, the Defense Health Agency. In April 2010, the Agency hired Brown as a healthcare fraud specialist (HCFS) assigned to the Program Integrity Office (PIO) in Aurora, Colorado. Shortly after joining the Agency, Brown told his supervisors that he had been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder and other panic and anxiety disorders related to his military service. When Brown’s symptoms worsened in September 2011, he was hospitalized and received in-patient treatment for one week. The Agency approved Brown’s request for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The district court granted summary judgment for the Agency, determining that there were no triable issues on Brown’s claims that the Agency failed to accommodate his mental-health disabilities and discriminated against him based on those disabilities. Brown appealed, challenging the district court’s rulings that: (1) his requests for telework, weekend work, and a supervisor reassignment were not reasonable accommodations; and (2) he failed to establish material elements of his various discrimination claims. The Tenth Circuit found no reversible error: (1) granting Brown’s telework and weekend-work requests would have eliminated essential functions of his job, making those requests unreasonable as a matter of law; (2) Brown did not allege the limited circumstances in which the Agency would need to consider reassigning him despite the fact that he performed the essential functions of his position with other accommodations; (3) the Court declined Brown’s invitation to expand those limited circumstances to include reassignments that allow an employee to live a “normal life;” and (4) Brown did not allege a prima facie case of retaliation, disparate treatment, or constructive discharge. Summary judgment for the Agency was affirmed. View "Brown v. Austin, et al." on Justia Law