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

Pretrial detainee Thomas Pratt exhibited alcohol withdrawal symptoms while in a county jail. Healthcare providers diagnosed and treated Pratt’s symptoms, but their course of treatment proved ineffective. Plaintiff Faye Strain, as Pratt’s guardian, sued. "Disagreement about course of treatment or mere negligence in administering treatment do not amount to a constitutional violation." To state a claim for deliberate indifference, a plaintiff must allege that an official acted (or failed to act) in an objectively unreasonable manner and with subjective awareness of the risk. "Indeed, the word deliberate makes a subjective component inherent in the claim." The Tenth Circuit concluded Plaintiff's allegations did not rise to the "high level" of deliberate indifference, and affirmed the district court's dismissal of Plaintiff's federal claims (in addition to the court's decision not to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff's remaining state law claims). View "Strain v. Regalado" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Jose Jesus Cruz entered a conditional guilty plea to possession of heroin with intent to distribute and to possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. Cruz appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence, arguing that evidence should have been excluded because it was the result of an unlawful search and seizure. The district court concluded that there was probable cause for Cruz’s warrantless arrest, and that two exigent circumstances justified the warrantless entry into his residence: (1) the destruction of evidence and (2) the hot pursuit of a suspect. Finding "abundant evidence" in the record to support probable cause for Cruz's arrest, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress. View "United States v. Cruz" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Randolfo Librado Chavez, Jr. was convicted by jury of two counts of distributing methamphetamine. His appeal of those convictions centered on the district court’s admission into evidence of three transcripts, which purportedly were of audio recordings of incriminating conversations that he had had in Spanish and in English. The district court did not admit into evidence the audio recordings themselves or play the recordings for the jury. In addition, the district court instructed the jury that they could not question the accuracy of the English-language translations in the transcripts. To the Tenth Circuit, Chavez challenged both the district court’s admission of the transcripts and the jury instructions relating to them, arguing the district court: (1) violated the best-evidence rule by admitting the transcripts into evidence without admitting the recordings themselves; and (2) committed plain error by instructing the jury to accept the accuracy of the translations in the transcripts. As to Chavez’s first contention, the Tenth Circuit concluded the district court’s admission of the transcripts, without also admitting the recordings they purported to transcribe, violated the best-evidence rule and constituted reversible error. Accordingly, it reversed and remanded the case to the district court with instructions to vacate Chavez’s convictions and grant him a new trial. In light of that disposition, the Court did not reach the merits of Chavez's jury-instruction challenge. View "United States v. Chavez" on Justia Law

Delsa Brooke Sanderson brought three claims against her employer, Wyoming Highway Patrol (“WHP”), under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two of those claims were brought before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals for review: retaliation and hostile work environment based on sex. WHP moved for summary judgment on all claims. In ruling on WHP’s motion, the district court dismissed Sanderson’s retaliation claim without prejudice because Sanderson had failed to exhaust her administrative remedies. The district court then granted WHP’s motion for summary judgment on Sanderson’s hostile work environment claim, concluding that Sanderson had not carried her burden of showing discrimination that was “sufficiently severe or pervasive.” Further, the court affirmed a magistrate's decision excluding Sanderson's designated expert witness, finding the witness' testimony was neither reliable nor relevant. Sanderson appealed both of those rulings, and the district court's order excluding her expert witness. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the retaliation claim and the order excluding Sanderson's designated expert witness. The Court reversed summary judgment as to the hostile work environment claim, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Sanderson v. Wyoming Highway Patrol" on Justia Law

The Pueblos of Jemez, Santa Ana, and Zia resided along the Jemez River at a time when their lands passed from Spanish to Mexican sovereignty, and finally to the United States. In 1983, the United States initiated a water-rights adjudication for the Jemez River Basin, claiming water rights on behalf of the Pueblos. The issue this case presented for the Tenth Circuit's review centered on whether the Pueblos' aboriginal water rights were extinguished by the imposition of Spanish authority "without any affirmative adverse act." No matter the method used, the sovereign’s intent to extinguish must be clear and unambiguous; “an extinguishment cannot be lightly implied in view of the avowed solicitude of the Federal Government for the welfare of its Indian wards.” Moreover, “if there is doubt whether aboriginal title has been validly extinguished by the United States, any ‘doubtful expressions, instead of being resolved in favor of the United States, are to be resolved in favor of’ the Indians.” The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court, finding that while "All conquering sovereigns possess authority over their land and resources ... not until the sovereign exercises this authority through clear and adverse affirmative action may it extinguish aboriginal rights." View "United States v. Abouselman" on Justia Law

Defendant David Ansberry attempted to detonate a bomb in front of the Nederland, Colorado police station. He pled guilty to use or attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against a person or property in the United States. At sentencing, the parties disputed the application of three provisions contained in the United States Sentencing Guidelines: (1) whether Ansberry knowingly created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person (which under section 2K1.4(a)(1) would create a base offense level of twenty-four); (2) whether the individual officers who came into contact with the bomb were victims (which under section 3A1.2(a) would increase Ansberry’s offense level by three); and (3) whether Ansberry’s offense involved a federal crime of terrorism because it was calculated to retaliate against government conduct (which under section 3A1.4 would increase his offense level by twelve and convert his criminal history category from I to VI). The district court sided with the government on all three provisions and sentenced Ansberry to 324 months in prison. Ansberry challenged application of each of the three guidelines provisions. The Tenth Circuit concluded the district court did not err in applying the section 2K1.4(a)(1) base offense level because the court found that Ansberry actually created a risk of death or serious bodily injury, and this finding was not clearly erroneous. But the Court agreed with Ansberry that the court erred in applying: the section 3A1.2(a) enhancement because the court impermissibly relied on relevant conduct rather than on the facts immediately related to his offense of conviction; and the section 3A1.4 terrorism enhancement, because the district court expressly refused to determine whether the conduct Ansberry retaliated against was objectively government conduct. Ansberry’s sentence was vacated and the matter remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Ansberry" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Kimberly Aubrey worked for the Weld County, Colorado, Clerk and Recorder’s office. She became unable to work for a time due to posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (“PRES”), a rare condition characterized by fluctuating blood pressure that causes swelling in the brain, coma and sometimes death. Eventually Aubrey’s PRES resolved and she began to recover. The County allowed her to take several months off but eventually terminated her employment. By that time, Aubrey contended, she recovered sufficiently to be able to return to her job, with reasonable accommodation for her disability. Aubrey sued the County under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and several related statutes. The district court granted the County summary judgment on all claims. The Tenth Circuit reversed in part, finding Aubrey presented sufficient evidence that a jury could have found the County failed to engage in the collaborative interactive process that the ADA called for between an employer and an employee in order to determine whether there was a reasonable accommodation that would have permitted Aubrey to perform the essential functions of her job. In light of that evidence, Aubrey’s failure-to-accommodate and disability discrimination claims were sufficient to survive summary judgment. Summary judgment for the County was affirmed on Aubrey’s retaliation claims because she failed to present sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the County terminated her employment in retaliation for her asking for an accommodation. View "Aubrey v. Koppes" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-appellant Dana Fedor appealed a district court’s order compelling her to arbitrate employment-related claims she brought against her former employer, UnitedHealthcare, Inc. (UHC), and United Healthcare Services, Inc. Fedor argued the district court impermissibly compelled arbitration before first finding that she and UHC had indeed formed the arbitration agreement underlying the district court’s decision. To this, the Tenth Circuit agreed, concluding that the issue of whether an arbitration agreement was formed in the first instance had to be determined by the court, even where there has been a failure to specifically challenge provisions within the agreement delegating certain decisions to an arbitrator. Judgment was vacated and the matter remanded for further proceedings. View "Fedor v. United Healthcare" on Justia Law

Brittney Brown brought a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action against Roger Flowers, who at the time was a jailer at the Pontotoc County Justice Center; she alleged he raped her while she was a pretrial detainee. Flowers moved for summary judgment, arguing that sex between him and Brown was consensual and that, regardless, he was entitled to qualified immunity. The district court determined that a jury could have found that Flowers had coercive, nonconsensual sex with Brown and that such conduct would have violated her clearly established rights. Accordingly, it denied Flowers’s motion. Flowers appealed, arguing: (1) the district court erred in finding that the question of consent and coercion was a jury question and that it therefore erred in finding a constitutional violation; and (2) clearly established law did not put him on notice that the sex was coercive or nonconsensual. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded it lacked jurisdiction with respect to Flowers' first contention, "on this interlocutory appeal, we generally must accept the facts as the district court found them." With respect to his second, the Court determined existing caselaw on the sexual abuse of inmates clearly established the contours of Brown’s rights, and affirmed the denial of qualified immunity. View "Brown v. Flowers" on Justia Law

The class’s version of events painted the Hutchenses as cunning con artists who "puppeteered" a advance-fee loan scam from afar. Defendants Sandy Hutchens, Tanya Hutchens, and Jennifer Hutchens, a three-member family who purportedly orchestrated a loan scam, challenged a district court’s rulings to avoid paying all or part of the judgment against them brought pursuant to a class action suit. The Tenth Circuit concluded almost all of those challenges failed, including their challenges to the jury’s verdict, class certification, proximate causation, and the application of the equitable unclean hands defense. However, the Court agreed with the Hutchenses’ position on the district court’s imposition of a constructive trust on some real property allegedly bought with the swindled fees. The Court therefore affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded to the district court for entry of a revised judgment. View "CGC Holding Company v. Hutchens" on Justia Law