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

The residential community of Cordillera in Eagle County, Colorado, featured a private lodge and spa (the “Lodge”) and a village center (the “Village”). For many years, the Lodge offered its dues-paying members certain amenities, including a golf course and spa. The Village offered “open space: tennis courts and hiking paths, which all residents and their guests could use. In 2013, after years of monetary losses, the owner of both parcels listed them for sale. In 2016, CSMN Investments, LLC (CSMN) emerged to purchase both properties. CSMN's plan for the properties would have closed the properties to other uses. Before closing on the sale, CSMN sought confirmation from Eagle County’s Planning Director that its planned use, operating an inpatient addiction-treatment center, was an allowed use under the “Cordillera Subdivision Eleventh Amended and Restated Planned Unit Development Control Document” (PUD). The Director issued a written interpretation of the PUD, concluding CSMN could operate a clinic including inpatient, non-critical care, for treatment of a variety of conditions. In response to the Director’s interpretation, community members unhappy with the change to the Lodge and Village, formed the Cordillera Property Owners Association (CPOA) and Cordillera Metropolitan District (CMD), to jointly appeal the Director's PUD interpretation to the Board of county Commissioners. The Board affirmed the Director on all but one point, concluding the PUD permitted outpatient-only clinical uses. Still aggrieved, the CMD and CPOA took their case to Colorado state court; the district court affirmed the Board's decision. CPOA appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals, which likewise affirmed the Board's decision. With the state-court appeals pending, CSMN filed a civil-rights action in Colorado federal district court against CPOA, CMD, and various associated people (the CMD board members, the CMD district manager, and the Legal Committee members). In response, Appellees moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) to dismiss all claims, arguing that the right to petition immunized their conduct. CSMN countered that Appellees’ claim of immunity was unfounded because the petitioning had sought an unlawful outcome, and that even if the immunity somehow did apply, the petitioning fell within an exception to that immunity, that is, the petitioning was a “sham.” The district court sided with Appellees, dismissing all but one of the claims on the ground that their conduct was protected by Noerr-Pennington immunity. CSMN appealed. But the Tenth Circuit concurred with the finding that Appellees engaged in objectively reasonable litigation, thus immunity applied to their conduct. View "CSMN Investments v. Cordillera Metropolitan" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellants were eleven rural hospitals (the “Hospitals”) who challenged the methodology the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (the “Secretary”) used to calculate their Medicare reimbursements. After the publication of the FY 2010 Final Rule, the Hospitals took issue with the Secretary’s methodology for calculating the hospital-specific rate for new base years. And dissatisfied with their reimbursements under that methodology, the Hospitals filed administrative appeals with the Provider Reimbursement Review Board, an independent panel authorized to hear appeals from the Secretary’s final determinations. The Hospitals then sued the Secretary in the district court, arguing: (1) the Secretary applied the same cumulative budget-neutrality adjustment twice—once by using inflated normalized diagnosis-related group weights as a divisor in step two and then again in step four; (2) the Secretary’s methodology yielded different payments than “would have been made had [he] . . . applied the budget-neutrality adjustments to the DRG weights themselves;" and (3) the Secretary acted arbitrarily and capriciously by not calculating the hospital-specific rate for new base years “based on 100 percent” of a hospital’s base-year “target amount." The district court held it would “not second-guess the Secretary’s policy” just because there may have been “other ways of calculating payments.” And so the court denied the Hospitals’ summary-judgment motion, granted the Secretary’s cross-motion, and entered final judgment.The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in reviewing the Hospitals’ arguments, found that their arguments rested on "flawed assumptions. And the Secretary has long understood his methodology and explained it to the public." The Court concurred with the district court and affirmed its judgment. View "Hays Medical Center et al. v. Azar" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs-Appellants United Government Security Officers of America International Union and its local, United Government Security Officers of America, Local 320 (collectively, the Unions) sued American Eagle Protective Services Corporation and Paragon Systems, Inc. (collectively, the Employers) under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), seeking declaratory relief under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and to compel arbitration of a terminated employee’s grievance. The Employers terminated Michael Reid, a Salt Lake City union member. The Unions grieved the termination, alleging the member was terminated without just cause. The Employers denied the grievance, alleging the member was terminated with just cause, thus not subject to arbitration under the exceptions listed in the CBA. The member was terminated in 2014; the Unions filed this action in 2018, seeking to compel arbitration of the grievance of the alleged wrongful discharge. The district court granted summary judgment to the Employers, ruling that the action was time-barred. Finding no reversible error in the district court's judgment, the Tenth Circuit affirmed. View "United Government Security v. American Eagle Protective" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Christopher Barnett appealed the dismissal with prejudice his federal civil-rights claims for failure to state a claim and dismissing with prejudice his state-law claims because they did not survive the restrictions imposed by the Oklahoma Citizens Participation Act (OCPA), Okla. Stat. tit. 12, sections 1430–40 . Defendants cross-appealed the district court’s denial of attorney fees under the OCPA, contending that an award of attorney fees was mandatory. Barnett’s complaint bases his claims on an incident on January 4, 2018, related to a hearing in Oklahoma state court on an open-records case he had brought against Tulsa Community College. According to Barnett, two lawyers in the firm of Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden & Nelson, P.C., (Hall Estill) falsely reported to the office of the state attorney general (AG) that Barnett had made a threat. The AG’s office then relayed this report to the county sheriff. When Barnett arrived at the courtroom for the hearing, the state-court judge instructed him to speak with a deputy sheriff. After Barnett denied making any threat, the deputy told him to stay inside the courtroom until he received permission to leave. At some point the AG’s office arrived with its own security detail. When the proceedings began, the state-court judge discussed the report in open court. Barnett filed suit in state court the next day against Hall Estill, and Tulsa University (TU), alleging federal civil-rights claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and state tort claims because he had been unlawfully seized when he was forbidden to leave the courtroom, had been cast in a false light by the public airing of the alleged threat, and had been retaliated against by Defendants for his exercise of his rights to free speech and access to the courts. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the federal-law claims, agreeing with the district court that the complaint did not adequately allege that any of the Defendants acted under color of state law. But the Court reversed judgment on the state-law claims and remanded to the district court with instructions to dismiss the claims without prejudice or remand them to the state court. View "Barnett v. Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Archie Manzanares appealed a district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion challenging his sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). Under the ACCA, an offense qualified as a violent felony by satisfying at least one of three definitions, which have come to be known as the Elements Clause, the Enumerated Clause, and the Residual Clause. Manzanares asserted that without the Residual Clause, his underlying New Mexico convictions (armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated battery) no longer qualified as violent felonies. The district court denied the motion, concluding that all three underlying convictions satisfied the Elements Clause. Manzanares appealed the classification of the armed robbery conviction as a violent felony to the Tenth Circuit, and sought to expand the certificate of appealability to allow him to appeal the decision regarding the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated battery convictions. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Manzanares’s 2255 motion, and denied his motion to expand the COA. View "United States v. Manzanares" on Justia Law

A married couple, Beverly Bien and David Wellman, invested money with Mid Atlantic Capital Corporation (“Mid Atlantic”). Their investments performed poorly. Stung by the losses, Ms. Bien and Mr. Wellman initiated arbitration proceedings against Mid Atlantic. The arbitration panel awarded damages, fees and costs to the couple. The panel also ordered Ms. Bien and Mr. Wellman to reassign their ownership interests in their investments to Mid Atlantic. Mid Atlantic moved the federal district court to modify the arbitration award to correct “an evident material miscalculation of figures.” The district court denied the motion because the alleged error that Mid Atlantic sought to remedy did not appear on the face of the arbitration award. In the amended final judgment, in addition to ordering Mid Atlantic to pay Ms. Bien and Mr. Wellman certain damages, the court ordered that prejudgment interest would accrue on the damages portion of the award and that postjudgment interest would accrue at the federal rate specified in 28 U.S.C. 1961. Both parties appealed the district court’s order. Mid Atlantic specifically challenged the court’s denial of its motion to modify the arbitration award; the couple cross-appealed to challenge the court’s rulings with respect to prejudgment interest and the reassignment of distributions they received since the arbitration award due to their ownership interests in the investments. Finding no abuse of discretion or other reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court. View "Mid Atlantic Capital v. Bien" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were citizens of the City of Boulder, Colorado and entities with various interests in the sale or possession of firearms within the city. They filed suit against the City of Boulder and several of its officials, alleging that Boulder City Ordinances 8245 and 8259 violate the U.S. Constitution, the Colorado State Constitution, and Colorado state statutes, Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 29-11.7-102 & 103. The ordinances at issue banned the sale of "assault weapons," and raised the legal age for possessing a firearm from eighteen to twenty-one. The City of Boulder is a home-rule municipality under the Colorado Constitution, which granted the City to pass ordinances in “local and municipal matters” that supersede “any law of the state in conflict therewith.” The district court abstained and stayed the proceedings pending resolution of the state law preemption question in state court. Plaintiffs appealed, and finding that the district court properly abstained as “appropriate regard for the rightful independence of state governments reemphasize[s] that it is a wise and permissible policy for the federal chancellor to stay his hand in absence of an authoritative and controlling determination by the state tribunals,” the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. View "Caldara v. City of Boulder" on Justia Law

Plaintiff XMission, L.C. appealed a district court's dismissal of its claims against Fluent, LLC for lack of personal jurisdiction over Fluent in Utah. Fluent was a Delaware limited liability company with its principal place of business in New York. It described its service as digital marketing; its business model was apparently based on supplying consumer data to businesses. XMission was a Utah limited liability company with its principal place of business in Salt Lake City. As an internet service provider (ISP), it used servers and other hardware that it owned and operated in Utah to provide internet access for its commercial and residential customers. It also provided email hosting and other internet-related services. Any email sent to a domain hosted by XMission would arrive on XMission’s email servers in Utah. XMission’s complaint against Fluent was based on more than 10,000 emails sent from 2015 to early 2018 to more than 1,100 XMission customers in Utah through its servers, allegedly in violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act). The emails at issue instructed recipients to follow links that offered to rewards. By clicking the link, the recipient is taken to a Fluent-controlled data-gathering domain that prompts the recipient to enter personal information such as name, age and date of birth, gender, email address, social media activity, zip code, and street address. Fluent apparently collects and aggregates the consumer information and sells this personal data to others to assist them in developing targeted marketing campaigns. The record does not disclose whether the email recipients actually obtain any rewards from the named companies or whether Fluent is compensated in any way by those companies for these emails. After review, the Tenth Circuit remained unpersuaded the offending emails created personal jurisdiction over Fluent in Utah, and thus affirmed the district court's dismissal. View "XMission, L.C. v. Fluent, LLC" on Justia Law

Defendant Fernando Samora borrowed his ex-girlfriend's care and drove it alone to a restaurant. When Defendant left the restaurant and approached the vehicle, the officers from a multi-agency task force converged to arrest him on an outstanding warrant. Defendant fled on foot and a chase ensued. After the officers caught and arrested Defendant, they searched the vehicle he had been driving and found a loaded firearm inside the center console. The Government charged Defendant with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Defendant proceeded to trial where the district court gave an erroneous instruction on constructive possession. A jury returned a guilty verdict and Defendant appealed, arguing: (1) the Government presented insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction; and (2) even if the Government presented sufficient evidence, the failure to properly instruct the jury constitutes plain error requiring remand for a new trial. The Tenth Circuit concluded after review that the trial court plainly erred in its jury instructions. It therefore reversed and remanded for a new trial. View "United States v. Samora" on Justia Law

Claiming insolvency, taxpayer Vincent Hamilton sought to exclude nearly $160,000 in student loans that were forgiven from his taxable income. During the same tax year, however, he had received a non-taxable partnership distribution worth more than $300,000. His wife transferred those funds into a previously-unused savings account held nominally by their adult son. Using login credentials provided by their son, Mrs. Hamilton incrementally transferred almost $120,000 back to the joint checking account she shared with her husband. The Hamiltons used these funds to support their living expenses. In a late-filed joint tax return, they excluded the discharged student-loan debt on the theory that Mr. Hamilton was insolvent. In calculating his assets and liabilities, however, the Hamiltons did not include the funds transferred into the savings account. Had they done so, Mr. Hamilton would not have met the criteria for insolvency; and the couple would have owed federal income tax on the student-loan discharge. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue eventually filed a Notice of Deficiency, reasoning that the partnership distribution rendered Mr. Hamilton solvent, such that the Hamiltons were required to pay income tax on the cancelled student loan debt. debt. The Hamiltons petitioned for review from the Tax Court, which sustained both the deficiency and a significant late-filing penalty. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the Tax Court's judgment. View "Hamilton v. CIR" on Justia Law