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

At issue in this case was whether a federal court sitting in Oklahoma had specific jurisdiction over Dr. Scott Jolly, a dentist and Arkansas resident, and his Limited Liability practice, Jolly Dental Group, LLC. Dental Dynamics, LLC argued that three isolated business transactions and an allegedly fraudulent contract were sufficient to establish federal court jurisdiction over its breach of contract and fraud claims. The Tenth Circuit disagreed, finding Jolly Dental's contacts with Oklahoma were "too random, fortuitous, and attenuated" to establish personal jurisdiction there. With respect to Denta; Dynamics' fraud claim, the Court concluded Dental Dynamics failed to show conduct sufficiently targeted to Oklahoma to establish personal jurisdiction there. View "Dental Dynamics v. Jolly Dental Group" on Justia Law

The United States sought to enjoin the Uintah Valley Shoshone Tribe and several individual members from selling hunting and fishing licenses that authorized members to take wildlife from the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. The Uintah Valley Shoshone Tribe was not a federally recognized Indian tribe, but it nonetheless claimed to have tribal rights, including hunting and fishing rights, related to the Reservation. The district court held the Tribe had no authority to issue licenses. The court, however, declined to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the issuance of future licenses against both the individual defendants and the Tribe. The Tenth Circuit agreed with the district court that the Uintah Valley Shoshone Tribe lacks authority to issue hunting and fishing licenses, and found the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to issue a permanent injunction. View "United States v. Uintah Valley Shoshone Tribe" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant Luzetta Murphy-Sims appealed after a jury ruled in favor of Defendant-Appellee Owners Insurance Company (Owners) on her complaint against Owners' insured stemming from a car accident. The insured was at fault; Murphy-Sims maintained that she suffered extensive injuries, and consequently incurred significant medical costs, as a result of the accident. In February 2014, she sent Owners a letter demanding settlement claiming $41,000 in medical expenses. Owners timely replied with a request for more information. When Murphy-Sims failed to reply, Owners sent two additional follow-up requests. Finally, in June 2014, Murphy-Sims provided Owners with some of the requested information. It did not offer a settlement payment in response. In July 2014, Murphy-Sims sued the insured. The parties agreed roughly three weeks later to enter into a Nunn agreement, which bound the matter over to binding arbitration. The arbitrator awarded Murphy-Sims approximately $1.3 million and judgment was entered against the insured. Pursuant to the agreement, Murphy-Sims did not execute on the judgment. In March 2016, Murphy-Sims, standing in the insured's shoes as permitted under the Nunn agreement, filed the underlying lawsuit against Owners in state district court, claiming Owners breached its contract with Switzer and had done so in bad faith. Owners removed the suit to federal court and the case proceeded to trial. The jury ultimately found that Owners did not breach its contract with the insured, thereby declining to award $1.3 million in damages to Murphy-Sims. The jury did not reach the bad faith claim having been instructed that it need not be reached in the absence of a breach of contract. After review of Murphy-Sims arguments on appeal, the Tenth Circuit determined the district curt committed no reversible error, and affirmed its judgment. View "Murphy-Sims v. Owners Insurance Company" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Jason Garcia appealed the sentence he received after pleading guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to ninety-six months in prison. He claimed the district court erred in considering his earlier possession of two handguns as relevant conduct and that the sentence the court imposed on him was substantively unreasonable. After review, the Tenth Circuit rejected Garcia’s challenges: the Court reviewed Garcia’s relevant-conduct argument for plain error and concluded that the district court did not plainly err in treating his prior incident of handgun possession as relevant conduct as to his offense of conviction; and (2) the district court’s sentence was not substantively unreasonable. View "United States v. Garcia" on Justia Law

Japanese national Takeshi Ogawa brought a Hague Convention action against his former wife, South Korean national Kyong Kang, alleging that she wrongfully removed their twin daughters from Japan to the United States in violation of his rights of custody and seeking an order requiring the twins to return to Japan. The district court disagreed and denied Ogawa’s petition, concluding that: (1) the twins’ removal to the United States did not violate Ogawa’s rights of custody, and alternatively, (2) even if their removal was wrongful, the twins objected to returning to Japan. Ogawa appealed. After review, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals determined Ogawa failed to make a prima facie showing that he had any rights of custody as the Convention defined them. Accordingly, it affirmed the district court’s order. View "Ogawa v. Kang" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Jeremias Robertson pled guilty to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon, and was sentenced to a term of 84 months’ imprisonment followed by three years’ supervised release. On appeal he challenged the district court’s findings that he pointed a gun at an officer, thereby resulting in a four-level enhancement for use or possession of a firearm in connection with another felony offense (aggravated assault with a deadly weapon), and a six-level enhancement for assaulting the officer in a manner creating a substantial risk of bodily injury. To the Tenth Circuit, he argued: (1) the district court should have required proof by clear and convincing evidence; (2) under any standard of proof, the evidence did not support the district court’s findings; and (3) the district court erroneously drew a negative inference from his silence at the sentencing hearing. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment and sentence. View "United States v. Robertson" on Justia Law

Among its reforms, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) required private health insurers to provide coverage for individuals regardless of their gender or health status, including preexisting conditions. Congress anticipated these reforms might hamper the ability of insurers to predict health care costs and to price health insurance premiums as more individuals sought health insurance. To spread the risk of enrolling people who might need more health care than others, Congress established a risk adjustment program for the individual and small group health insurance markets. Congress tasked the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) with designing and implementing this risk adjustment program with the states. HHS developed a formula to calculate how much each insurer would be charged or paid in each state. The formula relied on the “statewide average premium” to calculate charges and payments. Plaintiff-Appellee New Mexico Health Connections (“NMHC”), an insurer that was required to pay charges under the program, sued the HHS Defendants-Appellants under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), alleging that HHS’s use of the statewide average premium to calculate charges and payments in New Mexico from 2014 through 2018 was arbitrary and capricious. The district court granted summary judgment to NMHC, holding that HHS violated the APA by failing to explain why the agency chose to use the statewide average premium in its program. It remanded to the agency and vacated the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 rules that implemented the program. After the district court denied HHS’s motion to alter or amend judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), HHS appealed. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals: (1) determined NMHC’s claims regarding the 2017 and 2018 rules were moot, so the matter was remanded to the district court to vacate its judgment on those claims and dismiss them as moot; (2) reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to NMHC as to the 2014, 2015, and 2016 rules because it determined HHS acted reasonably in explaining why it used the statewide average premium in the formula. Because the Court reversed the district court on its summary judgment ruling in favor of NMHC, it did not address the denial of HHS’s Rule 59(e) motion. View "New Mexico Health Connections v. HHS" on Justia Law

Petitioner Edward Fields pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of first degree murder, two counts of using a firearm during a federal crime of violence causing the death of a person, and two counts of assimilative crime. Fields was sentenced by jury to death on each of the two murder convictions, and to significant terms of imprisonment on each of the remaining convictions. After completing the direct appeal process, Fields initiated proceedings before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by filing a motion to vacate, set aside or correct sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2255. The district court denied Fields’s petition, and also denied him a certificate of appealability (COA). The Tenth Circuit subsequently granted Fields a COA with respect to four issues. After its review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded to the district court with directions to conduct an evidentiary hearing on Fields’s claim that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to adequately investigate and present at trial evidence of his organic brain damage. View "United States v. Fields" on Justia Law

Petitioner Adama Matumona was a native and citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He petitioned the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision to deny his application for asylum and withholding of removal. Regarding asylum, Petitioner argued the BIA: (1) erred in determining that he had firmly resettled in Angola, which barred him from applying for asylum; and (2) engaged in improper factfinding in determining he was ineligible for an exception to the firm-resettlement bar. On withholding of removal, he argued the BIA improperly rejected his claims of past persecution and a well-founded fear of future persecution. Furthermore, Petitioner contended his due-process rights and his statutory right to a fair hearing were violated by the failure of the immigration judge (IJ) to adequately develop the record and to implement appropriate safeguards for a pro se litigant detained in a remote facility. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed on all issues except that the Court remanded to the BIA to consider Petitioner’s claim that he was entitled to withholding of removal because of the alleged pattern or practice of the DRC government of persecuting persons with Petitioner’s political views. View "Matumona v. Barr" on Justia Law

At issue in this appeal was Mountain Dude’s claims brought under Utah’s Fraudulent Transfer Act (“UFTA”). Mountain Dudes was the creditor to Split Rock, Inc. (“SRI”). Mountain Dudes obtained a $1.75 million judgment against SRI as the result of a dispute over a home Mountain Dudes purchased from SRI. At the same time of the Mountain Dude/SRI dispute, a land developer in St. George, Utah went over $50 million in debt during the 2008 recession. SRI transferred all of its remaining assets to a newly formed business, Split Rock Holdings, LLC (“SR Holdings”). Though the transaction occurred between two entities, many of the same individuals were involved on both sides of that deal. Mountain Dudes, as SRI’s creditor, had hoped to levy periodic payments that SR Holdings agreed to make to SRI on a $2.7 million obligation. Before any such payments were due, however, SRI and SR Holdings modified the original Sale of Asset Agreement. Ultimately, SR Holdings paid SRI a total of $188,000 under the Modification’s terms. Over approximately the same time period, SR Holdings disbursed $1.1 million to three of the individual Defendants—Platt, Bylund and Manning. Mountain Dudes filed suit relating to the Modification pursuant to the UFTA. Resolution of this appeal turned primarily on a procedural matter involving how the sufficiency of evidence presented at a civil jury trial could be challenged. The Tenth Circuit determined the district court deprived Mountain Dudes LLC of that opportunity. Instead, after the jury was unable to reach a verdict on Mountain Dudes’ UFTA claims, the district court invoked Rule 50(b) to grant Defendants judgment as a matter of law on grounds the court raised sua sponte after the jury deadlocked. That, the Tenth Circuit held, It therefore reversed the judgment the district court entered sua sponte in Defendants’ favor. However, the Court affirmed the district court’s other rulings rejecting the grounds the various parties did raise seeking judgment as a matter of law. View "Mountain Dudes v. Split Rock Holdings" on Justia Law