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

After law enforcement executed a search warrant on Defendants Huanyu Yan and You Lan Xiang’s home (“Doane home”) and seized 878 marijuana plants, Defendants moved to suppress arguing the exception to the good faith rule applied. When law enforcement seizes evidence in good faith reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate, that evidence will not be subject to suppression even if a court later invalidates that warrant. The district court disagreed and denied their motion. Defendants proceeded to a joint jury trial where a jury convicted them of: (1) Conspiracy to Manufacture and Possess with Intent to Distribute 100 or more Marijuana Plants; (2) Manufacturing and Possessing with Intent to Distribute 100 or more Marijuana Plants; and (3) Using and Maintaining a Drug-Involved Premises. At the close of the government’s case, Mr. Yan moved for judgment of acquittal, arguing the government offered insufficient evidence to sustain his conspiracy conviction. The district court denied his motion. Defendants appealed the district court’s suppression ruling, and Mr. Yan separately appealed the district court’s denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court. View "United States v. Xiang" on Justia Law

At the time this appeal was initiated, Jason Brooks was a Colorado-state inmate serving a lengthy prison sentence for securities fraud. Brooks had an extreme and incurable case of ulcerative colitis: even when his disease was well treated, Brooks suffered from frequent, unpredictable fecal incontinence. This case involved the Colorado Department of Corrections’s (“CDOC”) efforts, or lack thereof, to deal with the impact of Brooks’s condition on his ability to access the prison cafeteria. Specifically, the issues presented centered on whether the district court erred when it concluded: (1) Brooks’s Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) claim for damages failed because the CDOC’s offer to provide Brooks with adult diapers was a reasonable accommodation of Brooks’s disability; and (2) Brooks’s Eighth Amendment claim against ADA Inmate Coordinator Julie Russell failed because the decision not to access the cafeteria with the use of adult diapers was Brooks’s alone. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals determined the district court erred in its treatment of Brooks’s ADA claim for damages. "A reasonable juror could conclude the offer of adult diapers was not a reasonable accommodation of Brooks’s disability. Thus, at least as to the question of the reasonableness of the proposed accommodation, the district court erred in granting CDOC summary judgment on Brooks’s ADA claim for damages." On the other hand, the Court concluded the district court correctly granted summary judgment in favor of Russell on Brooks’s Eighth Amendment claim: "the record is devoid of sufficient evidence for a jury to find Russell acted with a sufficiently culpable state of mind—deliberate indifference to Brooks’s ability to access food—when she declined Brooks’s request for a movement pass." Accordingly, the Court dismissed in part, reversed in part, and remanded this matter to the district court for further proceedings. View "Brooks v. CDOC, et al." on Justia Law

When Seminole Nursing Home, Inc. failed to pay $61,916.19 in federal employment taxes due for 2013, the IRS provided notice to Seminole of its intent to issue a levy to collect these unpaid taxes plus penalties and interest. Seminole challenged the validity of a Tax Code regulation that restricts economic hardship to individual taxpayers who fail to pay delinquent taxes after notice and demand. Seminole contended the economic-hardship exception should be applied to all taxpayers, including corporations. The United States Tax Court rejected the contention on the ground that the regulation was a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The Home appealed, but agreeing with the Tax Court, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. View "Seminole Nursing Home v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Samantha Gerson was allegedly sexually abused when she was 15 years old by an employee (the Perpetrator) at Logan River Academy, a residential treatment facility in Logan, Utah. She filed suit against Logan River a decade later in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, from which the case was transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Utah. Logan River moved to dismiss on the ground that the suit was barred by Utah’s applicable statute of limitations. Gerson responded that the suit was timely under California law. The district court applied California’s choice-of-law doctrine, determined that Utah’s statute of limitations governed, and granted the motion to dismiss. Finding no reversible error in that decision, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal. View "Gerson v. Logan River Academy, et al." on Justia Law

During a traffic stop, law-enforcement officers ordered the passenger, defendant-appellant Colt Malone, to exit the car. He complied, and the officers found a pistol. Based on the presence of this pistol, the government charged Malone with possession of a firearm after a felony conviction. Malone moved to suppress evidence of the pistol, arguing that the officers had violated the Fourth Amendment by prolonging the traffic stop. The district court denied the motion to suppress, leading Malone to enter a conditional guilty plea and to appeal. After review of the trial court record, the Tenth Circuit affirmed: "[e]ven if the officers had detoured from the mission of the traffic stop, the district court had made a factual finding that the officers did not prolong the stop and Mr. Malone waived any challenge to that finding. So introduction of the pistol into evidence would not have violated the Fourth Amendment." View "United States v. Malone" on Justia Law

Claud “Rick” Koerber was indicted by a grand jury for wire fraud, tax fraud, and mail fraud relating to a real estate investment scheme. A superseding indictment added to his wire fraud and tax evasion counts, charging him with additional counts for securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. More than five years passed without a trial, resulting in the district court’s dismissing the case with prejudice under the Speedy Trial Act. On the government’s appeal of that decision, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s dismissal-with-prejudice order, identifying errors in its application of the Speedy Trial Act factors. On remand, after reapplying the factors, the district court decided to dismiss without prejudice. So in 2017 the government reindicted Koerber for the offenses earlier charged in the superseding indictment. Koerber’s first trial ended in a hung jury. His second trial ended in jury convictions on all but two counts. The court later imposed a 170-month prison sentence. On appeal, Koerber challenged his prosecution and conviction, claiming a range of errors: from evidentiary rulings, to trial-management issues, to asserted statutory and constitutional violations. After reviewing the briefing, the record, and the relevant law, the Tenth Circuit found no reversible error and affirmed. View "United States v. Koerber" on Justia Law

Carl Cushing and Kris Hall were convicted by a jury of a drug conspiracy to distribute large quantities of methamphetamine. On appeal, Cushing and Hall raised a number of challenges to their convictions. The Tenth Circuit held that, among other things, the evidence was sufficient to convict both Cushing and Hall of the drug conspiracy, the district court did not err in admitting res gestae evidence to provide the jury appropriate context to the crime, and the expert testimony presented at trial was properly admitted. Accordingly, judgment was affirmed as to each defendant. View "United States v. Cushing" on Justia Law

Hetronic International, Inc., a U.S. company, manufactured radio remote controls, the kind used to remotely operate heavy-duty construction equipment. Defendants, none of whom were U.S. citizens, distributed Hetronic’s products, mostly in Europe. After about a ten-year relationship, one of Defendants’ employees stumbled across an old research-and-development agreement between the parties. Embracing a “creative legal interpretation” of the agreement endorsed by Defendants’ lawyers, Defendants concluded that they owned the rights to Hetronic’s trademarks and other intellectual property. Defendants then began manufacturing their own products—identical to Hetronic’s—and selling them under the Hetronic brand, mostly in Europe. Hetronic terminated the parties’ distribution agreements, but that didn’t stop Defendants from making tens of millions of dollars selling their copycat products. Hetronic asserted numerous claims against Defendants, but the issue presented on appeal to the Tenth Circuit centered on its trademark claims under the Lanham Act. A jury awarded Hetronic over $100 million in damages, most of which related to Defendants’ trademark infringement. Then on Hetronic’s motion, the district court entered a worldwide injunction barring Defendants from selling their infringing products. Defendants ignored the injunction. In the district court and before the Tenth Circuit, Defendants focused on one defense in particular: Though they accepted that the Lanham Act could sometimes apply extraterritorially, they insisted the Act’s reach didn’t extend to their conduct, which generally involved foreign defendants making sales to foreign consumers. Reviewing this matter as one of first impression in the Tenth Circuit, and after considering the Supreme Court’s lone decision on the issue and persuasive authority from other circuits, the Tenth Circuit concluded the district court properly applied the Lanham Act to Defendants’ conduct. But the Court narrowed the district court’s expansive injunction. Affirming in part, and reversing in part, the Court remanded the case for further consideration. View "Hetronic International v. Hetronic Germany GmbH, et al." on Justia Law

During a heated argument at a campsite in Yellowstone National Park, defendant-appellant Jeffery Harris pointed a gun at another camper. Rather than charge Harris under the federal assault statute, the federal prosecutor applied the Assimilative Crimes Act (ACA), 18 U.S.C. 13, to charge Harris with a Wyoming statute that prohibited “threaten[ing] to use a drawn deadly weapon on another unless reasonably necessary [for defense.]” Harris was convicted at trial. On appeal, he contended the federal assault statute precluded assimilation of the Wyoming state assault statute in this case. Determining whether the federal assault statute precluded conviction on the Wyoming state assault statute required the Tenth Circuit to apply the analysis set forth in Lewis v. United States, 523 U.S. 155 (1998), an issue of first impression in the Tenth Circuit. The Court agreed with Harris that the Wyoming statute should not have been assimilated, and accordingly reversed and remanded. View "United States v. Harris" on Justia Law

Kendall Morgan, a former deputy sheriff for LeFlore County, conducted a traffic stop of plaintiff-appellee Chad Osterhout. During the traffic stop, Morgan struck Osterhout in the face and kicked him twice in the ribs. According to Morgan, Osterhout was trying to flee; Osterhout maintained he remained still with his hands raised. Osterhout sued Morgan and the Board of County Commissioners of LeFlore County, Oklahoma. The jury attributed liability to Morgan and the Board, awarding Osterhout $3 million in compensatory damages against both defendants, and $1 million in punitive damages against Morgan. Morgan moved for a new trial or remittitur of damages. The district court remitted the compensatory damages to $2 million, but denied the motion for a new trial. Both defendants appealed. The Board and Mr. Morgan argue that the district court abused its discretion by using a verdict form with a single total for compensatory damages. And the Board argued: (1) the district court erred in denying summary judgment because the notice had been defective and Morgan’s alleged force would have fallen outside the scope of his employment; (2) the jury acted inconsistently by assessing punitive damages and finding that Morgan had acted within the scope of his employment; (3) the verdict against the Board conflicted with the clear weight of the evidence; and (4) the award of compensatory damages was grossly excessive. Morgan argued: (5) the district court should have granted a new trial based on opposing counsel’s misconduct; (6) the compensatory damages were grossly excessive and unsupported by the evidence; and (7) the punitive damages were grossly excessive. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the trial court judgment. View "Osterhout v. Board of County Commissioners, et al." on Justia Law