Minnesota Lawyer
Administrative
Social Security Disability Benefits
Denial of Benefits; Residual Functional Capacity
Petitioner appealed from respondent’s denial of Social Security disability benefits. Petitioner suffered a heart attack and brain bleed that required multiple surgeries; he claimed that he continued to suffer from constant migraines and chest pain that required him to lie down 10 to 12 hours a day. However, although the ALJ found that petitioner had limitations, he denied benefits based on the vocational expert’s opinion that petitioner could work as a short-order cook.
Where the medical evidence showed that petitioner had largely normal health scans and was conservatively managing his conditions, the ALJ properly found petitioner to have a residual functional capacity where other evidence demonstrated he was capable of performing everyday tasks.
Judgment is affirmed.
Bankruptcy
Plan Modifications
Confirmation; ‘Substantial Change’
Where a primary secured creditor appealed after the bankruptcy court allowed Chapter 12 debtors to modify their confirmed plan several years in a row over the objection of the creditor, the court’s ruling that the debtors met their burden of showing an unanticipated, substantial change in circumstances was not clearly erroneous, and the court properly found that the fourth modified plan was feasible and confirmable.
Judgment is affirmed.
Civil Practice
Removal
Motion for Remand; Reliance on State Court Records
Plaintiffs appealed the denial of their motion to remand the case to state court and the subsequent dismissal of their action.
Where the district court could rely on state court records without converting a motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment, the district court properly dismissed the case and was not required to sua sponte recuse itself.
Judgment is affirmed.
Statute Of Limitations
Employment Case
Where appellant challenged the dismissal of his employment action, the district court did not err in dismissing the action as barred by the statute of limitations.
Judgment is affirmed.
Civil Rights
Americans with Disabilities Act
Denial of Service Dog; Sufficiency of Evidence
Plaintiff appealed the district court’s grant of defendant’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. Plaintiff sued defendant, his employer, under the ADA after defendant denied plaintiff’s request to bring his service dog on board the freight trains he worked on as a reasonable accommodation for his military service-connected disabilities. Although the district court initially denied defendant’s motion for JMOL, when the jury returned a verdict for plaintiff awarding compensatory damages, the district court granted defendant’s renewed motion, finding an insufficient evidentiary basis for the jury’s verdict.
Where plaintiff’s failure-to-accommodate claim required proof of an employer-provided or sponsored benefit or privilege provided to non-disabled workers, the district court correctly granted JMOL for defendant as mitigating physical or mental pain was not an employer’s responsibility.
Judgment is affirmed.
Fair Housing Act
Familial Status Discrimination; Punitive Damages
Defendant appealed from the denial of his post-trial motion to set aside or reduce the jury’s punitive damages verdict. The government brought an enforcement action under the Fair Housing Act, alleging that defendant engaged in familial status discrimination against renters. The district court granted summary judgment for the government as to liability and submitted the issue of damages to the jury, which returned a verdict awarding compensatory and punitive damages.
Where defendant admitted to having five decades of experience as a landlord, the jury could disbelieve his claim that he was unaware that familial status discrimination was illegal and thus could find that defendant acted with at least reckless indifference to his tenants’ rights, supporting an award of punitive damages. The amount of punitive damages awarded was supported by the reprehensible nature of defendant’s conduct that threatened his tenants’ financial and physical health.
Stras, J., concurring: “Rescuing Fair Housing Act ‘defendants from bad outcomes that arise out of perfectly good procedures’ falls within Congress’s domain, not ours.”
Judgment is affirmed.
State Disciplinary Proceeding
Due Process; HIPAA
Where plaintiff sought declaratory and injunctive relief to stop state physician disciplinary proceedings, alleging that the ongoing proceedings violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the district court properly abstained under Younger v. Harris, but the court should have declined to reach the merits of the due process claim, which could be litigated in state proceedings, so the dismissal is modified to be without prejudice.
Dismissal modified.
Criminal Law
Drug and Firearms Offenses
Motion to Suppress; Appeal Waiver
Defendant appealed his conviction for drug and firearms offenses, challenging the denial of his motion to suppress.
Where defendant’s plea agreement contained an appeal waiver, his challenge to the denial of his suppression motion was barred.
Judgment is affirmed.
Drug and Firearm Offenses
Top-of-Guidelines Sentence; Substantive Reasonableness of Sentence
Defendant appealed the sentence imposed following his guilty plea to drug and firearms offenses. The district court imposed a top-of-the-Guidelines sentence. Defendant challenged the substantive reasonableness of the sentence.
Where the district court expressly stated that it had considered all the statutory sentencing factors, the court found defendant’s sentence presumptively reasonable.
Judgment is affirmed.
Failure to Register as a Sex Offender
Jury Instructions; Waiver of Issue
Defendant appealed his conviction for failing to register as a sex offender. During a conference on proposed jury instructions, defense counsel asserted that the jury should be instructed on the concept of knowledge. The district court read the standard jury instruction on knowledge twice. Although defense counsel stated that he was still going to object, each time counsel stated that the instruction was okay.
Where defendant through his counsel expressly agreed to the jury instructions as read by the district court, he waived any challenge to the instructions on appeal.
Judgment is affirmed.
Healthcare Fraud
False Medicare/Medicaid Claims; Classification of “Device”
Defendants appealed their convictions for healthcare fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., arising from their submission of Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement claims for use of FDA-approved pain injections even though defendants were actually using non-FDA approved injections. On appeal, defendants argued that indictment and jury instructions required the government to prove that the non-approved injection was a “device” under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Defendants also raised other alleged errors.
Even though the jury instructions may have added an element not contained in the statutory offense, the government was not required to prove its case by that heightened standard. Instead, the sufficiency of the evidence was evaluated against the statutory elements of the offense.
Judgment is affirmed.
Resentencing Hearing
Continuance
Where a defendant challenged the sentence imposed at resentencing after his motion for a reduction was granted, the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the defendant’s request for a continuance made at the beginning of the resentencing hearing because defendant did not make a showing that he was prejudiced by the denial and he expressly declined to continue the hearing when the court offered to do so.
Judgment is affirmed.
Robbery
Denial of Concurrent Sentences; Relevance of Offenses
Defendant appealed the sentence imposed following his conviction on robbery charges. In June 2018, defendant robbed a pharmacy and a store. About a month later, defendant robbed another pharmacy. Defendant pled guilty to the robbery charges and requested that the sentence for the June robberies run concurrently with the sentence for the July robbery. The district court denied the request, finding that the July robbery was not relevant conduct for the June robberies. The district court further noted that even if it erred in denying the request, it would still impose the same sentence.
Where the district court expressly advised that it would have imposed the same cumulative sentence regardless of defendant’s request for concurrent sentences, any error in denying defendant’s motion was harmless.
Judgment is affirmed.
Search Warrant
Sentencing Package Doctrine
Where defendants in a robbery case challenged the validity of the search warrant issued to search a residence in Texas where they were staying, the challenged was rejected because the judge gave the application meaningful consideration, the application established probable cause, a mistake in names was not material, and the evidence was sufficient to support one of the defendant’s convictions for Hobbs Act robbery, but the convictions and sentences for murder with a firearm during a crime of violence must be vacated, and the case was appropriate for application of the sentencing package doctrine.
Judgment is affirmed in part; reversed in part; vacated and remanded in part.
Sentencing
Appeal Waiver
Where a defendant challenged his sentence after pleading guilty to several counts of Hobbs Act robbery, the defendant’s plea agreement included an appeal waiver that was valid, enforceable and applicable to the issues raised in the appeal, so the appeal is dismissed.
Appeal dismissed.
Sentencing
Enhancements; Drug Importation
Where a defendant challenged his sentence after pleading guilty in a methamphetamine case, the district court did not abuse its discretion in applying a two-level enhancement for the importation of the drug.
Judgment is affirmed.
Sentencing
Prior Felony Convictions
Where a defendant challenged his sentence in a felon-in-possession case, the defendant refused to stipulate to his status as a convicted felon, so the district court did not err in admitting evidence of multiple prior convictions after concluding that the probative value of the evidence was not outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.
Judgment is affirmed.
Sentencing
Sentencing Package Doctrine
Where a defendant who pled guilty in a murder and robbery case argued that his sentence was substantively unreasonable, the conviction and sentence are vacated because it was appropriate to apply the sentence package doctrine, and the remaining two counts are remanded for resentencing.
Vacated; remanded.
Sexual Exploitation of a Child
Child Pornography; Suppression of Evidence
Defendant appealed his conviction for sexual exploitation of a child and receipt of child pornography. On appeal, defendant argued that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence from his cell phone, excluding evidence defendant sought to admit at trial, and formulating the jury instructions.
Where the police’s informant only admitted to lying in her initial interview after the execution of the search warrant and defendant’s arrest, the search warrant was valid as it relied on testimony believed to be reliable at the time. The district court also properly excluded evidence that only had a marginal relationship to the issue of defendant’s guilt and would only serve to potentially induce the jury to “punish” the government’s witness for “misconduct.”
Judgment is affirmed.
Sex Trafficking
Denial of Motion to Withdraw Guilty Plea; Appeal Waiver
Defendant appealed his conviction for sex trafficking and firearms offenses, challenging the denial of his motion to withdraw his guilty plea and the substantive reasonableness of his sentence.
Where defendant voluntarily entered his guilty plea which contained an appeal waiver, the waiver was enforceable as to the issues raised by defendant on appeal.
Judgment is affirmed.
Supervised Release
Violation; First-Degree Harassment
Where a defendant challenged the revocation of his supervised release, arguing that he did not commit the alleged new law violation, the district court’s finding that the defendant committed first-degree harassment in violation of Iowa law was not erroneous, so the judgment is affirmed.
Judgment is affirmed.
Theft of Government Funds
Sufficiency of Evidence; Jury Instructions
Defendant appealed the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal and his conviction for theft of government funds and making false statements to a federal agency. Defendant argued that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he had the requisite criminal intent and that the verdict form also undermined the presumption of innocence.
Where the evidence showed that defendant was able to perform work inconsistent with his claimed disabilities, the jury could find that defendant intentionally received disability benefits he was not entitled to, and listing “guilty” ahead of “not guilty” on the verdict form did not undermine defendant’s rights where the district court instructed the jury on the presumption of innocence and the government’s burden of proof.
Judgment is affirmed.
Insurance
Auto Insurance
Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act; Motion to Remand
Plaintiff appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to remand and dismissal of the case. Plaintiff was involved in a car accident and sued the driver and defendant, the driver’s insurance company in Arkansas state court, alleging in part that defendant violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. After the driver was dismissed from the case, defendant removed the case to federal court and moved to dismiss. The district court granted the motion, denying plaintiff’s cross-motion for remand.
Where the parties were diverse and plaintiff could potentially recover more than $75,000, the district court correctly exercised jurisdiction over plaintiff’s ADTPA claim and dismissed the case where the version of the statute in effect during defendant’s alleged wrongful conduct required plaintiff to plead reliance.
Judgment is affirmed.
