Justia U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Auto-Owners, alleging breach of contract and bad faith. On appeal, Auto-Owners challenged the district court's certification of a class for those policy owners whose policies were issued in North Dakota. The court reversed, concluding that the certified class did not meet the predominance requirement of Rule 23 where the reasonableness of any claim payment may have to be individually analyzed and, therefore, the district court abused its discretion in certifying the class. View "Halvorson, et al. v. Auto-Owners Ins. Co., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, injured on an oil and gas rig, filed suit against various third parties - including TESCO and TESCO employee Jeffrey Anderson - after recovering workers' compensation benefits from his employer, DeSoto. SWE was the owner/operator of the oil and gas well. The court concluded that the SWE contract did not establish that the common law duty of care Anderson owed plaintiff extended to preventing unforeseen injuries caused by DeSoto's failure to follow SWE's safety rules; Anderson and TESCO had no duty to foresee that injury to a DeSoto employee would occur because other DeSoto employees not under defendants' control had failed to exercise their duty of care; ordinary care did not require Anderson to foresee that his encouraging word would cause a DeSoto driller to do something he had not already decided, indeed, been ordered to do; and the amount of encouragement Anderson gave the DeSoto driller was insubstantial. Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in striking an expert report submitted by plaintiff and in denying the motion to amend. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Williams v. Chartis Casualty Co. et al." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's revocation of his release and sentence of 31 months' imprisonment. The district court found that defendant had violated mandatory, standard, and special conditions of his supervised release. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting a juvenile witness's out of court statements at the revocation hearing because the government's explanation for not producing the witness was reasonably satisfactory and because the testimony and other evidence offered in place of the witness's live testimony were sufficiently reliable. The court rejected defendant's argument that the district court improperly found witness tampering to be an alternative basis for revocation. View "United States v. Smith" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction on three counts of wire fraud, asserting that his cross-examination testimony was improperly compelled. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court, concluding that defendant initially made a knowing waiver of the Fifth Amendment; the district court properly ruled that the questions at issue were within the proper scope; and the court rejected defendant's contention that his testimony was improperly compelled because the district court threatened him with economic sanctions. View "United States v. Musk" on Justia Law

The Union filed a grievance on behalf of a nurse terminated by the Hospital, alleging that the Hospital lacked "just cause" to terminate. The court concluded that the arbitrator did not exceed his authority by awarding reinstatement and back-pay; the manner in which the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expired had no effect on the arbitrator's authority; the circumstances of the Union's decertification and the CBA's expiration were known to, and expressly considered by the arbitrator in making his award; and there was no basis to conclude that the arbitrator's exercise of his remedial authority failed to "draw its essence" from the CBA. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment confirming the arbitration award. View "Midwest Division - LSH, LLC v. Nurses United For Improved Patient Care" on Justia Law

Debtor appealed the bankruptcy court's order denying her Motion to Set Aside Compromise. The bankruptcy appellate panel affirmed the judgment of the bankruptcy court, concluding that debtor failed to meet her burden to show a pecuniary interest to establish her standing to object to the trustee's Motion to Compromise or to pursue this appeal. View "Peoples v. Radloff" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed these actions to enjoin enforcement of Ordinance No. 5165, which limited hiring and providing rental housing to "illegal aliens" and "unauthorized aliens," terms defined by the Ordinance. The district court severed and enjoined enforcement of certain rental provisions, concluding that they were preempted by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and violated the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq. The court concluded, inter alia, that plaintiffs have failed to establish that any of the Ordinance's rental provisions were facially preempted by federal law; the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the Martinez Plaintiffs' motion to correct their "oversight or omission" in failing to plead a distinct FHA claim; because one of the Keller Plaintiffs had Article III standing to assert an FHA disparate impact claim, the court had jurisdiction to consider the merits of the claim; on the merits, the Keller Plaintiffs could not identify "a viable alternative means" that would not have the same "discriminatory" effect and disparate impact on the portion of unlawfully presented aliens who are Latino and, therefore, this claim must be dismissed; and the Martinez Plaintiffs failed to prove their belated claims of actual conflict. Accordingly, the court reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Keller, Jr., et al. v. City of Fremont, et al." on Justia Law

A bankruptcy court ordered that the Laurel Avenue house be vacated and authorized U.S. Marshals to physically remove plaintiff, the debtor's son, from the home. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the dismissal of his suit, which alleged, inter alia, that his constitutional rights were violated when the house, its contents, and his person were searched and seized. The court found no error in the dismissal of plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim against the federal defendants where he did not allege a Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics action in the amended complaint, nor did he seek to amend to add the claim; plaintiff's section 1983 claim failed against the city and the city's officers where plaintiff failed to set forth sufficient facts to show a direct causal link between the city's policy or custom and the alleged violation of his constitutional rights; the district court did not err in dismissing his tort claims against the trustees under the doctrine established in Barton v. Barbour, which established that an equity receiver could not be sued without leave of the court that appointed him; and because the dismissal of plaintiff's federal claims was proper, the court found no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision to decline supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state law claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Alexander v. Hedback, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an involuntarily committed mental patient, sued various officials alleging that a facility-wide change in policy deprived him of a previously held ability to walk unsupervised around an unsecured area of the grounds at the Center where he was committed. Where, as here, it was difficult even to characterize the claimed restriction as a bodily restraint, the balancing test of the professional-judgment standard necessarily lead the court to conclude that plaintiff's claims failed. Even if plaintiff had articulated a protected liberty interest, there was no substantive due process violation where nothing about the policy at issue shocked the conscience. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's due process claim. View "Montin v. Gibson" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Wells Fargo, alleging that Wells Fargo violated Minn. Stat. 580.032, subd. 3 by failing to record a notice of pendency of foreclosure before publishing the foreclosure notice. The court affirmed the district court's grant of Wells Fargo's motion to dismiss, concluding that the statute did not provide plaintiff with relief in this case because there was no dispute that Wells Fargo properly served plaintiff with notice in compliance with Minn. Stat. 580.03 and, since she received personal service of the foreclosure notice, she could not have been among those for whose benefit the separate notice requirement of Minn. Stat. 580.032, subd. 3 was enacted. View "Badrawi v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage" on Justia Law