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

Plaintiff filed suit against Homolka, Homolka P.A., Watts Guerra, and Watts, alleging he is owed (1) $10,000 per month as leasing payments from October 2015, the first month he stopped receiving payments, until the September 2017 settlement; (2) a promised $50,000 truck reimbursement; and (3) a $3.4 million bonus. The jury returned a unanimous verdict for Plaintiff, finding that Homolka breached the oral contract, acting as an agent of Homolka P.A. and Watts Guerra. The jury awarded $175,000 in compensatory damages with no prejudgment interest. The district court denied Watts Guerra’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and Plaintiff’s motion for a new trial. Watts Guerra and Plaintiff cross-appealed these rulings.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court held that it agreed with the district court that the jury reasonably found Watts Guerra liable on an ostensible agency theory for Homolka’s breaches of the contract underlying the jury’s award of $175,000 in compensatory damages. The court reasoned that in considering these issues, “we start with the assumption jurors fulfilled their obligation to decide the case correctly,” and “we defer second to the trial court, which has a far better sense of what the jury likely was thinking and also whether there is any injustice in allowing the verdict to stand.” Applying these deferential standards, the court wrote that it has no difficulty concluding the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiff’s motion for a new trial. The jury verdict awarding $175,000 compensatory damages was neither inadequate nor the product of an inappropriate compromise. View "Lowell Lundstrom, Jr. v. Watts Guerra LLP" on Justia Law

Defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to possessing with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. He appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. Defendant argued that his unconstitutional arrest stemmed from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office’s reckless conduct, i.e., its failure to establish any procedure to handle recalled warrants. Defendant contends that the office should have implemented a review system, suggesting that “[a] simple, routine process of a weekly review would have caught the error.”   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that it was employee negligence—not reckless disregard of constitutional requirements—that resulted in the failure to remove Defendant’s recalled warrant from the file and the computer system. The sheriff’s office manager and her co-worker’s negligent conduct “was not so objectively culpable as to require exclusion” of the evidence garnered after Defendant’s arrests. Thus, the court wrote in light of its conclusion that the exclusionary rule does not apply, it need not consider the government’s alternate ground for admission of the evidence, i.e., that Defendant’s resistance to his illegal arrest furnished grounds for a second, legitimate arrest. View "United States v. Elmer Zahn" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of several child pornography-related offenses. He appealed the district court’s denial of his pretrial suppression motion, the application of a sentencing enhancement, and the grouping of his counts at sentencing.The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that even if Defendant showed cause, he wasn’t prejudiced, which is required for good cause. The Government offered significant evidence at trial that supported Defendant’s conviction, including his incriminating admissions that he received and produced child pornography and explicit content recovered from his and the minor victim’s phones. While the motel room evidence was incriminating in the sense that it worked against Defendant, “[t]he desire to suppress” such evidence is “not by [itself] sufficient to establish good cause to justify relief from a waiver of a defense, objection, or request under Rule 12.” Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Defendant leave to make an untimely pretrial motion.In calculating his sentence, Defendant says that the district court erred when it declined to group three counts together because those counts involved substantially the same harm. But the court explained that even if it grouped Defendant’s offenses the way he suggests, he would still receive a life sentence because his combined offense level would exceed 43, so any error was harmless. View "United States v. Travis Mayer" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, seeking to purchase firearms, successfully petitioned a Minnesota state court to restore his right to possess firearms under the Minnesota restoration of rights statute. He was then granted the right to purchase and a permit to carry by local Minnesota governments. But no federally licensed dealer will sell him a firearm. Federal law will not let them do that, the FBI advised Plaintiff, because “the Minnesota Restoration of Rights does not restore federal firearm rights for felony convictions listed on your Iowa state record.” Invoking the civil remedy Congress created in the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Plaintiff then filed this civil action against the United States under 18 U.S.C. Section 925A, seeking an order allowing him to purchase firearms and directing the FBI to correct the allegedly erroneous information that he is ineligible to possess a firearm in Minnesota. The district court granted the government’s motion to dismiss.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that under federal law, Plaintiff may not possess a firearm if he is a person “convicted in any court” of a qualifying crime.” His prior Minnesota and Iowa felony convictions both qualify. Beecham teaches that, in evaluating whether rights have been restored, we look to the “law of the jurisdiction in which the proceedings were held.” Lowe held that “only the convicting jurisdiction can restore civil rights.” Therefore, the district court properly held that the restoration of civil rights in Minnesota applied only to Plaintiff’s Minnesota convictions. As the Iowa convictions have not been restored, under federal law, they continue to bar him from possessing a firearm. View "Brent Smith v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued her former employers, Rowley Memorial Masonic Home and Rowley Masonic Assisted Living Community, LLC (collectively, Rowley), as well as the Administrator, and Director of Nursing, for age discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act (ICRA) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Plaintiff argued that the district court erred by denying her motion to compel and granting summary judgment to Defendants. She also moved to certify a question of law to the Iowa Supreme Court and to supplement the record under seal.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, denied the motion to certify, and granted the motion to supplement. The court held that Plaintiff provided no basis for her speculation that Lemke’s additional answers would yield evidence of age discrimination. In light of the likely minimal relevance of the investigator’s additional answers and the fact that at least some of the information Plaintiff seeks was discoverable from other sources, the court wrote it perceives no abuse of the district court’s discretion and cannot say that its denial of the motion resulted in fundamental unfairness to her. Further, the court held that because Plaintiff cannot create an inference that Defendants’ decisions were motivated by her age, she has failed to make a prima facie case of age discrimination View "Inge Smothers v. Rowley Mem. Masonic Home" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was fired by John Deere & Co.; he sued Deere for failing to accommodate his disability and discriminating against him in violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act (ICRA). The district court granted summary judgment to Deere. Plaintiff appealed the district court’s judgment on his disability and failure to accommodate claims.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that Plaintiff cannot make a prima facie case for failure to accommodate because he never requested an accommodation at the relevant time. In fact, Deere encouraged Plaintiff to request accommodations and accommodated him before when he asked. And when Plaintiff returned to work in September 2019, he had been cleared of all restrictions. Because Plaintiff has not shown that Deere knew he needed an accommodation on his return to work, his claim fails. Further, the court wrote that Plaintiff has not provided any direct evidence of discrimination that “shows a specific link between the alleged discriminatory animus and the challenged decision, sufficient to support a finding by a reasonable fact finder that an illegitimate criterion actually motivated the adverse employment action.” Finally, the court held that Plaintiff’s suggestion that his actions weren’t serious enough to merit his termination “merely questions the soundness of [Deere’s] judgment, and does not demonstrate pretext for discrimination.” View "Michael Winters v. Deere & Company" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and the district court imposed a sentence of 71 months of imprisonment. Defendant appealed, asserting that the government violated the terms of the plea agreement, rendering her appeal waiver invalid and that the district court procedurally erred when determining her advisory Guidelines range. Defendant suggests that the United States impermissibly objected to her receiving an acceptance-of-responsibility adjustment “based on” her “pre-plea conduct.”   The Eighth Circuit enforced the waiver and dismissed Defendant’s appeal. The court explained that it is true that the government cannot object to an acceptance-of-responsibility adjustment based on a defendant’s pre-plea conduct if it initially agreed at the time the plea was entered that the defendant “qualified for” that adjustment. But here, the government took no position in the plea agreement on whether an acceptance-of-responsibility adjustment was warranted. And in any event, the government’s objection at sentencing was based on Defendant’s post-plea conduct, not any conduct that pre-dated the plea agreement. In the waiver, Defendant expressly gave up “any and all rights to appeal . . . [her] sentence,” which includes her appeal of the district court’s denial of an acceptance-of-responsibility adjustment. And she does not contend that the waiver was not knowing and voluntary or that enforcing it “would result in a miscarriage of justice.” View "United States v. Lacee Tuttle" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence of 1,680 months imprisonment for seven counts of child-exploitation and child pornography offenses. Specifically, he challenged the jury selection, the jury instructions, the sufficiency of the evidence, and the reasonableness of the district court’s sentence.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained here the magistrate judge conducted extensive voir dire, and the parties had ample opportunity to examine the jurors. Throughout the process, the magistrate judge took care to rehabilitate wavering jurors by focusing them on what they were being asked to do as jurors—listen to the evidence and fairly and impartially judge the facts. Ultimately, the magistrate judge accepted Juror 3’s responses as indicating that he would be able to put aside his visceral reactions and impartially consider the evidence. On this record, that finding was not a “manifest error,” and the court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to remove Juror 3.   Further, the court explained that the district court carefully considered the 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(a) factors and sentenced Defendant within the guidelines range, the calculation of which Defendant does not challenge. The district court noted Defendant’s “extremely dangerous” conduct in pulling a loaded handgun from his waistband and pointing it at a law-enforcement officer’s head when he was arrested. The court then emphasized that Defendant’s offense conduct was “particularly disturbing.” It also found by a preponderance of the evidence that Defendant had sexually abused his ex-girlfriend’s daughter. It did not err in considering this conduct, even though Nosley was acquitted of it in state court. View "United States v. Nathan Nosley" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(1). The district court sentenced Defendant to 75 months imprisonment. The government appealed the district court’s decision not to enhance Defendant’s sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. Section 924(e)(1). The government argues on appeal that the definition of MDMA at Minnesota Rules, part 6800.4210, is identical to the federal definition of MDMA. They argue that the district court should have deferred to the expert agency’s interpretation of the term “isomers,” which is contained in the Rule, rather than allowing the statute to expand the definition.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court found that the version of the Minnesota statute applicable to Defendant’s 2011 felony drug convictions prohibiting isomers of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) was overbroad. The court explained for the enhancement to apply, the court would have to read “isomers” in Minnesota Rules, part 6800.4210, item C, as excluding certain isomers, namely, those excluded in the federal regulations. However, if the court read “isomers” as being limited to optical, positional, and geometric isomers, it would render superfluous the language of Minn. R. 6800.4210, “whether optical, positional, or geometric.” A common sense reading of the statute suggests that Minn. R. 6800.4210 limits some isomers, while Minn. Stat. Section 152.02, subd. 2(3) (2009) limits all isomers. Therefore, Defendant does not have the requisite three ACCA convictions for enhanced sentencing. View "United States v. Lorenzo Heard, Jr." on Justia Law

The United States Air Force required all service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19, subject to certain exemptions. In this case, thirty-six members of the Air Force, Air Force Reserve, or Air National Guard sued the Secretary of Defense and others, alleging that the government’s denial of their requests for religious exemptions violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Airmen sought a nationwide preliminary injunction prohibiting the Air Force from taking steps to discharge any of the Airmen and from denying travel, training, or other career opportunities to them. The district court denied the motion and later dismissed much of the case, although one aspect of the complaint remains pending in the district court. The Airmen appealed the order denying the request for preliminary injunctive relief.
The Eighth Circuit, in light of intervening developments that have granted the Airmen all of the relief requested, dismissed the appeal. The court explained that none of the Airmen is subject to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement, and no adverse action may be taken against the Airmen for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. A statutory change that discontinues a challenged practice usually makes an appeal moot. View "Tanner Roth v. Lloyd Austin, III" on Justia Law