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

Plaintiff, an inmate at an Arkansas prison, filed suit against three prison officials for requiring him to work with deadly chlorine gas without proper training and safety gear. The district court granted summary judgment to the officials based on plaintiff's failure to exhaust his administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).The Eighth Circuit, accepting plaintiff's declaration as true, held that Defendant Perry misled plaintiff and thus the formal grievance procedure was unavailable to plaintiff. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's judgment as to Defendant Murphy where plaintiff did not file his formal grievance in time. In regard to Defendant Romine and White, the court held that the informal complaint process was capable of use and could have provided some relief and thus the administrative exhaustion requirement applied regardless of whether the formal grievance procedure was later available to plaintiff. In the alternative, plaintiff failed to exhaust his remedies against Romine and White. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment as to these two defendants. View "Townsend v. Murphy" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's imposition of supervised release conditions. The court held that, even though defendant completed his revocation sentence, the cost of his GPS monitoring was a concrete and continuing injury and the appeal was not moot. The court also held that the district court did not plainly err in imposing supervised released conditions where the restrictions placed upon defendant's possession of sexually explicit material and his unauthorized use of computers were not unreasonable, because they were related to, and in fact a direct consequence of, the circumstances surrounding his underlying conviction for possession and distribution of child pornography, and involved no greater deprivation than necessary. Furthermore, the government presented sufficient evidence that defendant violated those terms by possessing what the district court found to be a sexually explicit book called manga, and by accessing a computer without his probation officer's consent. View "United States v. Gatton" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of a breach-of-contract action to recover unpaid insurance premiums. The court held that the administrative procedures available to the insurer were too informal to require exhaustion under then-applicable Missouri law. Therefore, Travelers had no obligation to exhaust its administrative remedies before filing its lawsuit. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Company of America v. Jet Midwest Technik" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit denied a petition for review of the BIA's decision upholding the IJ's denial of petitioner's applications for asylum and withholding of removal. The court held that the IJ and BIA applied the correct legal standard in requiring petitioner to show his social group or political opinion was the predominant reason for the persecution. The court held that petitioner's asylum claim failed because the evidence did not compel a finding that petitioner was persecuted on account of his social group or political opinion. Likewise, petitioner's application for withholding of removal also failed. In this case, a reasonable factfinder could conclude that gangs were targeting petitioner for general recruitment purposes and his relationship to his father, a former policeman, was merely "incidental or tangential" to that goal. View "Gomez-Rivera v. Sessions" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action against WireCo's workers' compensation insurance carriers, Liberty, seeking damages for excess premiums that WireCo allegedly paid on three of Liberty's insurance policies. The court held that the plain language and established purpose of the Missouri vexatious refusal to pay statute indicated that it applied to claims filed under a policy that related to a covered loss and that a breach of a contract of overcharging or of failure to refund premium was not a loss contemplated by the statute. Therefore, a loss under the statute did not include excess premium payments.The court also held that only the theories of breach of contract were before the district court at summary judgment; even assuming the rating plans were incorporated into the policies, and that Liberty breached the contracts, WireCo must present evidence that Liberty's alleged breaches caused WireCo to suffer damages; and Liberty was entitled to summary judgment on WireCo's breach of contract claims because WireCo failed to present evidence that it would have paid lower premiums if Liberty had complied with the notice and documentation requirements of the Missouri and Texas schedule rating plans. View "WireCo WorldGroup, Inc. v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co." on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants in an action brought by plaintiff after he was terminated as an employee of the Arkansas State Treasurer. The court held that plaintiff's initial argument regarding his defamation, false light, and invasion of privacy claims were without merit because the district court had denied summary judgment on these issues; the district court appropriately granted Defendant Milligan, in his official capacity as Treasurer of the State of Arkansas, summary judgment on plaintiff's Rehabilitation Act claim where the Treasurer neither accepted nor distributed federal financial assistance; the district court's jury instructions on defamation were not erroneous; the district court did not abuse its discretion by failing to give plaintiff's proposed jury instructions regarding invasion of privacy, agency, and cat's paw theory as to the Americans with Disabilities Act claim; and plaintiff's claims regarding whistleblowing activities were not supported by the record and were therefore rejected by the court. View "Singer v. Harris" on Justia Law

Hildene filed suit against Bannister and Arvest, alleging that the asset purchase transaction between Bannister and Arvest breached the "successor obligor" term of an indenture agreement between Bannister and U.S. Bank National Association as trustee and that Arvest tortiously interfered with the Indenture. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment, holding that the asset purchase transaction did not violate the Indenture. The court held that the plain meaning of the word "property" in this context was property directly owned by Bannister, the "company" that signed the Indenture; and Bannister's "property and capital stock" did not include assets of Bannister subsidiaries. The court also held that the district court did not err in dismissing plaintiff's tortious interference claim against Arvest because Bannister did not breach the Indenture's successor obligor provision. View "Hildene Opportunities Master Fund, Ltd. v. Arvest Bank" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the tax court's dismissal of a petition for relief from a determination that petitioner owed additional employment tax. The court held that there was no actual controversy involving a determination that petitioner was an employee for Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) purposes. Even assuming there was an actual controversy, it did not involve a determination that petitioner was an employee for FICA purposes. In this case, the only issue the Commissioner examined was the amount of remuneration for petitioner's services and this determination did not give the tax court jurisdiction. View "Martin S. Azarian, P.A. v. Commissioner" on Justia Law

After defendant was convicted of bombing a doctor, the United States filed two civil forfeiture actions against weapons seized from defendant during the criminal investigation. On appeal, defendant challenged an order of forfeiture of an unregistered shotgun, and defendant and his wife challenged the forfeiture of 93 National Firearms Act regulated weapons.The Eighth Circuit declined to overturn either order based on defendant's allegations of fraud and improper limitations on discovery. The court held that the district court did not err in granting forfeiture of the shotgun where defendant's acquittal of illegal possession of the shotgun in his criminal trial did not bar the district court from rejecting his affirmative defense and ordering forfeiture of the shotgun in this civil proceeding. The court also held that the district court had jurisdiction to dispose of 93 weapons seized from defendant as he could not lawfully possess them as a convicted felon. Furthermore, the district court did not err in ordering the proceeds from the sale of the weapons to be given to the victim where defendant's wife could not rely on the law of Arkansas marital property to establish an ownership interest in the 93 weapons and the district court did not err in relying on the Arkansas civil judgment in granting defendant's interest in the proceeds to the victim. View "United States v. Mann" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit vacated defendant's sentence after he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. The court held that the Iowa court minutes of evidence were not permissible Shepard documents if the defendant has not confirmed their accuracy in a plea agreement or during plea colloquy. In this case, the district court improperly used them to apply the modified categorical approach to determine whether defendant had the three necessary predicate convictions under the Armed Career Criminal Act. Accordingly, the court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Dittmar" on Justia Law