Justia U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

After a jury trial, Russell Rose and Kelvin Frye were convicted of conspiring to distribute arising from their respective roles in a Cape Cod-based drug-distribution conspiracy. The First Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences, holding (1) no error occurred in the authorization of the government’s applications for phone wiretaps that produced tapes of intercepted phone calls between the co-conspirators; (2) the government properly utilized its central witness, and the witness’s testimony was not improper overview testimony; (3) a jury would have convicted Defendants even if evidence recovered from the search of the curtilage of Rose’s home was improperly admitted; and (4) even the district court violated Alleyne v. United States in sentencing Defendants, neither party could establish the necessary prejudice to sustain their claim of Alleyne error. View "United States v. Rose" on Justia Law

In 1998, Jason Davis received a punitive damages award in a federal civil rights action that he brought against six state employees, who were held responsible for restraining and beating him in a state mental hospital. In 2009, Joshua Messier was killed while being restrained by multiple corrections officers. The personal representative of Messier’s estate brought suit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and others. The Messier case settled, resulting in the payment of $2 million from Massachusetts. In 2014, Appellant, in his capacity as the personal representative of Davis’s estate, filed a complaint in the district court alleging that former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former Attorney General Martha Coakley violated the Davis estate’s due process and equal protection rights by agreeing to settle the Messier case while, at the same time, refusing to pay for the outstanding punitive damages award owed to the Davis estate. The district court granted Patrick and Coakley’s motion to dismiss. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that Appellant’s due process and equal protection arguments were without merit. View "Davis v. Coakley" on Justia Law

At issue in this case was whether an ordinance in the City of Portland, Maine that prohibited standing, sitting, staying, driving, or parking on median strips violated the First Amendment. The district court ruled in favor of Plaintiffs, concluding that the ordinance violated their freedom of speech. The court permanently enjoined the City from enforcing the ordinance in any respect. The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s permanent injunction barring the ordinance’s enforcement, holding that the ordinance violates the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech because it indiscriminately bans virtually all expressive activity in all of the City’s median strips and is not narrowly tailored to serve the City’s interest in protecting people in the streets and in protecting people on medians. View "Cutting v. City of Portland, Maine" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendants Jose Laureano-Salgado, Pedro Ramirez-Rivera, and Ismael Cruz-Ramos were convicted of multiple drug and gun offenses. Defendants were all sentenced to life in prison. The First Circuit (1) vacated Cruz-Ramos’s conviction and sentence and remanded his case for a new trial, holding that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the fruits of a police search of his home and car and that including the erroneously admitted evidence at trial was not harmless; and (2) affirmed Laureano-Salgado’s and Ramirez-Rivera’s convictions and sentences, holding that the evidence was sufficient to support their convictions, that there was no merit to Defendants’ claims regarding jury selection, that the district court’s evidentiary rulings made during the trial did not amount to reversible error, that the jury was properly instructed, and that there was no sentencing error. View "United States v. Ramirez-Rivera" on Justia Law

Petitioner brought this habeas corpus petition after he was released from federal custody, arguing that the Bureau of Prisons violated his right to due process when it failed to hold an in-person hearing before revoking his good-time credits, thus causing him to over-serve his prison sentence. The district court concluded that although Petitioner had over-served his sentence, no due process violation occurred. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that there were no facts that Petitioner could assert or constitutional claim that he could muster that would entitle him to the specific remedy he now requests, and therefore, Petitioner failed to present a petition upon which relief could be granted. View "Francis v. Maloney" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit against his employers in the District of Puerto Rico, alleging, inter alia, violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The employers moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting that a forum selection clause in Plaintiff’s separation agreement provided exclusive jurisdiction in the Court of First Instance, San Juan Division. Plaintiff argued that the forum selection clause was invalid because he did not affirmatively waive his Seventh Amendment Right to a jury trial. The district court concluded that the forum selection clause was valid but entered a declaratory judgment stating that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico must afford civil litigants the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The First Circuit vacated the portion of the district court’s judgment declaring that the Commonwealth must afford civil litigants a jury trial, holding that this action was in contravention of binding Supreme Court precedent. Remanded. View "Gonzalez-Oyarzun v. Commonwealth of P.R." on Justia Law

Appellants in this case were three shipping operators who pay a fee to Puerto Rico to conduct business out of the Port of San Juan. The Commonwealth supplied each company with cargo-scanning technology, required them to scan all of their inbound cargo at the port, and then, to pay for the scanning, charged each an additional fee on top of the existing fees that it already charged operators to utilize the port. A magistrate judge concluded that the additional fee was constitutional as applied to the three shipping operators equipped with the scanning technology and did not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the three shipping operators failed to prove that the additional fee, as applied to them, violates the dormant Commerce Clause. View "Camara de Mercadeo v. Vazquez" on Justia Law

Plaintiff worked for the Town of Camden for thirty-one years prior to being laid off. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the police union and the Town provided for recall of qualified employees based on seniority. During the twelve-month period after Plaintiff was laid off, vacancies opened in the Camden Police Department, but the Town did not recall Plaintiff. Plaintiff and his wife brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that the Town had deprived Plaintiff, without due process of law, of his property interest in his right to be recalled. The district court dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint for failure to state a claim. The First Circuit vacated the dismissal and remanded. On remand, the district court entered judgment for the Town, concluding that the CBA contained a condition precedent requiring Plaintiff to submit his address and phone number to the Town after his layoff in order to assert his recall rights and that Plaintiff did not submit such information post-layoff. The First Circuit vacated the judgment and remanded, holding that the CBA recall provision did not unambiguously create a condition precedent, and therefore, further fact-finding was necessary. View "Clukey v. Town of Camden, Maine" on Justia Law

Hector Luis Roman-Oliveras (Roman) was dismissed from his job after working for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) for over twenty years. Roman, along with his wife and mother, brought suit against PREPA and two individual supervisors, alleging that Defendants unlawfully targeted Roman due to his medical disability and his union activities. In 2012, the parties held settlement negotiations, which took place in the district judge’s chambers. The judge memorialized an account of the discussions in a minute entry recounting that the parties had reached a binding oral settlement agreement. The parties, however, did not submit a final written agreement. Another district judge later dismissed the case with prejudice on the basis of the settlement agreement. Plaintiffs appealed, arguing that “an agreement had never been reached,” and, assuming such a settlement had been reached, the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to enforce it. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the district court did not err in finding that the talks conducted in 2012 produced a binding oral settlement agreement that the district court had jurisdiction to enforce. View "Roman-Oliveras v. P.R. Elec. Power Auth." on Justia Law

Plaintiff Sonia Velez-Velez, a Popular Democratic Party (PDP) member, lost her job with the Puerto Rico Highway and Transportation Authority after an election returned the opposing political party, the New Progressive Party (NPP), to office. Plaintiff was informed on February 11, 2010 that she would be terminated under the new NPP administration’s ruling that one set of hiring policies under which Plaintiff was hired was unlawful and therefore, those employees hired under the erroneous determinations must be terminated. Plaintiff requested a hearing, and on November 8, 2010 the Examining Officer recommended affirming the decision to terminate Plaintiff’s employment. On December 20, 2011, Plaintiff and her husband filed this complaint, alleging claims for political discrimination, among other claims. The district court granted summary judgment for Defendants, concluding that the discrimination claim was time-barred. Plaintiff appealed, claiming that the clock did not begin to run until she was formally terminated after the hearing. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the statute of limitations began to run when Plaintiff was informed on February 11, 2010 of the re-interpretation of policy. View "Velez-Velez v. P.R. Highway & Transp. Auth." on Justia Law