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

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence to a 188-month term of immurement, holding that Defendant waived his “career offender” argument and made no showing sufficient to excuse that waiver.Defendant pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin and detectable quantities of cocaine hydrochloride and fentanyl. During sentencing, Defendant repeatedly agreed that he should be sentenced as a career offender. The district court found Defendant to be a career offender and imposed a bottom-of-the-range term of immurement. Defendant appealed, assigning error to the district court’s treatment of him as a career offender. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the equities preponderated heavily in favor of enforcing Defendant’s waiver of his argument against career offender status. View "United States v. Orsini" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence of thirty months’ imprisonment for possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance, holding that the sentence was neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable.Pursuant to a plea agreement, Defendant pleaded guilty to knowingly and unlawfully possessing a firearm and ammunition while being an unlawful drug user. Defendant agreed to a waiver-of-appeal provision. Defendant then brought this appeal challenging his sentence. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that this Court need not rely on the appeal waiver to dispense with Defendant’s appeal because, even if it did consider the merits of Defendant’s challenges to his sentence, those challenges failed. View "United States v. Mangual-Rosado" on Justia Law

The First Circuit denied Petitioner’s petition for review challenging the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) denial of his motion to reconsider its order refusing to open his case, holding that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in rejecting Petitioner’s motion to reconsider.Petitioner, a citizen of Ghana who unlawfully entered the United States, sought cancellation of removal based on hardship to his U.S.-citizen daughter and voluntary departure. The immigration judge (IJ) denied Petitioner’s request for cancellation of removal and also denied voluntary departure. The BIA affirmed the IJ’s denial of voluntary departure. Thereafter, the BIA denied Petitioner’s motion to reopen the proceedings based on alleged ineffective assistance of counsel and then denied Petitioner’s motion to reconsider. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in denying Petitioner’s motion to reconsider on the ground that Petitioner failed to identify a specific legal or factual error in the BIA’s original adjudication of his motion to reopen. View "Kuffour v. Sessions" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing this contract action for lack of personal jurisdiction over the defendants in Maine, holding that the district court did not err in concluding that the exercise of jurisdiction over Defendants would not comport with due process.The underlying dispute involved agreements about Defendants’ interests in an Illinois limited partnership, Elm Street Plaz Venture, LLLP. LP Solutions LLC (LPS), a Maine company, offered to buy limited interests owned by Defendants, who mostly resided in Illinois. Defendants accepted the offer and made distribution payments. When Defendants later refused to deliver partnership distributions that LPS said were assigned to it, LPS sued Defendants in Maine. The case was removed to federal district court, which determined that there was no personal jurisdiction because Defendants' contacts with Maine did not make the exercise of personal jurisdiction foreseeable. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that Defendants could not foresee the exercise of jurisdiction. View "LP Solutions LLC v. Duchossois" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence imposed in connection with his plea of guilty to being a felon in possession of a handgun and twenty rounds of ammunition, holding that there was no error in the sentence fashioned by the district court.The district court sentenced Defendant to eighty-six months. The First Circuit affirmed the sentence, holding (1) the district court did not err in determining that Defendant’s prior Massachusetts drug distribution and assault with a dangerous weapon conviction qualified as a “crime of violence” under the United States Sentencing Guidelines; and (2) the district court properly applied a sentencing enhancement for possession “in connection with” another felony. View "United States v. Oliveira" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and vacated in part the district court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of American Honda Finance Corporation (Honda) on Plaintiff’s putative class action alleging that Honda violated Massachusetts consumer protection laws, holding that summary judgment was improper on some of Plaintiff’s claims.Plaintiff claimed that Honda afforded her inadequate loan-deficiency notifications after she fell behind on her automobile-loan payments. Because Plaintiff’s claims hinged entirely on questions of Massachusetts law, the First Circuit certified three questions to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). After the SJC issued an opinion responding to these questions and the parties filed supplemental briefs, the First Circuit issued this opinion. The Court held (1) Plaintiff’s challenge to the district court’s ruling that Honda sold her car for fair market value was waived; (2) the district court erred in finding that the post-repossession and post-sale notices Honda sent to Plaintiff complied with the requirements of Massachusetts law; and (3) therefore, entry of summary judgment on Plaintiff’s Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 106, 9-614 and 9-616 notice and Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A, 2(A) claims was improper. View "Williams v. American Honda Finance Corp." on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s conviction of one counts of stalking in violation 18 U.S.C. 2216A, holding that Defendant’s constitutional challenge was unsuccessful, there was no error in the district court’s jury instructions, and sufficient evidence supported the conviction.On appeal, Defendant brought a First Amendment challenge to the federal anti-stalking statute, arguing that section 2261A(2)(B) is facially overbroad and a content-based restriction on speech that does not survive strict scrutiny. The First Circuit disagreed as to this issue and the remaining issues Defendant raised on appeal, holding (1) Defendant’s First Amendment challenge to the statute was unavailing; (2) the district court did not err in denying Defendant’s request for a unanimity instruction or in giving jury instructions that precisely tracked the statute’s wording; and (3) there was sufficient evidence to support Defendant’s conviction. View "United States v. Ackell" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing the case brought by Plaintiff seeking to have the district court address the same grievances she brought without success in the Massachusetts state courts, holding that Supreme Court case law divests federal courts of subject-matter jurisdiction in such cases.A bank commenced a summary process action in the Worcester Housing Court seeking to evict Plaintiff. Plaintiff counterclaimed. The Housing Court eventually entered final judgment awarding possession of the property to the bank. Plaintiff’s appeal was unsuccessful. Thereafter, Plaintiff filed a civil action against the bank in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging wrongful foreclosure and other claims relating to the same issues she addressed in the summary process action. The district court granted the bank’s motion to dismiss, concluding that the doctrine set forth in D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 482 (1983) and Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 415-16 (1923), deprived the federal courts of subject-matter jurisdiction. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the district court lacked jurisdiction where Plaintiff’s federal suit sought to invalidate the antecedent state courts’ judgments. View "Klimowicz v. Deutsche Bank National Trust Co." on Justia Law

The First Circuit reversed the district court’s certification of a class of all purchasers of Asacol, including purchasers who had not suffered any injury attributable to Defendants’ allegedly anticompetitive behavior, holding that the district court’s approach to certifying a class was at odds with both Supreme Court precedent and the law of this circuit.Drug manufacturer Warner Chilcott Limited’s coordinated withdrawal and entry of two drugs, Asacol and the similar drug called Delzicol, precluded generic manufacturers from introducing a generic version of Asacol, which would have provided a lower-cost alternative to Warner’s drugs, Delzicol and Asacol HD. Plaintiffs filed a class action alleging violations of the consumer protection and antitrust laws of twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. The district court certified a class of all Asacol purchasers who subsequently purchased Delzicol or Asacol HD in one of those twenty-six jurisdictions, finding that while ten percent of the class had not suffered any injury, those uninjured class members could be removed in a proceeding conducted by a claims administrator. The First Circuit reversed, holding that where injury-in-fact is a required element of an antitrust action, a class cannot be certified based on an expectation that the defendant will have no opportunity to press at trial genuine challenges to allegations of injury-in-fact. View "Teamsters Union 25 Health Services & Insurance Plan v. Warner Chilcott Limited" on Justia Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant’s sentence of sixty months in prison following his guilty plea to being a felon in possession of a firearm and unlawfully possessing a machine gun, holding that there was no error in the proceedings below.After entered his guilty plea, the district court varied upward and sentenced Defendant to sixty months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. The presentence report stipulated a guidelines imprisonment range of thirty to thirty-seven months. On appeal, Defendant claimed that the variant sentence was excessive and thus substantively unreasonable. The First Circuit disagreed, holding that, given Defendant’s offense conduct and his criminal history, the sentence imposed was substantively reasonable and that the variance was lawfully imposed and adequately explained. View "United States v. Hernandez-Ramos" on Justia Law