Playing Catch-Up!
So, I’ve fallen pretty far behind in, well, everything recently. Sorry ‘bout that. We’re going to do a little catch-up today, by which I’m going to go through the cases that were argued before SCOTUS in little one-two sentence bites, so you can get an idea of what’s on the Court’s plate this month.
So, the first week of November, we had Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, Lockhart v. United States, and Foster v. Chatman, all of which I’ve already discussed. The other cases are under the break.
Week one saw argument in: Torres v. Lynch (As in Attorney General Loretta). This is a fascinating statutory construction* case, regarding whether a state criminal law is “described in” a federal law when the difference is a jurisdictional component. Because we have a limited Federal government, any federal law has to be within Congress’s power, and the statute in question involves Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, so the question is whether an enhanced (longer) sentence is permissible when the state law actually violated is identical to the federal law that “describes” it, except that the federal statute required that the defendant affect interstate commerce by his conduct and the state law didn’t.
Shapiro v. McManus involves a rule of Federal Civil Procedure that requires three federal judges to sign off on an injunction (a court order forbidding an action). The question is whether that same rule requires three judges to dismiss a claim as frivolous, or if one judge is enough.
Bruce v. Samuels involves a question of the statutory cap on federal inmate wage garnishment to pay for lawyer and filing fees. Currently, a qualified inmate can only have 20% of his inmate wages garnished to pay for legal services (the government pays for the rest); the question is whether that’s a complete cap, or if it just refers to a particular filing (in other words, whether a defendant who files four different legal challenges loses only 20% of his wages, just like the defendant who files just one challenge).
Last week saw arguments in Montanile v. Board of Trustees of the National Elevatory Industry Health Benefit Plan (say that five times fast). This one is complicated and involves ERISA (The Employment Retirement Income Security Act). Montanile was injured in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, sued, and ultimately won $500,000, after the NEI Health Plan had paid him $100,000 for medical expensives. The NEI Health Plan asked to be reimbursed from the settlement, and Montanile refused, and then spent most of the settlement. Now, if the Plan had sued Montanile’s lawyers before they paid him the settlement, there’s no question that it would have been entitled to the $100,000 reimbursement. However, because the lawyers dumped the money, and the strange way that ERISA is written, means there’s an open question as to whether Montanile has to pay them back. Yeah, I don’t quite get it, either.
Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, a class action lawsuit involving how damages are calculated. In order to certify the class**, the plaintiffs’ lawyers used a statistical analysis that ignores differences among the class, and many of the plaintiffs (perhaps hundreds) may not even have been injured in the first place. This is another lawsuit involving employers (in this case Tyson) requiring that employees perform some action necessary to actually work before they clock in (and thus don’t get paid). The problem is, the damages were calculated by assuming ALL of Tyson’s employees were injured in the same way, but the procedures they had to perform off the clock were, in fact, not identical (and some employees may not have had to do anything off the clock).
Luis v. United States involves asset restraint. To prevent a defendant from unjustly benefitting from the proceeds of a crime, the government is permitted to prevent a defendant from using those proceeds to pay for any part of the legal process (so that a guy who steals a million dollars doesn’t use that stolen money to post bail and pay a lawyer and thus get to benefit from the theft). In Luis, the government wanted to freeze Luis’s untainted assets; that is, money he had that was unquestionably not the proceeds of the crime of which he was accused. The problem here is that, after stealing $45 million through Medicare fraud, Luis then spent all that money, so there was no tainted assets to freeze, so the government asked to freeze $45 million in untainted assets, which Luis claims she needs to pay her lawyers.
Yes. $45 million. She just has that lying around in addition to the $45 million she actually stole.
There were no cases this week, nor will there be any next week. On Monday, November 30, the court will hear the last two cases of the November sitting (which makes sense, as November then ends). These are:
Green v. Brennan, a federal employment discrimination law case, which asks when the time period to file a lawsuit alleging that one was “constructively discharged” -- that is, forced to resign through a hostile work environment. Five of the intermediate appellate courts have held that the time starts to run when the employee actually resigns, while three have held that it begins to run when the last discriminatory act that leads to resignation happens.
And, finally, Musacchio v. US. This case involves the law-of-the-case doctrine which is a little complicated, but here’s the short version: When a judge makes a decision involving a case, even though that decision is not binding on other courts, or even on itself, it is binding on that case; in other words, a judge’s decision, even when it isn’t strictly following the law, becomes the law as applied to the case. In Musacchio, the judge accidentally required the jury to consider an additional element of a crime that isn’t normally required, which now becomes the law of the case (in other words, the judge made it harder for the prosecution to prove their case). The question is, when undergoing an appellate review for the sufficiency of the evidence, is the prosecution held to the higher standard, or do they just have to prove the correct elements? There is also a second question of whether a defendant has to raise a statute of limitations defense at trial, or if he can raise it on appeal (this is a doctrine called preservation, which can be pretty tricky to explain, and will have to get its own blog post).
And that’s November! Questions, comments? Don’t forget to hit that ASK button if you want to know more about anything here, or anything in particular!
* That just means it’s about how to read a law.
** A legal term of art meaning that the various plaintiffs in the class action have the right to BE plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit.









