Justia U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

In consolidated appeals, the issues before the court concern the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, specifically the civil commitment provisions codified in 18 U.S.C. 4248. Invoking these provisions, the government initiated proceedings in district court seeking the civil commitment of respondents, all prisoners in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP"), because the government certified them as sexually dangerous persons. The district court collectively dismissed all nine proceedings under 18 U.S.C. 4241 and issued a dismissal order requiring the government first to release the prisoners from BOP custody, then obtain a commitment order under section 4241, and then finally seek a separate civil commitment order under the second category of persons eligible for certification under section 4248(a). The court held that the dismissal order approach to section 4248 was flawed where it departed from the plain meaning of section 4248(a); it erroneously read section 4248 in pari materia with section 4241; and erroneously invoked the canon of constitutional avoidance. Accordingly, and because the district court did not have the timely benefit of the United States v. Comstock and Timms v. Johns decisions, the court vacated the dismissal order and remanded for further proceedings.

Petitioner appealed the Board of Immigration's ("BIA") decision that petitioner was ineligible for cancellation of removal after he had amassed a substantial criminal record while in the United States. Petitioner conceded that he was removable for having been convicted of two or more crimes of moral turpitude but challenged the government's contention that an aggravated-felony conviction justified his removal. At issue was whether the BIA properly determined that petitioner had not satisfied his burden of showing that he was eligible for cancellation of removal. The court affirmed the removal and held that the BIA's ruling denying petitioner's request for relief from removal was faithful to the plain meaning of the statutory text governing eligibility for cancellation of removal and that petitioner's arguments to the contrary ignored Congress' burden-shifting framework.

Petitioner, a native of Jamaica, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a petition for review where the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") agreed with the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") that petitioner was removable because he was an alien who had committed a variety of gun and drug offenses. Petitioner claimed that he was a citizen under 8 U.S.C. 1432(a)(3). Petitioner also claimed that, because he was declared a United States citizen in a 1998 removal proceeding, DHS was precluded from litigating the issue of his alienage in later removal proceedings. The court held that, because 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(9) and 1503(a) prohibited petitioner from obtaining review of his citizenship claims through a habeas corpus petition, the court affirmed the district court's jurisdictional dismissal of petitioner's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The court also held that the BIA read section 1432(a)(3) in accordance with its unambiguous meaning and the statute passed constitutional muster where the statute automatically conferred citizenship on legitimate children when the parent with sole custody after a legal separation naturalizes and on out of wedlock children only when the mother naturalizes. The court further held that petitioner had not satisfied the requirements of issue preclusion, and even if he could overcome that obstacle, preclusion still would not apply given the criminal misconduct apparent in his case.

Defendant appealed convictions of separate counts of receipt and possession of child pornography and three counts of mailing child pornography where he was sentenced to 235 months imprisonment. At issue was whether the district court erred when denying defendant's motion to suppress evidence of child pornography obtained from a search of his residence. The court held that exclusion of the evidence obtained from the search was an appropriate remedy where it was unreasonable to believe that probable cause was demonstrated to search for evidence of the commission of a crime where the warrant application included scant indication that the crime had been committed and zero indication as to when it was committed.

The State sued CVS Pharmacy, Inc. and five other pharmacies (collectively, "pharmacies") in state court alleging that they sold generic drugs to West Virginia consumers without passing along to the consumers the cost savings of generic drugs over brand name equivalents in violation of West Virginia Code 30-5-12b(g), which regulated the practice of pharmacy, and the West Virgina Consumer Credit Protection Act, West Virginia Code 46A-6-104. At issue was whether the district court properly ordered the case to be remanded to state court after the pharmacies removed the case from state court to the district court under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 ("CAFA"), Pub. L. No. 109-2 Stat. 4. The court affirmed and held that the action was not a class action as defined by the CAFA where the action was not brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 or West Virginia's corresponding rule but, rather, the action was brought under the West Virginia statute regulating the practice of pharmacy and the West Virgina Consumer Credit Protection Act, neither of which included provisions providing for a typical class action.

Plaintiff filed a quiet title claim against Bank of New York ("BNY") after he failed to make payments on a loan for over a half of a year and BNY foreclosed on his property. At issue was whether BNY lacked authority to carry out the sale where plaintiff alleged that America's Wholesale Lender, the original lender, had authority to foreclose on the property. The court held that plaintiff's note plainly constituted a negotiable instrument under Va. Code. Ann. 8.3A-104 and that note was endorsed in blank. Therefore, BNY possessed the note at the time it attempted to foreclose on the property and once plaintiff defaulted on the property, Virgina law straightforwardly allowed BNY to take the actions that it did.

Appellant appealed from a 151-month sentence based on his guilty plea arising out of a twenty-count indictment naming twenty-eight defendants with conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise and conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. At issue was whether appellant's guilty plea was rendered involuntary by the district court's refusal of his request for substitute trial counsel and that, at sentencing, the district court likewise erred when it denied his renewed request for substitution. The court held that appellant had not made a substantial showing that his guilty plea was involuntary where the district court's refusal to appoint substituted counsel did not, under the circumstances, deprive him of the meaningful assistance of counsel. The court also held that the district court's subsequent refusal to grant appellant's request for substitution of counsel for purposes of the sentencing hearing did not violate his rights in light of all that had gone before its refusal and the circumstances of the sentencing hearing itself. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Plaintiff sued defendant alleging breach of fiduciary duty and sought damages under the "other appropriate equitable relief" provision of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA"), 29 U.S.C. 1132(a)(3), where defendant denied plaintiff's life insurance coverage claims for her deceased daughter on the grounds that her daughter did not qualify for coverage under the plan's "eligible dependent children" provision. At issue was whether section 1132(a)(3) allowed the remedy of surcharge, which would permit recovery of the life insurance proceeds lost by plaintiff because of defendant's breach of fiduciary duty. Also at issue was whether the court should recognize equitable estoppel as part of the common law of ERISA. Further at issue was whether the district court erred in granting plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. The court held that the remedy of surcharge was not available under section 1132(a)(3) and that the district court did not err in limiting plaintiff's damages to the premiums withheld by defendant where plaintiff sought a legal, not equitable, remedy, and that, to the extent plaintiff sought to sanction defendant, this remedy was also not allowed under ERISA. The court also declined to use estoppel principles to modify the unambiguous terms of an ERISA plan. The court further held that the district court did not err in granting plaintiff's motion for summary judgment where defendant lacked standing to prosecute its cross-appeal where defendant was not aggrieved by a judgment requiring it to pay an amount that it always agreed that it owed and where defendant already refunded the premiums.

Appellants appealed an order revoking their pro hac vice admissions in connection with a putative class action suit where the suit alleged that appellants' clients breached supplemental cancer insurance policies that they had issued. At issue was whether the district court erred in revoking appellants' pro hac vice status where the revocation was based on motions appellants filed in response to plaintiffs' request for class certification, chiefly a motion to recuse the district judge based on his comments during an earlier hearing. The court vacated the revocation order and held that, even though the recusal motion had little merit, the district court erred in revoking appellants' pro hac vice admissions where it did not afford them even rudimentary process.

Defendant was convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud, and attempted destruction of evidence where he was in the business of selling merchandise over the Internet and then pocketing the money without sending along the products. At issue was whether the district court violated defendant's Confrontation Clause rights by relying on out-of-court statements of people who did not testify, and were never cross-examined, in determining that defendant harmed more than ten victims and that he caused just shy of $200,000 in losses. The court affirmed the judgment and held that the Confrontation Clause did not apply at sentencing proceedings like defendant's. The court concluded that its holding respected the traditional distinction between trial and sentencing, the sentencing court's need to consider a wide variety of evidence in choosing an appropriate sentence, and the sentencing judge's ability to properly evaluate that evidence. The court also held that defendant failed to demonstrate that the district court's failure to explain sentencing factors affected his substantial rights.