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

A jury awarded plaintiff $1 million on his claims against Sparrows Point for nonpayment of a commission on the sale of a large parcel of industrial property located on the Sparrows Point peninsula. Defendants contend that the evidence is insufficient to support the jury's verdict as to all claims. In the alternative, they seek a new trial, contending that the district court erred in admitting evidence of an alleged effort to compromise plaintiff's claim to a commission and in granting plaintiff a jury trial.The Fourth Circuit held that the evidence of defendants' effort to compromise plaintiff's claim was not admissible for any purpose under Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and the error was not harmless. The court explained that, even assuming that the evidence is sufficient as a matter of law to support the jury's verdict, the court cannot be confident that the jury was not substantially swayed by the evidentiary error. Therefore, the court held that defendants are entitled to a new trial. Finally, the court found that the district court enjoyed ample discretion to grant plaintiff's untimely request for a jury trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 39(b), and thus the new trial may remain before a jury. View "Macsherry v. Sparrows Point, LLC" on Justia Law

MSI, a non-profit organization dedicated to gun owner rights, individuals, and Atlantic, a family-owned, federally licensed firearms dealer that operates Maryland commercial gun stores, challenged Maryland Senate Bill 707 banning "rapid-fire trigger activators," which when attached to a firearm, increase its rate of fire or trigger activation, citing the Takings Clause and alleging that the statute was void for vagueness. The Fourth Circuit initially affirmed the dismissal of the complaint for lack of standing.In an amended opinion, the court reversed in part. Atlantic has standing to pursue the Second Amendment claim. Uncontroverted testimony plus Maryland State Police records and Atlantic's year-over-year sales records are sufficient to establish an injury in fact for purposes of Article III standing. The extent of Atlantic's economic injury—including its ability to identify lost customers as well as the scope of the purported decline in handguns sold and lost revenue— are material issues of fact to be resolved in the Second Amendment analysis on the merits. Atlantic also has third-party standing to challenge the handgun qualification license requirement on behalf of potential customers like the individual plaintiffs and other similarly situated persons. The court otherwise affirmed the dismissal. MSI lacked organizational standing; it failed to prove the law hindered its ability to pursue its mission. The individual plaintiffs had not sought licenses. View "Maryland Shall Issue, Inc. v. Hogan" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit vacated defendant's conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm in light of United States v. Medley, ---F.3d--- (4th Cir. 2020). In Medley, the court held that the failure of an indictment to provide proper notice combined with an improper jury instruction that omits an element of a crime are substantial errors that ought to be corrected under plain error review.In this case, defendant argued that Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), renders his indictment and conviction invalid where neither the indictment nor the jury instructions included a crucial element of the offense—that he knew his relevant status when he possessed the firearm. Applying Medley, the court held that the errors in this case warrant correction where defendant's indictment failed to provide him with notice that the Government would attempt to prove that he knew his prohibited status; afterwards, his conviction was predicated on an indictment that failed to allege an essential element of an offense and a verdict by a jury that was informed the Government was not required to prove that defendant knew his prohibited status; and, at trial, there was little—if any—evidence presented that would support that defendant knew his prohibited status. Therefore, the errors occurred at the inception of the Government's case against defendant and continued throughout. The court remanded with instructions to the district court to enter judgment dismissing the count without prejudice. View "United States v. Green" on Justia Law

A motion pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3583(e)(2) cannot be used to challenge the terms or conditions of supervised release on the ground that they are unlawful.After defendant pleaded guilty to two counts related to his role in a commercial sex operation and received a sentence of 70 months' imprisonment and five years' supervised release, the district court required that he register as a sex offender as a condition of supervised release. Defendant moved to modify the conditions of his supervised release under section 3583(e)(2), contending that the sex offender registration condition was illegal as applied to his offense of conviction. The district court denied the motion and defendant appealed. The Fourth Circuit held that defendant's motion for modification attacked the registration requirement on the ground that it was unlawful, using a motion under section 3583(e)(2) as a pathway to bring such a challenge presumably because other pathways (including a direct appeal) are now foreclosed. The court stated that defendant's current section 3583(e)(2) challenge is impermissible because it rests on the factual and legal premises that existed at the time of his sentencing. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal. View "United States v. McLeod" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2241 habeas application, rejecting his claim that he is entitled to habeas relief based on United States v. Chamberlain, 868 F.3d 290, 295 (4th Cir. 2017) (en banc), and the Sixth Amendment. In Chamberlain, the court held that the criminal forfeiture statute permits freezing only those assets traceable to the charged offense.The court held that petitioner failed to show that section 2255 would be "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." In this case, the court's existing "savings clause" jurisprudence makes abundantly clear that a section 2255 motion is fully adequate to address alleged Sixth Amendment violations. Furthermore, petitioner's statutory claim still fails the court's "savings clause" tests. Therefore, the district court properly dismissed the section 2241 application for lack of jurisdiction. View "Farkas v. Warden" on Justia Law

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 can protect transgender students from school bathroom policies that prohibit them from affirming their gender.Plaintiff, a transgender male, filed suit alleging that the school board's bathroom policy, which excluded him from the boys bathrooms, violated the Equal Protection Clause and constituted discrimination on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX. Plaintiff subsequently amended his complaint to add that the school board's refusal to amend his school records similarly violates both equal protection and Title IX.After rejecting the school board's threshold challenges, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of plaintiff. The court held that the school board's restroom policy constitutes sex-based discrimination and, independently, that transgender persons constitute a quasi-suspect class. Applying heightened scrutiny, the court held that the school board's policy is not substantially related to its important interest in protecting students' privacy. The court also held that the school board's continued refusal to update plaintiff's school records similarly violates his equal protection rights where the school board's decision is not substantially related to its important interest in maintaining accurate records because his legal gender in the state of Virginia is male, not female. In regard to the Title IX claims, the court held that the bathroom policy discriminated against plaintiff on the basis of sex and that plaintiff suffered legally cognizable harm based on the unlawful discrimination. Likewise, the school board's failure to amend plaintiff's school records violated Title IX.Finally, the court noted that the proudest moments of the federal judiciary have been when it affirms the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserves the prejudices of the past. View "Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board" on Justia Law

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2254 motion for habeas relief, raising Sixth Amendment claims. Petitioner was convicted of beating, shooting, and robbing a prostitute in a hotel room.The court held that the state court's adjudication of petitioner's claims on the merits was neither unreasonable nor inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. In this case, petitioner alleged that his lawyer should have sought forensic testing of various items in the hotel room to bolster his story. The court held that the state court reasonably determined that counsel's performance was not deficient as to the items found in the hotel room, and the state court reasonably determined that the failure to test petitioner's sock did not cause prejudice. View "Valentino v. Clarke" on Justia Law

Defendants conditionally pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States with the substantive offense being a violation of the Anti-Riot Act. Defendants' charges arose from their violent participation in three white supremacist rallies during 2017.The Fourth Circuit held that, while the category of speech that lies at the core of the Anti-Riot Act's prohibition, called "incitement," has never enjoyed First Amendment protection, the statute sweeps up a substantial amount of speech that remains protected advocacy under the modern incitement test of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (per curiam), insofar as it encompasses speech tending to "encourage" or "promote" a riot under 18 U.S.C. 2101(a)(2), as well as speech "urging" others to riot or "involving" mere advocacy of violence under section 2102(b).However, the court held that, in all other respects, the statute comports with the First Amendment. Because the discrete instances of overbreadth are severable from the remainder of the statute, the court held that the appropriate remedy is to invalidate the statute only to the extent that it reaches too far, while leaving the remainder intact. Finally, the court held that defendants' convictions stand because the factual basis of defendants' guilty pleas conclusively establish that their own substantive offense conduct—which involves no First Amendment activity—falls under the Anti-Riot Act's surviving applications. View "United States v. Miselis" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a wrongful death action on behalf of herself and the estate of her late husband, alleging that defendants manufactured, installed, or supplied asbestos-containing products that caused his mesothelioma and resulting death. After the jury found Covil liable and awarded plaintiff $32.7 million in compensatory damages, Covil appealed.The Fourth Circuit affirmed, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion by instructing the jury as to proximate cause. In this case, the district court's detailed instruction on substantial factor causation gave proper guidance to the jury to determine whether Covil's insulation constituted a substantial factor in the husband's mesothelioma, and it embodies the "general principles of law" set forth by Lohrmann v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp., 782 F.2d 1156, 1162 (4th Cir. 1986). The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to reduce the award where Covil waived its federal law argument; the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the verdict was not excessive as a matter of law; and without evidence of passion or prejudice, the court cannot replace the jury's considered judgment with its own, or with an amount that Covil would prefer. View "Finch v. Covil Corp." on Justia Law

Petitioner has been in prison for 44 years for a rape and burglary that he consistently maintained that he did not commit, claiming that police deliberately suppressed exculpatory evidence. The district court dismissed his petition for federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254, concluding that the MAR (Motion for Appropriate Relief) Court's decision did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. The MAR Court concluded that the cumulative effect of the withheld Brady evidence would have had no impact on petitioner's trial.The Fourth Circuit held that the MAR Court's analysis subjected petitioner to an enhanced burden, unreasonably applied Supreme Court law, and was objectively unreasonable. In this case, considering both the exculpatory and impeachment effects of the suppressed evidence, together with the shortfalls in the victim's identification and consistent testimony from alibi witnesses, the withheld evidence "could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict." Therefore, the court vacated the district court's dismissal of the petition. Because the district court failed to address the issue of whether the petition can survive the threshold requirements pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the court remanded for the district court to consider the issue in the first instance and to permit further discovery requested by petitioner. View "Long v. Hooks" on Justia Law