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Sanctions Concerning Arbitration Conduct Reversed, and Criminal, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights Matters

By FindLaw Staff on September 15, 2010 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

In Jackson v. Watkins, No. 09-10635, an action claiming that plaintiff, a veteran county prosecutor, was discharged on account of his race in violation of Title VII, the court affirmed summary judgment for defendants where plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence to rebut each of defendants' nondiscriminatory reasons for plaintiff's termination.

Positive Software Sols., Inc. v. New Century Mortg. Corp., No. 09-10355, involved defendant's attorney's appeal from the district court's imposition of sanctions for her conduct during arbitration.  The court reversed where the court lacked inherent authority to impose those sanctions.

In US v. Dowl, No. 09-31041, the court affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for wire fraud and theft of government funds, holding that  1) the alleged wire supported the wire fraud count, and the evidence presented at trial supported defendant's wire fraud conviction; 2) it was not error for the district court to define "steal," for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. section 641, to mean "the wrongful taking of money or property belonging to another with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently"; and 3) the district court was not required to treat the money transferred by Louisiana to the federal government as an offset to defendant's intended loss comparable to either amounts repaid by a defendant before a fraud is detected or investment money returned in a Ponzi scheme.

In US v. Johnson, No. 10-10126, the court affirmed defendant's bank robbery sentence where the case presented the type of situation where an abduction enhancement was proper, even though the victim remained within a single building.

In US v. Lipscomb, No. 09-10240, the court affirmed defendant's firearm possession sentence, holding that defendant pleaded guilty to a single-count indictment expressly charging him with possessing a sawed-off shotgun, a crime of violence.

In Cedar Lake Nursing Home v. US Dept. of Health & Hum. Servs., No. 10-60112, a petition for review of the Department of Health and Human Services' $5,000 per-instance civil monetary penalty levied against petitioner nursing home, the court dismissed the petition where 1) giving heightened deference to administrative decisions was appropriate, even on appeal from summary judgment, because agencies have particular subject-matter experience and expertise and are given more decisional latitude by legislatures than trial courts are; and 2) the ALJ's findings were not arbitrary, capricious, not in accordance to the law, or unsupported by substantial evidence.

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