Mary Margaret McKeown

The case concerned Daniel O. Oyeniran, a Nigerian citizen and U.S. lawful permanent resident facing removal, who sought deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture based on his fear of torture due to his father’s Christian activities opposing Sharia law, along with a motion to reopen proceedings with new evidence. The Ninth Circuit granted Oyeniran’s petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decisions denying CAT protection and the motion to reopen. The court held that collateral estoppel required the BIA to accept its prior findings that Islamic extremists had tortured Oyeniran’s family with the government’s acquiescence because of his father’s religious advocacy. It further ruled that the BIA abused its discretion in refusing to reopen the case, because Oyeniran presented significant new evidence—an arrest warrant issued against him personally for opposing Sharia law—that he could not reasonably have obtained earlier. On remand, the BIA must evaluate all the evidence, using its prior factual findings as a baseline, to determine whether Oyeniran faces a greater than fifty percent chance of torture if returned to Nigeria.

immigrationreligious libertyprocedure

The case involved the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Stockton suing BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad over petroleum contamination that migrated onto a former rail property in Stockton through an underground french drain installed decades earlier by the railroads' predecessors during track relocation. The Ninth Circuit held that the railroads were not liable under common-law nuisance or California's Polanco Redevelopment Act. The court reasoned that the record showed no active or knowing causation of the contamination by the railroads, and that they were not "owners" under the Polanco Act's CERCLA-based provision because they held only an easement at the time of the spill and were not operators responsible for the release. The court therefore reversed summary judgment for the Agency on the nuisance and Water Code claims and remanded for entry of judgment for the railroads while affirming summary judgment for the railroads on the CERCLA-based claim.

environmentpropertytorts & liability

The case involved an Indonesian citizen's petition for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT relief, based on his daughter's past female genital mutilation in Indonesia without parental consent and his fear that his other daughter would face the same procedure if the family returned. The petitioner also claimed persecution due to his marriage to a Catholic woman. The BIA had denied relief, finding the procedure was a less severe form that did not qualify as persecution and rejecting the social group claim. The Ninth Circuit held that the BIA erred by failing to treat the mutilation as persecution under circuit precedent and by not considering the risk to the second daughter, while substantial evidence supported rejection of the social group persecution claim. The court granted the petition and remanded for further proceedings.

immigration

This case involves a lawsuit by Nikki Pooshs against tobacco companies for personal injuries allegedly caused by smoking, including her terminal lung cancer, with claims including negligence, product liability, fraud, and conspiracy. The district court dismissed the claims as barred by the statute of limitations based on her earlier 1989 diagnosis of COPD and 1990 diagnosis of periodontal disease. The Ninth Circuit certified two questions to the California Supreme Court asking when separate physical injuries from the same wrongdoing may be viewed as invading different primary rights under California law and whether such injuries may be considered qualitatively different for purposes of when the limitations period begins to run. The court stayed all proceedings pending the state supreme court's answers, emphasizing that the outcome depends entirely on those responses.

torts & liabilityprocedure

This case concerns whether postal inspectors employed by the U.S. Postal Service are entitled to overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or instead are governed solely by the comparability pay requirements of 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c). The district court granted summary judgment to the Postal Service, holding that § 1003(c) permits availability pay modeled on the Law Enforcement Availability Pay Act rather than FLSA overtime. The Ninth Circuit reversed that ruling, reasoning that FLSA overtime presumptively applies to federal employees unless a specific exemption exists and that Congress did not explicitly repeal the FLSA when enacting § 1003(c). The court remanded for a determination of whether any comparable executive-branch employees receive FLSA overtime and whether the inspectors qualify for any FLSA exemption, while affirming the district court’s discovery order.

labor & employmentfederal power

The case concerned whether private disability insurance benefits received by one of the debtors should be included in their current monthly income for purposes of the bankruptcy means test under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The U.S. Trustee moved to dismiss the Chapter 7 petition, arguing that including the benefits created a presumption of abuse. The bankruptcy court agreed and dismissed the case, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed on direct appeal. The court reasoned that the statutory definition of current monthly income encompasses all sources of income without regard to taxability, rejecting the debtors' argument to tie it to the Internal Revenue Code's definition of gross income.

business & regulatoryproceduretaxes

This case involved a challenge by Frank Buono to a Latin cross erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve as a World War I memorial. The district court found the cross violated the Establishment Clause and issued an injunction requiring its removal. While the appeal was pending, Congress passed a law directing the Secretary of the Interior to transfer the one-acre parcel to the VFW in exchange for equivalent private land, conditioned on maintaining the site as a memorial. The Ninth Circuit amended its opinion to hold that a land sale does not presumptively end an Establishment Clause violation, agreeing with a transaction-by-transaction, fact-specific approach that examines the substance rather than the form of the transfer.

religious libertycivil rights

The case concerned whether the 2004 amendment to the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act, which expanded mandatory DNA collection to all federal felons on supervised release, violated the Fourth Amendment. Thomas Kriesel, convicted of conspiracy to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute and on supervised release, refused to provide a DNA sample and challenged the statute after it was applied to him. The Ninth Circuit upheld the Act, holding that it satisfied the Fourth Amendment because supervised releasees have diminished privacy expectations and the government's interests in accurate identification, solving crimes, and deterring recidivism outweighed those expectations. The court noted that every other circuit to consider the amended statute had reached the same conclusion and rejected Kriesel's claims that the collection constituted an unreasonable search or lacked sufficient safeguards.

criminal lawcivil rights

The case involved Intri-Plex Technologies suing Crest Ultrasonics for damages from defective hot air dryer filters that caused corrosion in computer disk drive baseplates, leading to customer recalls and losses. Intri-Plex's insurer had previously filed a subrogation action in state court asserting similar claims against Crest, which settled and was dismissed with prejudice. The district court granted Crest's motion to dismiss, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the suit constituted an impermissible splitting of a single cause of action barred by res judicata because the claims arose from the same underlying facts and transaction, and Intri-Plex had the opportunity to intervene in the prior litigation but did not. The court rejected arguments that uninsured losses or lack of waiver by Crest altered the outcome.

proceduretorts & liability

This case concerned whether postal inspectors employed by the U.S. Postal Service are entitled to overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or whether their pay is instead governed exclusively by 39 U.S.C. § 1003(c), which requires compensation on a 'comparability' basis to other federal law enforcement employees and has been implemented through an 'availability pay' system. The district court granted summary judgment to the Postal Service, concluding that § 1003(c) permits availability pay in lieu of FLSA overtime. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that FLSA overtime provisions presumptively apply to federal employees like the inspectors unless a specific exemption exists, and that Congress neither explicitly nor impliedly repealed the FLSA when enacting § 1003(c) because the statutes are not clearly in conflict. The court remanded for determination of whether the inspectors qualify for any FLSA exemption or are otherwise entitled to overtime.

labor & employment

The case involved Jorge Mejia, a Salvadoran immigrant and U.S. citizen's spouse with U.S. citizen children, who faced removal based on 1989 convictions for child molestation and lewd acts on a minor under California law; he sought adjustment of status and a discretionary waiver of inadmissibility under INA § 212(h). The Immigration Judge and BIA denied relief under a 2002 Attorney General regulation, 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(d), which requires a showing of exceptional and extremely unusual hardship for waivers involving violent or dangerous crimes, rather than the statutory extreme hardship standard. The Ninth Circuit held that the regulation was a valid exercise of the Attorney General's statutory authority to prescribe terms for waivers and could apply to convictions finalized before the regulation's effective date, as it guides discretion without conflicting with the statute. The court denied the petitions for review, finding the convictions qualified as violent crimes and that Mejia had not met the heightened standard, while also declining jurisdiction over certain discretionary claims.

immigrationcriminal law

The case involved the convictions of Pamela and James Moran for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, aiding in the preparation of false federal income tax returns, and related mail and wire fraud counts arising from their roles training salespeople for Anderson's Ark and Associates tax reduction plans marketed to clients. The district court allowed expert testimony describing certain transactions as shams, gave Pinkerton jury instructions, admitted coconspirator records, and excluded Mrs. Moran's proffered testimony about outside legal opinions on the programs' legality on hearsay and Rule 403 grounds. The appellate court affirmed the rulings on the expert testimony, jury instructions, and records but reversed the convictions and remanded for a new trial because the excluded testimony was critical to the defendants' good faith defense and the tax fraud and fraud counts were inextricably linked in the government's presentation.

criminal lawtaxesprocedure