The case involves a plaintiff injured after tripping on a raised gym floor during a cheerleading event at a public high school; the event was sponsored by a private company rather than the school board, though the board retained responsibility for the facility's condition. The Floyd County Board of Education moved to dismiss the tort suit on grounds of governmental immunity. The court denied the motion because it was not yet clear whether the board's action in permitting the private use qualified as a governmental function integral to state education or a proprietary function akin to a for-profit business. Further information on fees charged and the board's purpose was needed to resolve the immunity question under Kentucky precedent distinguishing the two categories of activity.
The case arose after Kentucky West Virginia Gas Co. reorganized and dispersed employees from a union-represented bargaining unit into non-unionized subsidiaries, leading the union to file a grievance (08-28) alleging that the employer failed to properly terminate the collective bargaining agreement and promise good-faith negotiations for a new one. The union sued under § 301 of the LMRA to compel arbitration of the grievance. The court held that the dispute is primarily representational because resolving it would require an initial determination of whether the union remains the § 9(a) representative of an appropriate bargaining unit under the NLRA, a matter within the NLRB's exclusive jurisdiction. Accordingly, the court granted the employer's Rule 59(e) motion, vacated its prior order compelling arbitration, and entered judgment for the employer.
The case concerned Martin County Coal's attempt to recover from Universal Underwriters, the insurer of its contractor CMS, for a $3.65 million settlement amount plus fees arising from a workplace injury lawsuit at a mine site. After an accident injuring CMS employee Phillip Crum, the parties settled with CMS assigning its claim against Universal to Martin County Coal, following Universal's refusal to defend CMS against Martin County Coal's indemnity counterclaim. The court had earlier ruled that Universal breached its duty to defend, but on summary judgment it held that the insurance policy limited coverage to situations of actual liability by the insured. Universal demonstrated through the record and case law that CMS would not have been liable at trial, while Martin County Coal provided no meaningful evidence in response, leading the court to grant summary judgment to Universal and dismiss the case.
This case arose from a 2008 car accident involving a tired mine employee, leading to state-court tort suits against Murriel-Don Coal that resulted in a $42 million judgment after coverage disputes with its insurer Aspen. Aspen filed a federal declaratory judgment action seeking a ruling that its policy's automobile exclusion barred any duty to defend or indemnify Murriel-Don in the underlying state litigation. The district court granted motions to dismiss, declining to exercise jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2201. The court reasoned that the Declaratory Judgment Act confers substantial discretion to avoid gratuitous interference with parallel state proceedings, and that the five Grand Trunk factors—including the state court's superior ability to resolve the identical coverage issues and the risk of inconsistent judgments—strongly favored dismissal over federal adjudication.
In this case, Murriel-Don Coal sued its insurer Aspen and its former attorneys Dunaway in Kentucky state court, asserting claims for breach of contract, failure to defend under an insurance policy, unfair claims practices, legal malpractice, and breach of fiduciary duty after a default judgment was entered against it in an underlying negligence action involving an employee car accident. Aspen removed the action to federal court on diversity grounds, contending that the non-diverse Kentucky defendants Dunaway had been fraudulently joined or misjoined solely to prevent removal. The court granted Murriel-Don's motion to remand, concluding that the claims against Dunaway were not so frivolous as to constitute fraudulent joinder and that all claims arose from the same series of transactions with common questions of fact, precluding application of the fraudulent misjoinder doctrine either.
In Turner v. Astrue, the plaintiff sought attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act after a district court remand of his Social Security disability claim, though he had not yet received benefits and thus had no payment obligation under his contingency fee agreement with counsel. The court had previously denied the fee request, holding that no fees were "incurred" within the meaning of the EAJA, and now denies the plaintiff's Rule 60(b) motion to vacate that order in light of the Fifth Circuit's contrary decision in Murkeldove v. Astrue. The court reasons that waivers of sovereign immunity must be strictly construed, that the plaintiff's contingent obligation had not been triggered, and that the Fifth Circuit's analysis improperly relies on policy considerations and the absurdity doctrine rather than the statute's plain text. The court further notes that it lacks jurisdiction to grant relief while the appeal is pending but indicates it would not do so in any event.
