The case is a civil forfeiture action under 21 U.S.C. § 881 in which the government sought to seize real property and vehicles owned by Ronald Young, a Jamaican citizen previously deported for a drug conviction and later convicted of illegal reentry. Young, proceeding pro se, moved for summary judgment on the ground that evidence obtained during his October 2005 warrantless arrest must be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment, while the government cross-moved, arguing the properties were traceable to or used to facilitate controlled-substance violations. The court held that the arrest violated the Fourth Amendment because agents lacked a warrant for Young and no exigent circumstances justified the entry, requiring suppression of all derivative evidence. After excluding that evidence, the court concluded that a genuine issue of material fact remained as to whether the admissible evidence satisfied the government's burden for forfeiture and therefore denied both summary-judgment motions.
The case involves a father and grandparents suing federal officials including Attorney General Holder, the DOJ, and others to disclose the location of their child/grandchild who was placed in the Witness Security Program with his mother, who allegedly denies court-ordered custody and visitation rights, while also seeking enforcement of state custody orders and damages. The court partially granted the motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, dismissing the grandparents as plaintiffs and several defendants including McCarthy, Baker, and the DOJ, but allowing the father's claims against the mother under 18 U.S.C. § 3524(d)(5) and against Holder for mandamus to proceed. Core reasoning addressed the Witness Security Program Statute's specific provisions for child custody and visitation obligations, sovereign immunity, the domestic relations exception to jurisdiction, and the availability of mandamus for certain notification and service duties under the statute.
This case involves an appeal by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), which administers the FCC's universal service fund, from a bankruptcy court's denial of its motion to reconsider an order reducing its unsecured claim against debtor PT-1 Communications from over $5.7 million to about $2.5 million. The debtor had objected to the claim in 2002, and USAC failed to respond, attributing the failure to a change in its claims agent and notice address that was allegedly not properly updated. The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court's rulings, finding that USAC had received adequate notice of the objection, that any neglect was not excusable under Pioneer Investment Services standards, and that USAC's later motions under Bankruptcy Rules 3008 and 9024 and Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) were untimely. The court rejected arguments that the docket entries were deficient or that relief was available under Rule 60(b)(6).
The case involved the estate of Kevin Cerbelli suing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and several doctors for alleged negligence in prematurely discharging Cerbelli from psychiatric inpatient care in 1998 and failing to provide adequate outpatient treatment, which the plaintiff claimed contributed to his death when police officers shot him inside a precinct while he was emotionally disturbed, armed, and under the influence of cocaine. The district court reviewed the magistrate judge's report and recommendation, found no clear error on the face of the record, and adopted it in full. The court granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment in all respects, determining there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether the providers breached applicable standards of care or proximately caused the death.
The case involved an attorney's application under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b) for $10,203.50 in fees, equal to 25 percent of past-due SSDI benefits awarded to the client after a federal court remand for further proceedings. The court denied the application, filed nine months after the notice of award, as untimely. The core reasoning was that although § 406(b) contains no explicit filing deadline and no local rule applied, the unexplained delay was excessive and the application therefore failed to meet the requirement of prompt submission following an administrative award of benefits.
The case involved a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 filed by Nicholas Zimmerman challenging his New York state conviction for threatening a woman with a handgun. Zimmerman raised five main claims: ineffective assistance of trial counsel for waiving pretrial motions and failing to properly present an alibi defense, violation of his right to compulsory process when the trial court excluded alibi witnesses, improper bolstering of the victim's identification testimony, prosecutorial use of perjured testimony, and ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. The court denied the petition in full, reasoning that counsel's strategic choices were not deficient, any errors in witness exclusion or evidentiary rulings were harmless, the prosecution claims lacked factual support, and other arguments were either unexhausted or procedurally barred.