Justia U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The 57-year-old woman, diagnosed with frozen shoulder and later with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stopped medical treatment in 2003, having no health insurance and income of $4500 to $9000 a year as a clerical worker. Her last significant employment, as a hotel night-clerk, ended in 2007. She got another clerical job, but was immediately fired because unable to lift a box of paper. She sought social security disability benefits and resumed treatment. She had regained the full range of motion, but muscles in her arms and shoulders were weak and she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, causing bronchitis, respiratory infections, and shortness of breath. The ALJ decided that she was capable of performing as hotel clerk and was not disabled; he disregarded findings by a doctor whom he had appointed and with whom the applicant had no prior relationship. He noted the “lack of aggressive treatment” and that she smoked, overlooking that she stopped smoking 30 years earlier. The ALJ focused on her ability to do laundry, take public transportation, and grocery shop. The Appeals Council declined review. The Seventh Circuit remanded, stating that: “Really the Social Security Administration and the Justice Department should have been able to do better.” View "Hughes v. Astrue" on Justia Law

OCV supplies equipment and licenses software for in-room hotel entertainment and sought a judgment of $641,959.54 against Roti, the owner of companies (Markwell, now defunct) that owned hotels to which OCV provided services. The district judge granted summary judgment, piercing the corporate veil, but rejecting a fraud claim. The Seventh Circuit reversed. While the Markwell companies were under-funded, OCV failed to treat the companies as separate businesses and proceed accordingly in the bankruptcy proceedings of one of the companies and made no effort to determine the solvency of the companies. View "On Command Video Corp. v. Roti" on Justia Law

The Mungiki are a violent, outlawed sect, notorious for extortion, torture, and murder by dismemberment. The Kenyan government has been unable to bring the group under control. At age 14, Wanjiru accepted his teacher’s invitation to join the Mungiki, unaware of the group’s character. He was afraid to leave because the Mungiki punish defectors by execution. At age 20 he came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2005. He briefly attended school. He was arrested in 2009, following a sexual encounter with a woman he met in a nightclub while intoxicated. Wanjiru pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and received a suspended sentence, requiring surrender to immigration authorities. He petitioned for withholding of removal under 8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3) and deferral under the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The IJ found that Wanjiru was convicted of a “particularly serious crime,” was not persuaded of the Kenyan government’s acquiescence in the threat to Wanjiru, and denied relief. The BIA affirmed. The Seventh Circuit remanded, stating that the CAT does not exist only for persons with unblemished records. The possibility of deferring removal rather than withholding it exists for people who might be undesirables but who are entitled not to be sent to experience torture.View "Wanjiru v. Holder" on Justia Law

Hentz is an accountant with a firm employed by pension funds to perform accounting and auditing services. The firm possessed a compact disc containing confidential and protected information, including the names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of approximately 30,000 participants and beneficiaries of the funds. The firm agreed in writing to ensure that it would safeguard the information on the compact disc. Hentz placed the compact disc in a laptop, put the laptop in her personal vehicle, and parked in the open at her residence. The laptop and disc were stolen. The funds incurred nearly $200,000 in credit monitoring and insurance expenses and sued Hentz, who tendered the defense to Nationwide, which had written her homeowner’s insurance policy. Nationwide obtained a declaration that it had no duty to defend or indemnify Hentz because the policy does not cover damage to property rented to, occupied or used by or in the care of the insured or arising out of or in connection with a business conducted from an insured location or engaged in by an insured, whether or not the business is owned or operated by an insured or employs an insured. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. View "Nationwide Ins. Co. v. Central Laborers' Pension Fund" on Justia Law

McMurtrey pled guilty and was sentenced to 180 months in prison for possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine with intent to deliver and possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B); 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The plea reserved his right to appeal denial of his motion to suppress. He claimed that the warrant was obtained with an affidavit that was deliberately or recklessly false. McMurtrey made a sufficient preliminary showing under Franks by offering police officers’ affidavits that were contradictory on which of two houses should be searched. The affidavits also indicated that each officer previously had contradicted himself in providing information to the other. Rather than hold a full Franks hearing, the district court held a pre-Franks hearing and permitted the government to offer additional evidence. The defense was not permitted full cross-examination. The court relied on the evidence to find that the defense was not entitled to a full Franks hearing. The Seventh Circuit vacated, holding that the procedure was erroneous. A court should not allow the government to present its evidence on the validity of the warrant without converting the hearing into a full evidentiary Franks hearing, including cross-examination. View "United States v. McMurtrey" on Justia Law

Aguirre pled guilty to violating 8 U.S.C. 1326(a) by illegally reentering the U.S. after a prior deportation that had followed a felony conviction and was sentenced to 48 months in prison. He argued that he should receive a below-guideline sentence because the Northern District of Illinois did not have a “fast-track program” to defendants shorter sentences in exchange for very prompt guilty pleas and waiver of nearly all trial and appellate rights. While the district court imposed a sentence that was below the guideline range, the downward variance was not based on the lack of a fast-track program. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The prosecutor’s response to Aguirre’s request for a fast-track plea agreement was not deceptive and the prosecutor’s argument at sentencing, to the effect that Aguirre failed to show he could have qualified for fast-track status under any program in any other district, was both accurate and fair. The district judge did not legally err in his understanding of fast-track disparity mitigation arguments at sentencing. The court noted that it has never imposed requirements that a defendant must fulfill before making a fast-track disparity argument at sentencing. View "United States v. Anaya-Aguirre" on Justia Law

Clarke cooperated in a scheme to defraud her employer. The scheme netted more than $250,000; Clarke’s share was $50,000. She pled guilty to committing a fraudulent act that caused a loss of $8,000 and was sentenced to 14 months. Clarke was a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. An alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony is deportable, 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii); “aggravated felony” includes an offense that involves fraud in which the loss exceeds $10,000. Removal proceedings were instituted after Clarke completed her prison sentence. She filed a 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion asking that her conviction be set aside because neither the judge nor her lawyer had advised her that she could be removed if convicted. Her lawyer had told her there might be “immigration consequences.” The district court denied the motion. She has been removed to Jamaica. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The one-year statute of limitations begins to run on the date on which the conviction becomes final. A lawyer’s failure to advise his client concerning a critical consequence of conviction can be a “fact” supporting a claim of ineffective assistance, but in this case it could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence within a year after the plea. View "Clarke v. United States" on Justia Law

The Chicago-area law firms (Anderson) represent plaintiffs in class action lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act-Junk Fax Prevention Act, which authorizes $500 in damages for faxing an unsolicited advertisement, 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1)(C), (b)(3). This award triples upon a showing of willfulness, and each transmission is a separate violation. Advertisers would pay a fee, and B2B would send an ad to hundreds of fax numbers without obtaining permission from the recipients. When Anderson learned that defendants in four cases under the Act had contracted with B2B, B2B records became the focus of discovery. Despite obtaining all information necessary to certify classes in the four cases, Anderson continued pushing for B2B, and, at a deposition at which B2B was represented by Ruben, obtained the names of other B2B clients, and sent solicitation letters. Anderson attempted to give Ruben $ 5000. Defendants in new cases learned that Anderson had promised B2B confidentiality and unsuccessfully challenged class certification. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, stating that when an ethical breach neither prejudices an attorney’s client nor undermines the integrity of judicial proceedings, state bar authorities are generally better positioned to address the matter through disciplinary proceedings, rather than the courts through substantive sanction in the underlying lawsuit. View "Reliable Money Order, Inc. v. McKnight Sales Co., Inc." on Justia Law

In a trial on drug charges, the district court excluded an exhibit labeled “Roberson Seizure 2,” the testimony of Koop about the recovery of latent fingerprints from that exhibit, and testimony regarding comparison of the latent prints with patent fingerprints known to be the defendant’s. The judge suspected that the government had tampered with the fingerprint evidence and threatened to grant a mistrial on the ground of prosecutorial misconduct. The Seventh Circuit ordered that the evidence be admitted and that the case be reassigned to another judge. The trial resumed and resulted in conviction of the defendant and a sentence of 340 months. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting challenges to the fingerprint evidence and to the impact of the 11-day hiatus on jurors. With respect to its earlier mandamus decision, the Seventh Circuit stated that the district judge “seriously disrupted the prosecution’s case … on the basis of utterly baseless but damaging imputations of grave (criminal, really) prosecutorial misconduct. View "United States v. Herrera" on Justia Law

An officer stopped the car because Weir, a front-seat passenger, was not wearing his seat belt. The officer ascertained that the driver lacked valid registration documents or proof of insurance, but possessed only an open title. The officer decided to impound the car. He ordered the passengers out of the vehicle and asked whether they possessed any weapons. Weir told the officer that he had a pocketknife. The officer conducted a patdown, removed the small pocketknife from the pocket of Weir’s trousers, and felt an object in Weir’s pocket that he believed was a large sum of money. The officer removed the money from Weir’s pocket, counted $6,655, and seized it. As the traffic stop progressed, officers determined that the car had been reported stolen and that there were digital scales in the car that could be characterized as drug paraphernalia. Weir was allowed to leave the scene, but the driver later implicated Weir in a drug conspiracy, claiming that the money was the proceeds. The Seventh Circuit rejected Weir’s challenge to the seizure of the money and later denied rehearing. View "United States v. Weir" on Justia Law