Justia Contracts Opinion Summaries

Former customers of RCM, a subsidiary of the now-bankrupt Refco, appealed from a dismissal of their securities fraud claims against former corporate officers of Refco and Refco's former auditor. RCM operated as a securities and foreign exchange broker that traded in over-the-counter derivatives and other financial products on behalf of its clients. Appellants, investment companies and members of the putative class, claimed that appellees, former officers and directors of Refco, breached the agreements with the RCM customers when they rehypothecated or otherwise used securities and other property held in customer brokerage accounts. The district court dismissed the claims for lack of standing and failure to allege deceptive conduct. The court held that appellants have no remedy under the securities laws because, even assuming they have standing, they failed to make sufficient allegations that their agreements with RCM misled them or that RCM did not intend to comply with those agreements at the time of contracting.

Claimant appealed from a judgment of the district court ordering the forfeiture to plaintiff United States, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 401(a), of certain communication-jamming devices, to wit, the defendant-in-rem Jammers, owned by claimant and a company of which he was the majority shareholder and CEO. On appeal, claimant contended that the district court erred in dismissing his claim, arguing principally that the stipulation he signed was void on the grounds that it was signed under duress and without consideration. The court held that, as a matter of New York law, no consideration for claimant's agreement to the release was needed; and thus, if consideration was absent, its absence did not make the stipulation invalid. The court also held that claimant's assertions did not meet any part of the test of duress. The court further held that the district court correctly granted the government's motion to strike or for summary judgment on the ground of claimant's lack of Article III standing. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

This was an interlocutory appeal from an order of the district court denying a motion to dismiss a suit seeking confirmation of an international arbitration award. Appellant contended that the petition should be dismissed on the ground of forum non conveniens (FNC) in favor of an action in the courts of Peru. The court reversed and remanded with directions to dismiss the petition, concluding that the underlying claim arose from a contract executed in Peru, by a corporation then claiming to be a Peruvian domiciliary against an entity that appeared to be an instrumentality of the Peruvian government, with respect to work to be done in Peru, and the public factor of permitting Peru to apply its cap statute to the disbursement of governmental funds to satisfy the award tipped the FNC balance decisively against the exercise of jurisdiction in the United States.

Plaintiff sued defendant, with which she had a catastrophic medical insurance policy, because defendant told her that she had not yet "incurred" sufficient charges to satisfy its deductible. Plaintiff claimed that defendant's refusal to pay benefits rested on a deliberate misinterpretation of "incurred" and breached the insurance contract. The district court held that plaintiff, a Medicare recipient, could not have incurred charges that her physicians had agreed with Medicare to forgo prior to providing treatment. On appeal, plaintiff argued that the district court incorrectly read "incurred" in the insurance policy as including only those amounts that the insured paid or was legally obligated to pay. The court held, however, that the district court correctly interpreted "incurred," and therefore affirmed.

Plaintiffs appealed from a dismissal of their complaint, which sought a declaratory judgment that, inter alia, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) lacked the authority to bring court actions to collect disciplinary fines as imposed. The court held that the heavy weight of evidence suggested that Congress did not intend to empower FINRA to bring court proceedings to enforce its fines and that the 1990 Rule Change did not authorize FINRA to judicially enforce the collection of its disciplinary fines.

This appeal concerned tax deductions that Altria claimed in 1996 and 1997, and which the IRS disallowed. The claimed deductions resulted from Altria's participation in nine leveraged lease transactions with tax-indifferent entities. The jury found that Altria was not entitled to the claimed tax deductions. Applying the substance over form doctrine, the jury rejected Altria's contention that it retained a genuine ownership or leasehold interest in the assets and therefore was entitled to the tax deductions. The district court denied Altria's motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial and entered judgment for the government. The court affirmed and held that Altria had not shown that the district court erred in instructing the jury regarding the substance over form doctrine.

This action for breach of contract and related tort claims had its origin in a February 9, 2006 Credit and Security Agreement, wherein defendant agreed inter alia to provide plaintiff with a revolving line of credit. Plaintiff subsequently appealed from a judgment of dismissal entered by the district court, contending that the district court erred in relying on releases executed in favor of defendant, most recently in a forbearance agreement to dismiss its claims because its complaint pleaded that these releases were induced by economic duress. The court held that plaintiff failed to plead plausibly that defendant made a "wrongful threat," an essential element of economic duress. Rather, the conduct alleged to have caused duress evidences only the exercise of defendant's legal rights under the parties' original contract and subsequent agreements. Therefore, to the extent that those rights included defendant's exercise of "reasonable discretion" in various areas, plaintiff's allegations failed as a matter of law to plead actions exceeding the scope of such discretion. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgement of dismissal.

This appeal stemmed from numerous trademark and unfair competition claims over the name "Patsy's." Patsy's Italian Restaurant appealed, and Patsy's Pizzeria cross-appealed, from a judgment of the district court after a jury trial on claims brought pursuant to trademark and unfair competition law. The court upheld the district court's jury instructions; affirmed the district court's refusal to grant a new trial on the issue of whether Patsy's Pizzeria made fraudulent statements to the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as its refusal to vacate the jury's verdict that Patsy's Italian Restaurant did not fraudulently obtain its trademark registrations; affirmed the district court's refusal to reinstate Patsy's Pizzeria's trademark registrations; and upheld the district court's denial of attorneys' fees and injunctive relief. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

This case arose when plaintiff alleged that Citigroup, along with various rating agencies, airlines, and municipalities, conspired to block the use of her finance structure to issue Airline Special Facility bonds. Plaintiff subsequently appealed from a judgment of the district court dismissing her complaint and from the district court's order denying her postjudgment motion for reargument and reconsideration of the dismissal and for leave to replead. On appeal, plaintiff argued that the district court erred by, inter alia, dismissing the complaint without granting leave to replead, denying the postjudgment motion, and exercising supplemental jurisdiction to deny the remaining state law claims. The court held that the district court, in denying the postjudgment motions, applied a standard that overemphasized considerations of finality at the expense of the liberal amendment policy embodied in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Accordingly, the court vacated the order denying the postjudgment motion and so much of the judgment as retained supplemental jurisdiction and dismissed plaintiff's state law claims. The court remanded for further proceedings.

Petitioner sought review of three decisions of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) affirming in part and reversing in part the ALJ's findings with respect to allegations that AM Property Holding Corporation (AM) participated in a scheme with two successive cleaning contractors to avoid a bargaining obligation with petitioner after AM purchased a certain building. At issue was whether the NLRB erred by finding that: (1) AM was not a joint employer with either contractors; (2) the NLRB was precluded from determining whether one contractor was individually a successor employer to Clean-Right, the in-house cleaning division of the former owner of the building because the General Counsel had not litigated a violation based on that theory; and (3) petitioner was not entitled to additional remedies. The court rejected the first and third claims of error, but concluded that as to the second, the NLRB misunderstood its authority to determine whether one of the contractors was individually a successor employer to Clean-Right. Therefore, the court remanded so that the NLRB could reconsider this issue.