The Supreme Court granted cert. on January 12, 2018, to review Appling v. Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP (In re Appling), 848 F.3d 953 (11th Cir. 2017), which we reported on below. The case, which involves the bankruptcy discharge exception for fraud, will be heard this term. Posted by Tom Byrne.
Author: Wendy Spiro
Court Limits Right to Cure Improper “Shotgun” Pleadings
The term “shotgun pleading” refers to a complaint that, for one reason or other, fails to give the defendants adequate notice of the claims against them. In the Eleventh Circuit, courts have identified roughly four categories of shotgun pleadings: (1) a pleading with multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all preceding counts;…
Eleventh Circuit Declines to Revisit Dreadlocks Discrimination Case En Banc
Nearly a full year after issuing a revised opinion supporting an initial holding that hairstyles and other “cultural characteristics”—like dreadlocks—cannot form the basis for a Title VII claim of intentional racial discrimination, the Eleventh Circuit denied the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s petition for rehearing en banc in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions (CMS), 2017 WL…
Bankruptcy Debtors Can Recover Attorneys’ Fees Spent in Enforcing Stay and Seeking Damages, Including for Appeals
Richard and Patricia Horne filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. After the bankruptcy was filed and the automatic stay imposed by Section 362(a)(1) went into effect, Mary Mantiply, an attorney, filed a state court action against the Hornes on behalf of Mantiply’s client. Mantiply repeatedly refused to dismiss the case,…
A Private Plaintiff Cannot Sue FINRA for a Violation of Its Own Rules
In Turbeville v. FINRA, 2017 WL 4938821 (11th Cir. Nov. 1, 2017), a panel of the Eleventh Circuit held that a former registered representative’s purported state-law claims against FINRA were properly dismissed because there exists no private right of action against FINRA, a self-regulatory organization (“SRO”), for alleged violations of its own rules. In 2009,…
Rival Class Counsel Battle Over Settlement
An unseemly squabble between rival class-action firms drew the attention of the Eleventh Circuit in Technology Training Associates, Inc. v. Buccaneers Ltd. Partnership, 2017 WL 4819371 (11th Cir. Oct. 26, 2017). The court remanded the case for further combat over approval of an approximately $20 million class action settlement in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act…
Court Compels Individual Arbitration of Consumer Class Action
In Larsen v. Citibank FSB, 871 F.3d 1295 (11th Cir. Sept. 26, 2017), the Eleventh Circuit reversed the Southern District of Florida’s denial of a motion to compel arbitration of a consumer debt class action. The plaintiff, David Johnson, filed a putative class action alleging that Defendant KeyBank had improperly changed the sequence of debit…
You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: “Midco” Transaction Exposes Sellers to Transferee Liability
Consider the following situation: You’re a major stockholder in a corporation whose assets have appreciated in value, and you want to sell. You would really like to structure the deal as a sale of stock in order to avoid capital gains tax on the corporation’s appreciated assets. When you contact potential buyers, you find that…
“This is a tax case. Fear not, keep reading.”
These are the opening words of Judge Kevin Newsom’s opinion for the court in Morrissey v. United States, 2017 WL 4229063 (11th Cir. Sept. 25, 2017). What interested the court in the case were two issues: whether the expenses that a gay man incurred to father children through in vitro fertilization are deductible medical expenses…
Government Official Entitled to Qualified Immunity—No Clearly Established First Amendment Violation in Not Promoting Employee Based on Father’s Speech
In last term’s decision in White v. Pauly, the Supreme Court observed that it has “issued a number of opinions reversing federal courts in qualified immunity cases” in recent years. 137 S. Ct. 548, 551 (2017). In other words, lower courts have been too quick to conclude that challenged conduct violates “clearly established federal statutory…