Justia Injury Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, the personal representative of the Estate of Dorothy Brown, appealed from summary judgment certified as final pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) in favor of Noxubee General Hospital (Noxubee) and Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle (Baptist) and from a summary judgment in favor of Eli Lilly and Company (Eli Lilly). The action that gave rise to this appeal, removed from state court in Mississippi to a federal district court in Mississippi, and thereafter transferred to the Eastern District of New York, was brought to recover for the wrongful death of Ms. Brown allegedly due to her treatment with the drug Zyprexa, which was manufactured by Eli Lilly. An earlier appeal from the certified judgment in favor of Noxubee was withdrawn by stipulation. A motion to remand, predicated on the lack of diversity on the parts of Noxubee and Baptist were denied following the issuance of all the orders granting summary judgment. The court held that the appeals from the judgments entered in favor of Noxubee and Baptist were dismissed and the judgment dismissing the action against Eli Lilly were affirmed.

This case stemmed from the sexual assault of plaintiff by a male sheriff's deputy while she was being held in pretrial confinement at the Erie County Holding Center. At issue was whether plaintiff adduced sufficient evidence of municipal liability for this violation of due process to support a jury verdict returned in her favor against Erie County and its then-policy maker, former County Sheriff Patrick Gallivan. The court held that defendants were not entitled to judgment as a matter of law because the evidence was sufficient to support the jury verdict in favor of plaintiff on a municipal liabilities claim under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The court also held that defendants were not entitled to a new trial because the errors they asserted in Question Two of the special verdict form and the verdict itself were not properly preserved for appellate review. Accordingly, the judgment in favor of defendants on the 1983 claim was reversed and the case remanded with instructions to enter judgment on that claim consistent with the jury verdict in favor of plaintiff.

Plaintiff, an employee of The Long Island Rail Road Company (LIRR), appealed from a judgment of the district court granting LIRR's motion to dismiss his complaint for failure to state a claim. Plaintiff brought suit under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA), 45 U.S.C. 51 et seq., against LIRR and two other individuals (defendants), alleging claims of negligent infliction of emotion distress and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED). Plaintiff asserted on appeal that his IIED claim against LIRR should not have been dismissed. The court held that the zone of danger test applied to IIED claims brought under FELA. Therefore, because plaintiff failed to allege that he "sustain[ed] a physical impact" as a result of defendants' alleged conduct or was "placed in immediate risk of physical harm by that conduct," the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of his complaint. The court also declined to grant plaintiff leave to amend.

Plaintiffs in these four cases appealed from a judgment of the district court granting summary judgment in favor of defendant and dismissing their product liability claims for injuries allegedly caused by defendant's prescription drug, Fosamax. Plaintiffs appealed the district court's decision concluding that their product liability claims, brought under Virginia law, were not tolled by the pendency of a putative federal class action that raised identical claims and dismissing plaintiffs' claims as time-barred. The court held that the availability of "cross jurisdictional tolling" in this context raised questions of Virginia law that were appropriately certified to the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Plaintiffs Debbie and Max Walters appealed from a district court judgment that dismissed their petition for the issuance of a turnover order. In 1990, the Walters' thirteen-year-old son was killed on a hunting trip with his father when a Chinese-manufactured rifle the boy carried allegedly misfired. The Walters sued China and several entities allegedly controlled by China in the U.S. District Court on theories of products liability, negligence, and breach of warranty in connection with the manufacture of the rifle. The Walters eventually won a $10 million default judgment, and sought to enforce it by collecting China's assets in the possession of the respondent banks, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ltd., Bank of China, Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corporation. Citing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), the district court dismissed the petition with prejudice. Without filing a new petition, the Walters argued on appeal that the Banks lacked standing to assert foreign sovereign immunity on behalf of China, and that China waived any immunity by its conduct underlying the default judgment and by its failure to appear. Upon review of the submitted briefs and the applicable legal authority, the Second Circuit found Plaintiffs' arguments were without merit, and affirmed the district court's decision to dismiss their case.

Petitioner sought review of the BIA's order of removal claiming that the Chinese government had persecuted him because he attended an underground Christian church in China. The government moved to dismiss the petition pursuant to the fugitive disentitlement doctrine. The court denied the motion to dismiss where the court, by exercising its discretion, determined that the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, which was an equitable doctrine, was inapplicable to petitioner's case. Having denied the government's motion to dismiss, the court addressed the merits of petitioner's case in a summary order.

Plaintiff appealed from a judgment granting defendant's motion to dismiss as untimely plaintiff's complaint, which alleged breach of fiduciary duty, intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and conspiracy to commit those three offenses. At issue was whether the district court properly ruled that tolling of the untimely claims, on the basis of defendant's continuing concealment, was unwarranted. The court affirmed and held that the lawsuit, commenced on April 2004, arose from an injury suffered no later than June 2000 and therefore, was barred by the applicable statute of repose, Conn. Gen. Stat. 52-577. The court also held that plaintiff could not seek the safe harbor of equitable estoppel due to its failure to recognize that it was required to pursue its action. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district.

Plaintiffs, a Specialist in the United States Army and her infant son, sued defendants, former and senior government officials, alleging that defendants caused the September 11th, 2001 attacks against the United States in order to create a political atmosphere in which they could pursue domestic and international policy objectives and to conceal the misallocation of $2.3 trillion in congressional appropriations to the Department of Defense. Plaintiffs were in the Pentagon on September 11th and assert violations of their constitutional rights under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal narcotics Agents, a common law tort of conspiracy to cause death and great bodily harm, and a violation of the Antiterrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. 2333(a). At issue was whether the district court erred in dismissing plaintiffs' complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) and concluding that plaintiffs' claims were frivolous. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal and held that the few conceivably "well-pleaded" facts in the complaint were frivolous and were pure speculation and conjecture. The court also ordered plaintiffs' counsel to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38.