OPINION OF THE COURT JORDAN, Circuit Judge. In this substantive due process action involving the murder of a young woman, Officer John Michael of the Chester, Pennsylvania, police force appeals the denial of summary judgment by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He claims both qualified and statutory immunity. Since his conduct falls squarely within the immunity established by the Child Safety Lock Act of 2005, 18 U.S.C. 922(z)(3), we need not address...
OPINION HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge. Ronald Ottaviano appeals his judgment of conviction for mail and wire fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. Ottaviano raises various constitutional and legal challenges to the conduct of his trial. Because we are unpersuaded that the District Court committed reversible error, we will affirm. I Ottaviano is one of those peculiar Americans who does not believe himself bound by United States tax law. Not...
NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION SLOVITER, Circuit Judge. Richard Wren, who was employed as the Director of Veterans' Affairs of Luzerne County beginning in 2005, was fired on September 24, 2009 by the votes of County Commissioners Maryanne C. Petrilla and Stephen A. Urban. Wren brings this suit against, inter alia, Petrilla and Urban, alleging that he was unlawfully terminated in violation of his First Amendment rights, as annunciated in Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 (1980), and Elrod v....
OPINION OF THE COURT FUENTES, Circuit Judge. After the multinational telecommunications firm Nortel Networks declared bankruptcy in 2009, various debtors comprising the Nortel brand auctioned their business lines and intellectual property. They raised $7.5 billion. Since the auctions, the selling debtors have disputed whether or not they had previously agreed to allocate the auction funds through arbitration. As it stands, the debtors have $7.5 billion and no agreed-upon method for dividing...
NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge. Robert Dee, Jr., appeals the District Court's order granting in part and denying in part his motion for attorney's fees and costs. We will affirm. I This case comes to us for the third time and, as we write only for the parties, we provide a brief recitation of the facts. The Borough of Dunmore suspended Dee, who was an Assistant Fire Chief, on June 27, 2005, for allegedly not completing two weeks of training and failing to obtain...
OPINION OF THE COURT GREENBERG, Circuit Judge. I. INTRODUCTION Shah Rahman, now the appellant, brought this federal securities class action on March 22, 2011, against defendant Kid Brands, Inc., a New Jersey corporation, and against the individual defendants, Bruce G. Crain, Guy A. Paglinco, and Raphael Benaroya, officers of Kid Brands (collectively with Kid Brands "appellees"). Kid Brands is in the business of importing inexpensive infant furniture and products for the purpose of ultimate...
NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION OF THE COURT FISHER, Circuit Judge. A.G. appeals from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's grant of summary judgment in favor of the Lower Merion School District ("LMSD") on the ground that A.G. failed to produce sufficient evidence in support of her claim that LMSD acted with deliberate indifference to her federally protected rights. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm. I. We write principally for the parties, who are...
NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION OF THE COURT FUENTES, Circuit Judge. Anthony Pritchett appeals from the District Court's judgment in favor of Shawn Warrender. Pritchett had sought to recover from Warrender, a police detective, for maliciously prosecuting him in violation of 42 U.S.C. 1983. After the parties presented their evidence at a jury trial, the District Court concluded that Pritchett had not come forward with legally sufficient evidence of malice. The District Court entered judgment as a...
OPINION SMITH, Circuit Judge. This appeal concerns the Federal Bureau of Investigation's ("FBI") response to appellant American Civil Liberties Union's ("ACLU") request for information under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. 552 (2009). The ACLU claims that the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey ("District Court") erred in allowing the FBI to withhold 284 pages of responsive material pursuant to certain exemptions under the FOIA. The ACLU also...
OPINION SLOVITER, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us to decide whether the public has a right of access under the First Amendment to Delaware's state-sponsored arbitration program. Chancellor Strine and the judges of the Delaware Chancery Court ("Appellants"), who oversee the arbitrations, appeal a judgment on the pleadings entered in favor of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government (the "Coalition"). The District Court found that Delaware's proceedings were essentially civil trials...
OPINION RENDELL, Circuit Judge: Orlando Fernandez Taveras petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") June 2012 order of removal. The removal order was based on two convictions for petty larceny, both crimes of moral turpitude under the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"). The BIA rejected Fernandez Taveras's argument that he was eligible for adjustment of status or waiver of inadmissibility under 212(h) of the INA, notwithstanding a 1999 drug conviction....
OPINION OF THE COURT JORDAN, Circuit Judge. This appeal arises from a challenge to the approval by the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services ("the Secretary" or "HHS") of a 2008 amendment to Pennsylvania's state plan for administering its Medicaid program. Numerous private nursing facilities that provide services to Medicaid recipients argue that the state plan amendment, or "SPA," violates Title XIX of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. 1396 et seq. (the...
OPINION OF THE COURT AMBRO, Circuit Judge. Appellant Khalil Carter was sentenced to 37 months' imprisonment for violating his supervised release after he pled guilty to two separate offenses in state court. In imposing its sentence, the District Court looked to Carter's actual conduct to determine whether he had committed a "crime of violence." Carter contends that the Court should be limited to the offenses charged, none of which constitutes a "crime of violence." We conclude there was no...
NOT PRECEDENTIAL OPINION McKEE, Chief Judge. Paul Scagnelli and James Hamill appeal an order entered by the District Court granting summary judgment to Ronald Schiavone. 1 For the reasons set forth below, we will affirm. 2 I. Because we write primarily for the parties who are familiar with this case, we only briefly recite the procedural history and essential facts. We exercise plenary review over a grant of summary judgment. See Liberty Lincoln-Mercury, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 676 F....
OPINION CHAGARES, Circuit Judge. This motion to dismiss requires us to consider whether we have jurisdiction to review a district court's denial of a motion for reconsideration when the order to be reconsidered is a remand to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. For the reasons that follow, we hold that although the District Court had jurisdiction to rule on the motion to reconsider the remand order in this particular instance, this Court has no jurisdiction to review the...
OPINION OF THE COURT FISHER, Circuit Judge. Anderson Memorial Hospital ("AMH") first filed suit against W.R. Grace and its affiliates ("Grace") 1 in South Carolina state court in 1992, seeking class-wide redress for property damage caused by asbestos-containing products that Grace had manufactured. Before the resolution of that litigation, Grace filed a petition for Chapter 11 protection. The Bankruptcy Court supervised nearly a decade of related litigation. Most property damage claims...
OPINION OF THE COURT JORDAN, Circuit Judge. The State of Montana ("Montana") and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Right of Canada ("the Crown") 1 appeal the June 11, 2012 order 2 of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware affirming the Bankruptcy Court's confirmation of the plan of reorganization of W.R. Grace & Co, et al. ("Grace"). 3 We conclude that the District Court correctly denied Montana's and the Crown's objections to plan confirmation, and we will...
OPINION OF THE COURT FISHER, Circuit Judge. Relator Thomas M. Zizic, M.D. ("Zizic") filed this qui tam 1 suit under the False Claims Act ("FCA"), 31 U.S.C. 3729-33, alleging that Q2Administrators, LLC ("Q2A") and RiverTrust Solutions, Inc. ("RTS") fraudulently billed the United States for the unperformed review of benefit claim denials that was required by the Medicare Act ("Medicare"), 42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq., Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") regulations, and their...
OPINION OF THE COURT Petitioner Ramiro Rojas entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 2003 when he was 12 years old. Six years later, Rojas pled guilty to possessing drug paraphernalia in violation of Pennsylvania law and was ordered to pay a fine and court costs. The Department of Homeland Security (the "Department") then initiated removal proceedings against Rojas, contending that he was removable for having violated a law "relating to a controlled substance (as defined in...
OPINION SMITH, Circuit Judge. The owners of a coal-fired power plant failed both to obtain a preconstruction permit and to install certain pollution-control technology before making changes to the plant. The Environmental Protection Agency and several states say the owners were required to do so. But the EPA 1 did not cry foul until more than a decade after the changes, well after the owners had sold the plant. Now the EPA wants to force the former owners to obtain the missing...
