Relist Watch
on Jun 12, 2013 at 11:35 am
John Elwood reviews Monday’s relisted cases.
If the last few days of torrential rains have left you feeling more gloomy than an amorphous blob in need of a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, Relist Watch is here as usual to cheer you up.
Eventually. First we have to take care of the bad news. Yesterday marked the end of the line for three of last week’s relists, as the Court hachaed twice-relisted, generically named Limited Liability Company v. Doe, 12-855, the Federal Arbitration Act case by way of Puerto Rico; cast off into darkness one-timer Scott v. Saint John’s Church in the Wilderness, 12-1077, the Colorado anti-abortion protestor First Amendment challenge; and caused severe prejudice to the petition in Acosta-Ruiz v. United States, 12-6908, the Fifth Circuit harmless-constitutional-error case. Kinda-sorta-could-be-a relist Ford v. United States, 12-7958, which raised a similar harmless-error issue, fared no better.
If you feel your blue mood receding, it may be because we’re getting in to the good (or at least not bad) news. The Court keeps coming back for more of White v. Woodall, 12-794, the Sixth Circuit state-on-top habeas case now on for its fourth relist since the complete record arrived, and of third-time-relist (and former hold) Gallow v. Cooper, 12-7516, the Fifth Circuit state-on-bottom habeas case.
There was a flurry of new relist activity Monday. Perennial dawdlers may recall that Harris v. Quinn, 11-681, graced these pages just over a year ago. That Seventh Circuit case concerns the constitutionality of an Illinois law requiring personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs. The Court called for the views of the Solicitor General, which, a mere 316 days later, responded that Illinois’s mandatory union arrangement is a-OK under the First Amendment and the petition should be denied. Petitioner likely hopes the Court will accord the SG’s views due weight and grant cert. anyway. But even if the Court grants review, respondent Pat Quinn can take comfort in so far avoiding the fate of his predecessors in an office that introductory law school courses teach is the last pre-indictment stage of federal criminal procedure.
Patent lawyers take note of the relist in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., 12-786, a case concerning liability for inducing patent infringement. In a dispute over one of Akamai’s patents for the use of multiple servers to store and load different parts of web content in order to speed up how fast websites load (academic if, like me, you have lightning fast Internet), the Federal Circuit held Limelight liable because it performed the first three of four steps of the patented method, and induced its customers to perform the final step (some of whom did). In its petition, Limelight urges that a party cannot be held liable where no one person performs all the steps of a patented method. The Court also relisted Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc., 12-960, a conditional cross-petition asking the Court to consider the scope of joint infringement liability in the event it takes up Limelight’s petition.
Amy and Vicky, Child Pornography Victims v. U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, 12-651, a mandamus case out of the Ninth Circuit, concerns the role of proximate cause in awarding restitution to children depicted in images possessed by those convicted of child pornography. The Ninth Circuit agreed with the majority of courts of appeals that the restitution statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, requires victims to show that their injuries were proximately caused by the defendant’s specific actions. Wright v. United States, 12-8505, raises a nearly identical issue, only there the Fifth Circuit, in a highly fractured en banc decision, rejected the reading of “[a]ll of [its] sister circuits that have addressed th[e] question,” instead relying on the “plain language” of Section 2259 to hold that child victims need not show proximate cause. Both cases involve some of the same victims.
So as not to disturb the fundamental rule of nature that as the number of relists approaches four, at least one has to be a habeas case, the Court relisted Ryan v. Schad, 12-1084, yet another state-on-top habeas case out of the Ninth Circuit, and with a long pedigree to boot: It was relisted in the early days of Relist Watch, and then GVR’d a couple years ago in light of Cullen v. Pinholster. In its current form, a panel majority consisting of Judges Schroeder and Reinhardt reconsidered the prior denial of Schad’s latest GVR request, and ordered the case to be sent back to the district court for reconsideration of “new evidence” relevant to his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim in light of Martinez v. Ryan. The Ninth denied rehearing en banc, with eight of the court’s more conservative judges dissenting. Can’t imagine why this has caught the Court’s attention.
Last up is UBS Financial Services Inc. of Puerto Rico v. Union de Empleados de Muelles de Puerto Rico, 12-1208, which with the demise of Limited Liability Company preserves an Enchanted Isle toehold on Relist Watch. Petitioners argue that that First Circuit applied the wrong standard of review to the district court’s determination that the plaintiffs failed to plead demand futility with particularized facts in their shareholder-derivative suit: The court of appeals applied de novo review instead of abuse-of-discretion, the standard adopted by the majority of circuits and the Delaware Supreme Court.
Just a handful of Conferences remain until these palliatives end for the summer and you have to confront the emptiness of your existence. But just remember it could always be worse.
Thanks to Eric White and V&E summer associate Varun Jain for compiling and drafting this update.
[page]11-681[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-786[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-960[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-651[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-8505[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-1084[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-1208[/page] (relisted after the June 6 Conference)
[page]12-7516[/page] (relisted after the May 30 and June 6 Conferences)
[page]12-7958[/page] (relisted after the May 30 and June 6 Conferences)
[page]12-794[/page] (relisted after the May 16, May 23, and May 30, and June 6 Conferences)
