John E. Moore sued President George W. Bush, Senator Bill Nelson, the NSA, the Department of Justice, a county sheriff's department, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU of Florida, and another entity, alleging that government agencies had implanted him with a microchip to control his brain data and that the advocacy groups had failed to respond to his letters. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the defendants' motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1). The court held that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction because the claims were so attenuated and unsubstantial as to be devoid of merit, consisting of fanciful conspiracy theories unsupported by any plausible basis. Some FOIA claims against the NSA and DOJ were left pending.
This case involved motions by a criminal defendant, his attorneys, and their law firm to quash grand jury subpoenas duces tecum seeking records of legal fees paid in connection with the defendant's representation on drug conspiracy charges. The court denied the motions to quash, to appoint independent counsel, and to intervene. It held that the subpoenas sought non-privileged fee information relevant to an ongoing grand jury investigation, that the government had not created a conflict of interest, and that the defendant had made no factual showing that the grand jury was being misused for trial discovery rather than legitimate further inquiry into unindicted persons or uncharged conduct.
In United States v. Pollard, the defendant, who had pled guilty in 1986 to conspiracy to commit espionage and received a life sentence, filed a second motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in 2000 seeking resentencing on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing and failure to file a notice of appeal. The court held that the motion constituted a second or successive petition under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), requiring certification by a panel of the court of appeals before it could be considered, and that the defendant did not meet the pre-AEDPA McCleskey cause-and-prejudice standard to avoid this requirement. The court further concluded that the motion was untimely under AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations and that equitable tolling did not apply due to insufficient evidence of extraordinary circumstances preventing timely filing. Accordingly, the court declined to consider the motion on the merits.
This case involved an inmate's Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California and the FBI for records related to his 1989 criminal conviction. The plaintiff sued the Central District after delays in receiving documents, leading to disputes over which DOJ components were proper defendants and whether referrals of records between agencies constituted improper withholding. The court initially addressed motions to substitute the Department of Justice as the sole defendant and to join the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and FBI as parties, but later granted reconsideration to substitute DOJ alone. It then granted DOJ's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the agencies had provided all responsive documents permitted under FOIA exemptions and the Privacy Act, with no genuine issues of material fact remaining.
This case concerns motions by an Independent Counsel to compel three White House officials to testify before a federal grand jury investigating matters involving President Clinton, including conversations with senior advisers Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal. The court granted the motions to compel Lindsey and Blumenthal to answer questions, while denying the motion as to the third witness as moot. It held that the presidential communications privilege presumptively applies to the relevant conversations but is not absolute and can be overcome by the need for evidence in a criminal grand jury proceeding, drawing on precedents such as United States v. Nixon and In re Sealed Case. The court also considered but rejected Lindsey's additional claims of governmental attorney-client privilege and work product protection in this context.
The case involved a challenge by the American Society of Dermatology and two physicians to the Secretary of Health and Human Services' use of CPT codes from American Medical Association committees in administering the Medicare Part B physician fee schedule under the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale system. Plaintiffs claimed violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and improper delegation of statutory authority in how the codes and relative value units were developed and adopted. The district court granted the Secretary's motion for summary judgment, denied plaintiffs' motion, and dismissed the case after allowing an amended complaint. The core reasoning was that the Medicare statute expressly bars judicial or administrative review of the Secretary's coding system and relative value determinations, and the APA does not confer jurisdiction over the claims.
