In Rodriguez v. Alcoa Inc., plaintiff Gino Rodriguez sued Alcoa under the Americans with Disabilities Act after the company withdrew a conditional offer for a Plant Utility Operator position upon discovering his significant hearing impairment during a pre-employment physical exam that he had not disclosed on his medical history form. Rodriguez did not respond to Alcoa's motion for summary judgment. The court granted the motion, holding that Rodriguez's impairment did not substantially limit a major life activity under pre-2009 ADA standards, that Alcoa did not regard him as disabled in a qualifying manner, and that he therefore was not an individual with a disability entitled to protection.
In Harrison v. Formosa Plastics Corp. Texas, plaintiff Thomas Harrison, a process operator hired at age 51, sued his employer alleging age discrimination and retaliatory discharge after he was terminated following an incident in which he refused a supervisor's instruction to load rail cars and left work without permission. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case. The court determined that Formosa had articulated a legitimate, nonretaliatory reason for the termination (insubordination), that Harrison admitted he did not believe age motivated the firing, and that his retaliation claim rested solely on the temporal proximity between his complaints about age-related comments and his discharge, which was insufficient to establish but-for causation under Fifth Circuit precedent.
This case involves a federal habeas corpus petition by Warren Darrell Rivers, who was convicted of capital murder in 1988 for killing an 11-year-old boy during an aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to death by a Texas jury based on answers to two special issue questions. Rivers raised multiple claims, primarily that the special issues prevented the jury from giving full mitigating effect to evidence of his unstable childhood and abuse, along with ineffective assistance of counsel and other trial errors. The court granted relief only on the sentencing claim under Penry v. Lynaugh, ordering a new punishment hearing, while finding no constitutional error in the conviction or other claims and denying them. The core reasoning applied AEDPA deference to state findings, reviewed the record of mitigating evidence and jury instructions, and concluded recent jurisprudence showed the jury could not adequately consider the mitigation without explicit guidance.
The case was a qui tam action under the False Claims Act brought by a former hospital employee alleging that the defendant health systems violated the Stark law and Anti-Kickback Statute by offering below-market leases to physicians and groups in exchange for patient referrals, which in turn caused the submission of false Medicare claims; the complaint also included a retaliation claim for the relator's termination and miscellaneous allegations about misuse of funds. The court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss the action. It first analyzed subject-matter jurisdiction under the FCA's public-disclosure bar, determining that the core allegations had been publicly disclosed in prior state-court litigation involving a physical-therapy provider and that the relator was not an original source; the court further held that the retaliation claim was untimely under the applicable statute of limitations.
This case involved a patent infringement suit brought by Neutrino Development Corp. against Sonosite, Inc. over a patent for a handheld ultrasonography device and methods. After construing the claims and finding that Sonosite's devices literally infringed, the court ruled the relevant patent claims invalid due to the improper addition of new matter during prosecution and entered judgment for Sonosite. Sonosite then moved for attorneys' fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285, arguing the case was exceptional because of alleged inequitable conduct, including deceptive intent by the inventor in adding the new matter and pursuing the suit. The court denied the motion, holding that Sonosite failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the case was exceptional or that inequitable conduct occurred.
In Neely v. Barnhart, the plaintiff sought judicial review under 42 U.S.C. § 405(g) of the Social Security Administration's denial of his applications for Disability Insurance Benefits and Supplemental Security Income, alleging inability to work since December 2001 due to physical and mental impairments. The district court denied Neely's motion for summary judgment and granted the Commissioner's, affirming the ALJ's determination that Neely was not disabled because he retained residual functional capacity to perform other work existing in significant numbers in the national economy. The court concluded that substantial evidence supported the ALJ's findings on Neely's functional abilities, including evidence of consistent grooming, politeness, and lack of stress-related issues that contradicted certain medical opinions, and that the five-step sequential evaluation process under the regulations was properly applied without legal error.