This case is a bankruptcy appeal in which chapter 7 trustee Gary Rosen challenged the partial dismissal of his adversary complaint against David Dahan and related LLCs for allegedly helping debtor Minh Vu Hoang conceal post-petition real-estate proceeds through sham entities. The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court's June 2011 order, holding that claims under 11 U.S.C. § 549 to avoid unauthorized post-petition transfers were time-barred and that the complaint failed to state viable claims for turnover under § 542 or other avoidance counts because the defendants never held property of the estate. The court reasoned that the pleaded facts showed transfers occurred more than two years before suit and that the entities functioned merely as conduits without the defendants retaining estate assets.
The case concerns a dispute between the Ground Zero Museum Workshop, its founder Gary Suson, and former volunteer webmaster William Wilson, who resigned after a disagreement and used his credentials to remove his shopping cart service and related files from the museum's website, which plaintiffs alleged caused lost sales and damaged search rankings. Plaintiffs brought claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and various state-law torts including defamation, while Wilson filed a counterclaim. The court granted Wilson's motion for summary judgment in part and denied it in part, granted leave to amend the counterclaim, and denied the plaintiffs' motions to strike, primarily because plaintiffs failed to produce evidence of unauthorized circumvention or other violations and because certain state-law claims were subject to preclusion or choice-of-law rules.
This case involved a former employee of the Prince George's County Board of Education who sued the Board and her union, alleging that the union breached its duty of fair representation under the Labor Management Relations Act by failing to pursue her grievances about pay and leave, that the Board violated the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law by not paying all wages due, and that both defendants discriminated against her on the basis of disability under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act. The court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss. It held that the LMRA does not apply to state employees like the plaintiff, that she failed to exhaust administrative remedies for her discrimination claims (and they were also time-barred), and that her wage claim was barred by the statute of limitations.
This case is an employment discrimination action brought by the EEOC against CTI Global Solutions, a government contractor, alleging that the company unlawfully removed three pregnant employees from a long-term FBI records project due to lifting and climbing duties. The court granted in part and denied in part the EEOC's motion for partial summary judgment while denying the defendant's cross-motion. It determined that one employee's removal was based solely on her pregnancy in violation of federal law, with no valid defense, but found genuine factual disputes regarding accommodations for the other two employees, their job performance, and their efforts to mitigate damages through other work that required trial resolution.
In this diversity case, plaintiff Peter Borlo sued Navy Federal Credit Union for negligence and damage to his credit after learning that his former business partner had obtained an unauthorized $30,000 loan in Borlo’s name. Borlo had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008, and the loan-related facts were known to him before the petition was filed. The court granted Navy Federal’s motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1), holding that Borlo lacked standing because any cause of action accrued before bankruptcy and therefore belonged to the bankruptcy estate rather than to Borlo personally. The decision rested on principles that property of the estate includes all legal and equitable interests the debtor holds at the commencement of the case, and that standing to pursue pre-petition claims passes to the trustee.
This case involves service technicians suing their employers, DirectSat USA and related companies, for allegedly failing to pay overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act and similar Maryland and District of Columbia state laws, claiming they were required to work over 40 hours per week without compensation and directed to underreport hours on time sheets. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that one plaintiff's claims were barred by a prior similar action under the first-to-file rule, that the FLSA claims were inadequately pled, that state claims were preempted, and that a Rule 23 class action could not proceed alongside an FLSA collective action. The court granted the motion in part and denied it in part, finding the first-to-file rule inapplicable after the prior case was decertified, determining the claims were sufficiently pled, rejecting preemption, and holding that the collective and class actions could be maintained together.
