The Eleventh Circuit recently gave new life to a plaintiff’s claims of employment discrimination in Jefferson v. Sewon America, Inc., 2018 WL 2449228 (11th Cir. June 1, 2018). Jerberee Jefferson, an African-American woman, filed suit against her former employer, Sewon America, Inc., for racial discrimination and retaliatory termination. Although Jefferson began her career at Sewon…
Author: Mary Anne Lamb
Branch Nominated to Court
The White House today announced that the nomination of Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Elizabeth “Lisa” Branch has been sent to the Senate for confirmation. Judge Branch has served on the Georgia Court of Appeals since 2012. Posted by Tom Byrne
Eleventh Circuit Mourns Loss of Judge Phyllis Kravitch
The American legal community lost one of its pioneers yesterday, when the Honorable Phyllis Kravitch died after 38 years as a U.S. circuit judge. Judge Kravitch was born in 1920 in Savannah, Georgia, and she received an LL.B. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1943. She returned to practice law in Savannah, where…
Securities Private Offering Exemption Applies in SEC Enforcement Action
The Eleventh Circuit rejected the SEC’s narrow construction of registration exemptions in SEC v. Levin, 2017 WL 711018 (Feb. 23, 2017), reversing a grant of summary judgment to the defendant but still affirming a jury verdict for securities fraud on multiple counts. The defendant, George Levin, invested his personal funds in a Ponzi scheme that…
Supreme Court to Decide Interplay Between Bankruptcy Code and FDCPA
This past Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson, No. 16-348 (cert. granted Oct. 11, 2016), to review the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that filing a stale proof of claim in a consumer bankruptcy violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. For more details on the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion, 823 F.3d…
Interpretations of RESPA: A foreclosure sale “occurs” when scheduled, and one instance is never a pattern.
In Lage v. Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC, 2016 WL 5864507, Plaintiff-borrowers sued defendant loan servicer, alleging liability under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (“RESPA”) for failure to evaluate the merits of their loss mitigation application within thirty days as required by 12 C.F.R. § 1024.41(c) and for inadequately responding to their notice of error as…
Eleventh Circuit Rules Against EEOC Finding Age Discrimination in Hiring Claims Cannot Be Based on Disparate Impact Theory
May a job applicant sue a prospective employer based on a policy that had an adverse and disproportionate effect on him because of his age? The Eleventh Circuit, in an en banc opinion published October 5, 2016, Villarreal v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Pinstripe, Inc., 2016 WL 5800001, ruled that only employees may bring a disparate impact claim…
Eleventh Circuit Holds That Bankruptcy Rules Apply to Adversary Proceedings in District Court, Orders Reinstatement of $6-Million Verdict on Procedural Grounds
When a federal district court oversees adversary bankruptcy proceedings, is the post-trial deadline to request judgment as a matter of law governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b), which allows 28 days to file such a motion—or by Bankruptcy Rule 9015(c), which allows only 14 days? The Eleventh Circuit applied the Bankruptcy Rules’ shorter…