Justia U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Defendant, a licensed financial adviser, pled guilty to 34 counts of mail fraud (18 U.S.C. 1341), wire fraud (18 U.S.C. 1343), and bank fraud (18 U.S.C. 1344) based on his solicitation of bank clients to invest in speculative real estate transactions that he controlled, unrelated to bank products, an illegal practice in the securities industry known as "selling away." The Government accused him of collecting $1.55 million between October 2002 and January 2006. The district court denied his motion to withdraw the plea when he claimed that his prior attorney, unprepared to go to trial, had browbeaten him. The court imposed a sentence of 180 months and $1.3 million in restitution. The Third Circuit affirmed. With no evidence of actual innocence and the death of some of the government's elderly witnesses, there was no "fair and just" reason to allow withdrawal of the plea. Because defendant was an investment advisor when he initiated the fraud, the court properly applied a four-level enhancement at section 2B1.1(b)(16)(A); an obstruction of justice enhancement was justified by defendant's lies concerning his guilty plea and his contact with witnesses. View "United States v. Siddon" on Justia Law

After refinancing her mortgage in 2006, plaintiff filed suit under the Truth In Lending Act, 15 U.S.C 1601, claiming failure to properly notify her of her right to cancel the mortgage. The court instructed the jury that, because her signature was on the notice of right to cancel, something more than her testimony was needed to rebut the presumption that she received it. The jury returned a verdict for defendants. The Third Circuit vacated and remanding, stating that there is no basis in TILA or the Federal Rules of Evidence for the instruction and the error was not harmless. The signature does no more than create a rebuttable presumption of delivery.

Defendant-lender reported to credit agencies that two of plaintiff's mortgage payments were received late. Plaintiff, an attorney, filed suit under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. 1681 and alleging defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of contract, negligence, negligent supervision, conversion, and fraud. The district court entered summary judgment for the lender. The Third Circuit affirmed. A private litigant seeking to recover against a furnisher of information under the FCRA must first make a complaint to a consumer reporting agency; plaintiff did not comply with the structural framework of the statute.

The district court granted a default judgment of foreclosure in favor of the mortgage company. Following a sale, at which the mortgage company was the successful bidder, the court granted a motion to set aside the sale because the mortgage company had failed to notify a junior lien holder of the sale, as required by state law, so that the junior lien remained in place. The court subsequently granted the junior lien holder's motion to vacate the set-aside order, reasoning that the notice issue involved an independent question of state law and was not properly before it. The Third Circuit vacated. The court's diversity jurisdiction extends to resolving issues that arise from an error committed during the pendency of its jurisdiction over a marshal's sale that it ordered. No overriding state policy or matter of substantial public concern, justifying abstention, was implicated in this case.