The court held that Patrick Nichols plausibly alleged excessive force at the pleading stage and that a pro se civil-rights complaint can identify an intended defendant in its body even when the officer is omitted from the caption.
The court held that the legal basis for a physician’s claim under Ruan v. United States was reasonably available when he pleaded guilty, defeating cause for procedural default in his Section 2255 case.
Staffing-agency claims also fail due to unexhausted EEOC process, providing a roadmap for hospitals and vendors to defeat discrimination suits by contracted clinicians.
The Fourth Circuit held that 125 working days can establish a year of coal-mine employment and that the absence of a required coverage statement supports a presumption of financial capability. The court remanded for further action directing payment from the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
The court vacated an order that blocked Illinois Union from filing a stay motion in the Bouvet case, holding that MDL case-management rules cannot make an insurer’s FAA remedy contingent on lead counsel’s consent.
Published ruling says an MDL court’s case-management procedures cannot condition an insurer’s statutory right to pursue a stay pending arbitration on lead counsel’s consent.
The panel revived Ashley Cooper’s federal malicious-prosecution claim by holding that West Virginia’s two-year personal-injury period governs Section 1983 actions, but affirmed dismissal of the City of Wheeling because the complaint did not allege a municipal policy or custom.
The en banc court ruled that a content-based prior restraint on defendants' speech survives the heavy presumption against its validity because it is narrowly tailored to the compelling national-security interest in protecting perceived foreign collaborators.
The panel held that a district court abused its discretion by entering summary judgment for prison officials while a magistrate judge still had under advisement a sanctions motion over missing exculpatory video footage central to the inmate's claims.
Affirming a disability benefits award against Reliance Standard, the court held that an untimely internal-appeal decision is not a valid exercise of fiduciary discretion—triggering de novo review even when the plan grants discretionary authority.
In Thomas v. EOTech, a panel held that onboarding-paperwork limitations clauses cannot cut short the time Congress gave employees to sue under federal antidiscrimination law, though a parallel state-law claim still fell to the same clause.
A published Fourth Circuit panel said a West Virginia marijuana-manufacturing conviction could count as a controlled substance offense under the sentencing guidelines despite the court's earlier Campbell ruling.
A published Fourth Circuit panel said Abitron changed the Lanham Act analysis but did not spare a Dutch software company from a preliminary injunction in a cross-border trademark and trade secrets fight.
A Fourth Circuit panel said the Supreme Court's Abitron trademark ruling did not undo an injunction against Dutch company DMARC Advisor because the record showed conduct directed at U.S. customers, not just overseas activity with domestic effects.
A Fourth Circuit panel said a Virginia prisoner's Free Exercise damages claim must return to district court for a Turner analysis after officials denied him a diet that met both his Ramadan fasting and kosher-supervision beliefs.
A published Fourth Circuit panel revived key parts of a challenge to South Carolina's race-related curriculum budget proviso, sending standing questions and an author's book-removal claim back to the district court.
The Fourth Circuit said jurors should have been instructed that bodily injury under a federal civil-rights statute must be a proximate result of the defendant's conduct.
A split Fourth Circuit said jurors needed a proximate-cause instruction before finding that a former prison official's civil rights violation resulted in bodily injury, while leaving false-statement convictions intact.
A Fourth Circuit panel said two detention officers were not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage over allegations they delayed checking on an inmate they suspected had been beaten.
The panel said federal courts owed AEDPA deference to state-court rulings rejecting K.C. Langford's speedy-trial and ineffective-assistance claims.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of compassionate release for a federal prisoner with end-stage renal disease, holding that courts must assess whether the condition is terminal on the defendant-specific record.