DIFTCL: Federal Narrative Summaries

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit dismissed Torian Gaither’s appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that it could only exercise jurisdiction over final orders or specific interlocutory and collateral orders under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 1292, as well as Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b) and the *Cohen* collateral order...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The fifth-circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) claim with prejudice. While the appellate court held that the district court erred in applying the FDCPA’s “originator exclusion” to Metropolis Technologies, Inc., it concl...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Desi Arnez Lewis’s pro se civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for failure to state a claim pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The court held that claims challenging the calculation of a release date or seeking retrospe...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing Phillip Reeves’s pro se civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The appellate court reviewed the record and found no reversible error in the district court’s acceptance of the magistrate judge’s recommendation to dismiss the...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court in this civil tort case involving personal injury claims. The court found no reversible error after considering the briefs, oral argument, and pertinent portions of the record. The affirmation was based essentially on the reasons stated in the district court&#...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit dismissed the consolidated appeals filed by pro se plaintiff Thomas Jeff Henry for lack of jurisdiction due to untimely notices of appeal. The court held that because Henry failed to file his notices of appeal within the 30-day period mandated by Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) followin...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing James Richard Passmore’s pro se civil rights complaint brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against a magistrate judge. The appellate court reviewed the record and found no reversible error in the district court’s decision to accept the magist...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The fourth-circuit denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed the appeal from the district court’s order dismissing Anthony Glenn Linton’s 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition as untimely. The court applied the standard set forth in *Gonzalez v. Thaler* and *Slack v. McDaniel*, which requires a prisoner...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the district court’s order granting leave to amend the complaint was neither a final order nor an appealable interlocutory or collateral order under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, 28 U.S.C. § 1292, Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b), or the *Cohen* collateral order do...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed the appeal because the petitioner, a state prisoner challenging a district court’s dismissal of his habeas petition as successive and unauthorized, failed to make the requisite showing under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). The court applied the standar...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing Jamel Williams’s pro se civil rights complaint filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against South Carolina officials. The dismissal was based on the district court’s adoption of a magistrate judge’s recommendation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 Docket: 2:25-cr-00233-BL-SMD-1 The eleventh-circuit affirmed Rodriques Humphrey’s sentence of 480 months’ imprisonment, a 285-month upward variance from the high end of the properly calculated guideline range. The court reviewed Humphrey’s procedural objections to the district court’s calculati...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, denying relief to the pro se prisoner seeking to challenge a district court order that granted in part and denied in part his motion to dismiss his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition. The court held that it may exercise jurisdiction only over final orders u...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order granting Terrence Smith’s motion for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) and resentencing him to 480 months’ imprisonment. Applying an abuse of discretion standard of review, as established in *United States v. Brown*, the court h...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The fourth-circuit denied Ronald C. Albright’s motion for a certificate of appealability (COA) and dismissed his appeal from the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition. The court applied the standard set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), which requires a COA only if the applicant...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The fourth-circuit denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed the appeal because Phillip Reeves failed to make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right as required by 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c). The court applied the standard from *Buck v. Davis*, concluding that reasonable jurists could not find...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing Phillip Reeves’s civil rights complaint filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several defendants. The dismissal was based on the district court’s acceptance of a magistrate judge’s recommendation to dismiss the case pursuant to 28 U...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the appellant failed to file a timely notice of appeal. The court applied the rule that the timely filing of a notice of appeal in a civil case is a jurisdictional requirement under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A). Although the distr...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing Walter Ray Beasley’s amended civil rights complaint alleging that a jail supervisor failed to accommodate his religious-based diet for Ramadan under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The court held that Beasley...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order dismissing the appellant’s civil rights complaint without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that because the appellant’s informal brief failed to challenge the specific basis for the district court’s dispositio...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order granting the defendants’ motions to dismiss Robert Allen Paul Brown, Jr.’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint. The appellate court upheld the lower court’s determinations that sheriff’s departments and deputies sued in their official capacities...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed the appeal because the appellant failed to make the requisite showing that his district court’s procedural dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion was debatable or wrong. The court applied the standard set forth in *Gonzalez v. Thaler*, which...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment revoking Essence Ancrum’s term of supervised release and imposing a sentence of six months’ imprisonment followed by twelve months of supervision. The court applied de novo review to Ancrum’s claims that the district court violated Federal...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 Docket: 1:24-cv-24361-KMM The eleventh-circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Carnival Corporation on Darlene Wampole’s maritime negligence claims arising from a fall into a hatch on a cruise ship deck. The court applied the standard that a cruise ship operator owes pas...

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-10-02 Docket: 8:24-cr-00033-WFJ-TGW-1 The eleventh-circuit affirmed Javier Mares’s convictions for possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. The court applied de novo review to the sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, utilizi...