Lord Stanley makes an appearance in Judge Gayles' chambers

 

  

  

Congrats to Judge Artau!

 By John R. Byrne

Judge Artau was confirmed this evening as our latest United States District Judge. From what I understand, even though he's technically filling Judge Scola's seat, Judge Artau will sit in West Palm Beach (essentially replacing Judge Rosenberg, who's heading to the Federal Judicial Center). And whoever is eventually appointed to fill Judge Rosenberg's now (or soon-to-be) vacant seat will sit in Fort Lauderdale. Just as an fyi for those of you getting your applications ready!

Big Order in Helms-Burton Act Case

By John R. Byrne

Several months back, Judge Moreno presided over the nation's first jury trial involving the Helms-Burton Act. As the blog readers likely know, that statute prohibits the knowing trafficking in property confiscated by the Communist Cuban government. The Plaintiff in the case had sued four companies that facilitate hotel bookings. The verdict came back for the Plaintiff and it was a big one: $119.4 million. 

But in the words of the great (and recently retired) Lee Corso, "Not so fast, my friend." Judge Moreno set aside the jury verdict as to all four defendants. In short, the court found (1) that one defendant (Expedia Group, Inc.) didn't do anything wrong and couldn't be tagged with the acts of its co-defendants or a non-party Expedia entity) and (2) that the other defendants (Orbitz, LLC and Hotels.com) didn't knowingly traffic because they actually ceased-and-desisted bookings when they received Plaintiff's notice. 

Full order is here. The conclusion, though, sums it up well as follows:

A trial court's decision to set aside a jury verdict should never been taken lightly, particularly in a case where great lawyers on both sides have well represented their clients admirably, with passion but respect, over a long period of time. Much time and money has been spent by the parties and counsel as the Court struggled with the multitude of legal issues, which may well be decided differently by the wiser Court of Appeals. Perhaps, now we understand better the decisions of our United States Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, to suspend provisionally Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. There may be little comfort for either side of this first-ever Helms Burton Act jury trial in President Trump's decision in his first term not to defer any longer the bipartisan Congressional intent in 1996, after the shooting of the airplanes used to save Cuban refugees fleeing the island suffering a Communist dictatorship for the last 65 years. After all, even without a money judgment in favor of Plaintiff, the intent of the Helms-Burton Act was indeed followed. Those parties who are notified that their actions violate the Act must stop their activity. Defendants did cease bookings with the hotels located on Plaintiff's inherited property within the 30 days provided by the Act and thus complied with the purpose of the law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton. Therefore, the Court sets aside the jury verdicts and enters judgments in favor of Defendants Expedia Group, Inc., Hotels.com GP, LLC, Hotels.com L.P., and Orbitz, LLC.

New District Judge on Monday?

By John R. Byrne

This is for Judge Scola's seat. Stay tuned!

Dolphins open the season this Sunday at the Colts. Don't have a good feeling at all about this season (I expect them to be very bad this year) but they should be able to beat Daniel Jones on Sunday. 

CA11 stays Alligator Alcatraz decision in 2-1 order

 Here's the 2-1 order (Lagoa for the majority, joined by Branch and Jordan in dissent).

 Judge Lagoa ends her order with this:

While the power to determine immigration policy lies with the Federal government, “[t]he pervasiveness of federal regulation does not diminish the importance of immigration policy to the States,” which “bear[ ] many of the consequences of unlawful immigration.”  Arizona, 567 U.S. at 397.  Many of those harmful con-sequences are present here.  Governor DeSantis has declared a state of emergency under Florida law because Florida is experiencing an “immigration crisis of unprecedented magnitude.”  DE 137-1 ¶ 3.  According to Joseph Harrison, a Lieutenant Colonel and Deputy Director for the Florida Highway Patrol (“FHP”), forcing Florida to shutter the detention facility will lead to overcrowding and will kneecap the State’s immigration-enforcement efforts.  Id. ¶¶ 5, 6.  Furthermore, he offers non-speculative evidence that in-sufficient detention space will lead to detainees being released back into the community: “[B]efore the detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport was established,” he ex-plains, “ICE regularly informed FHP officers that the federal government lacked sufficient detention capacity to detain illegal aliens intercepted by FHP,” and, “[i]n those instances, FHP was forced to let those illegal aliens go.”  Id. ¶ 5.  We are convinced that, if the injunction were to stay in place, it would bring the State’s already stressed and overcrowded system to a breaking point. 
On the other hand, the Plaintiffs have submitted declarations indicating that the conversion of the Site from a working air-port into a detention center will have a range of deleterious effects on the environment, including “light, water, and noise pollution, increased vehicular traffic, wildlife habitat degradation, and waste management issues.”  These declarations assert that these effects may “negatively impact” the ecosystem of the Everglades and the survival of various threatened or endangered species, although it is unclear whether these declarations have accounted for the Site’s former use as an airport in order to establish a reliable baseline to evaluate possible future environmental impacts.  DE 5-2 ¶¶ 13–14.  We need not, however, wade into that issue here.  As the Supreme Court reminds, there is no governmental project, especially one enacted in exigent circumstances, that does not pose some coun-tervailing risk.  Cf. Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 26 (2008) (holding that the balance of equities and consideration of overall public interest weighed in favor of the Navy, in spite of the fact that the Navy’s use of “mid-frequency active” sonar might cause “harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals,” be-cause blocking the Navy from using this technology would jeop-ardize the “safety of the fleet”).  Our job, at this stage, is to balance the equities, as well as the overall public interest, and we are com-pelled in this case to conclude that these factors favor the Defend-ants: While the environmental effects mentioned by the Plaintiffs may result in down-the-line harm, the injuries facing the Defend-ants and the public are critical, immediate, and concrete. 
We conclude that the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction. 

Judge Jordan starts his dissent this way: 

 Given the applicable burden on litigants who move for a stay, the deferential abuse of discretion standard that governs review of a preliminary injunction, and the clearly erroneous standard that limits appellate review of factual findings, the stay motion filed by the state and federal defendants should be a relatively simple denial.  The majority, however, essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court’s determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities.  I therefore respectfully dissent from its decision to grant a stay of the preliminary injunction.    

Detra Shaw-Wilder Appointed Magistrate Judge

By Jordi C. Martínez-Cid

The Southern District of Florida has a new magistrate judge. Detra Shaw-Wilder was officially appointed to the bench, effective September 2, 2025. The administrative order is below.

Judge Shaw-Wilder is a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law. She brings decades of litigation experience to the federal judiciary. Prior to her appointment, she was a partner at Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, where she handled complex commercial litigation, corporate disputes, and high-stakes arbitration matters. This makes her the fourth judge on the Southern District of Florida bench that was associated with Koyzak Tropin Throckmorton, joining Judge Huck, Judge Isicoff, and Judge Lopez-Castro.  

Despite strong recommendations and near-universal praise, Judge Shaw-Wilder’s appointment follows a stalled nomination for a district court judgeship by President Biden in 2024, which was ultimately returned by the Senate in early 2025 after Florida’s senators withheld their blue slips. She now joins the bench as a magistrate judge and will sit in Fort Lauderdale.

Boat cases

The defendants in those cases (usually mopes) used to get arrested, charged, and sentenced to monster sentences... And there has always been really interesting litigation surrounding jurisdiction and sentencing, etc.

But yesterday, the United States military blew up one of these drug boats, killing 11.  

Was this legal?

From Reuters:

The U.S. military killed 11 people on Tuesday in a strike on a vessel from Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal narcotics, President Donald Trump said, in the first known operation since his administration's recent deployment of warships to the southern Caribbean.

"We just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat," Trump told reporters at the White House.

"And there's more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time ... These came out of Venezuela."

He later shared a video on his Truth Social platform that appeared to show footage from overhead drones of a speedboat at sea exploding and then on fire.

"The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike," Trump said.

He added that the U.S. military had identified the crew as members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. designated a terrorist group in February. He repeated allegations that Tren de Aragua is being controlled by Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, accusations that Caracas denies.

 

Eleventh Circuit Affirms CNN Summary Judgment Win

 By John R. Byrne

Some time ago, we covered Judge Singhal's grant of summary judgment to CNN in the defamation lawsuit filed against the network by Alan Dershowitz. The 11th Circuit just drove another nail into the lawsuit's coffin, affirming that order. The Court held there was no evidence that the reporters had spoken with actual malice (to the contrary, the Court noted that the evidence indicated that the reporters believed in the truth of their statements).

Perhaps more interesting, though, were the concurring opinions, written by Judges Lagoa and Wilson, which discussed the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan standard applicable to defamation cases. In short, Judge Lagoa doesn't like it, Judge Wilson does.  

Opinion here.