Weekly Case Digests January 18, 2021 January 22, 2021.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Digests

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Lindani Mzembe

Case No.: 20-1265

Officials: KANNE, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

This appeal presents several related issues about how federal judges should decide whether sentences in federal prosecutions should run consecutively to or concurrently with separate sentences in unrelated state prosecutions. The issues arise in an unusual way in this case because the state court had already decided to impose a long sentence consecutive to the federal offender's federal sentence. Intervening changes in federal law then required resentencing in federal court, where the consecutive v. concurrent question could be revisited. The defendant-appellant argues that, in refusing to make the new federal sentence concurrent with the intervening state sentence, the district judge erred (a) by giving an inadequate explanation for his decision, (b) by deferring to the state court's intervening judgment to make the sentences consecutive, and (c) by imposing an unreasonably severe sentence that is a de facto life sentence. We find no reversible error, so we affirm the new federal sentence.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Tai Matlin, et al., v. Spin Master Corp, et al.,

Case No.: 20-1039; 20-1049

Officials: EASTERBROOK, MANION, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Fee Award Attorney's Fees

Plaintiffs Tai Matlin and James Waring have spent seventeen years embroiled in disputes related to the intellectual property claims at issue in this case. In that time, arbitrators have sorted out many aspects of this IP kerfuffle, including that a company called Gray Matter is on the hook alone for paying certain royalties to Matlin and Waring. So, in 2017, when Matlin and Waring filed the suit now on appeal seeking those royalties from companies other than Gray Matter, they knewor should have knownthat they had a loser on their hands. And the district court recognized as much by sanctioning Matlin and Waring and ordering them and their former counsel, Stoltmann Law Offices, to pay certain costs and fees expended by Defendants Swimways and Spin Master.

Accordingly, we affirm the district court's decision granting costs and fees to Swimways and Spin Master in the amount of $271,926.92. We also deny Appellees' motion for sanctions under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: State of Wisconsin, Department of Workforce Development-Division of Vocational Rehabilitation v. United States Department of Education, et al.,

Case No.: 20-1016; 20-1115

Officials: WOOD, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Randolph-Sheppard Act Violation Arbitration

The Randolph-Sheppard Act provides economic opportunities by granting blind persons priority to operate vending facilities at certain government properties. When a blind vendor, Jocelyn Belsha, was awarded certain vending operations in Racine County, Wisconsin, a different blind vendor, Theresa...