Weekly Case Digests October 1, 2021 - October 15, 2021.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Digests

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Life Spine, Inc., v. Aegis Spine, Inc.,

Case No.: 21-1649

Officials: SCUDDER, ST. EVE, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Preliminary Injunction Trade Secret Misappropriation

This trade secret case arises from a short-lived business relationship between two companies that sell spinal implant devices. Life Spine, Inc. makes and sells a spinal implant device called the ProLift Expandable Spacer System. Aegis Spine, Inc. contracted with Life Spine to distribute the ProLift to hospitals and surgeons. In the distribution agreement, Aegis promised to protect Life Spine's confidential information, act as a fiduciary for Life Spine's property, and refrain from reverse engineering the ProLift. Despite these promises, Aegis funneled information about the ProLift to its parent company, L&K Biomed, Inc., to help L&K develop a competing spinal implant device. Shortly after L&K's competing product hit the market, Life Spine sued Aegis for trade secret misappropriation and breach of the distribution agreement. Following a nine-day evidentiary hearing, the district court granted Life Spine's motion for a preliminary injunction barring Aegis and its business partners from marketing the competing product.

Aegis now appeals. It submits that the district court's injunction rests on a flawed legal conclusionnamely, that a company can have trade secret protection in a device that it publicly discloses through patents, displays, and sales. We see the issue differently, however. As a legal matter, we do not disputenor does Life Spinethat information in the public domain cannot be a trade secret. But the issue here is factual: Did Life Spine publicly disclose the specific information that it seeks to protect by patenting, displaying, and selling the ProLift? The district court found that the answer was no, and Aegis must show that its finding was clear error. It has not done so. Finding no basis to upset the district court's meticulous analysis, we affirm.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Lloyd Robi

Case No.: 20-1790

Officials: RIPPLE, HAMILTON, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Court Error Restitution

Lloyd Robl, working as an unlicensed and uninsured asbestos abatement contractor, undertook asbestos removal and disposal services for clients in Minnesota and Wisconsin. After a grand jury returned a seventeen-count indictment against Mr. Robl, he entered into a plea agreement. He pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for falsely holding himself out as a licensed and insured asbestos abatement contractor as part of a larger scheme to defraud customers. He also pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly releasing asbestos into the ambient air by burning asbestos-containing material in burn piles and in burn barrels at his home. The district court sentenced Mr. Robl to a total of 144 months' imprisonment and entered its judgment on September 16, 2019. In doing so, it noted that it had not yet determined a restitution amount and set a restitution hearing.

At Mr. Robl's request, the district court cancelled the initial restitution hearing until after the disposition of his then-pending direct appeal. Mr. Robl later moved to dismiss his initial appeal with prejudice, and we granted that motion. The district court then set a new restitution hearing. However, after a telephonic status hearing, at which Mr. Robl was not present but was represented by counsel, the restitution hearing was again cancelled, and the district court subsequently entered restitution in the amount of $94,031.41.

Mr. Robl now appeals that restitution order. He first challenges the district court's jurisdiction to enter restitution. He further challenges the district court's award of $94,031.41 and contends that the district court denied him his rights to be present and to speak as guaranteed by Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 43(a) and 32(i)(4).

We conclude that the district court had jurisdiction to enter the restitution order and that it committed no error in the course of adjudicating the amount of restitution. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Tom Reed, et al., v. Brex, Inc., et al.,

Case No.: 20-1697

Officials: SYKES, Chief Judge, and HAMILTON and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Summary Judgment Issue of Material Fact

At the center of this overtime pay case is a complicated payment scheme for auto repair technicians. The Fair Labor Standards Act generally requires that covered workers be paid extra for overtime work, but it exempts from that requirement some retail and service employees who are paid bona fide commissions. Plaintiffs Tom Reed and Michael Roy are auto repair technicians for defendant Brex, Inc. They claim that Brex's payment plan is not a true commission, so that under the Act they are paid hourly wages and thus are entitled to overtime pay. Brex counters that, when one peels back the layers of its complex payment system, it is in fact a bona fide commission based on each technician's sales during a pay period. The district court granted summary judgment for Brex based on the bona fide commission exemption.

Reed and Roy argue that genuine issues of material fact preclude summary judgment on this theory, but their arguments are not persuasive. First, we reject their attempts to cite new facts and calculations for the first time on appeal for reasons we discussed above. Second, plaintiffs characterize regulatory interpretation as a question of fact for the jurybut they do not contest the actual facts, which are that Brex technicians are paid a straight commission 84 percent of the time. Plaintiffs have not cited any evidence from which a jury could conclude that the guarantee is actually a salary, even considering the modest hourly bonuses offered to well-credentialed technicians. See Yi; 480 F.3d at 510 (affirming summary judgment even though technicians were paid different baseline hourly rates based on skill and experience). Reed and Roy make other undeveloped factual arguments in favor of reversal, but such arguments and legal arguments unsupported by pertinent authority are waived. See, e.g., Williams v. Board of Education of City of Chicago, 982 F.3d 495, 511 (7th Cir. 2020). They claim that the fact that the guaranteed wage floor is paid for 16 percent of all workweeks raises an issue of fact for the jury as to whether the guarantee operates as an integral part of a true commission system. That figure shows only that the guarantee occasionally guarantees. And the Act permits guarantees. Plaintiffs' observation of this fact, without any citation to relevant authority or attempt to situate Brex's practices within the permissive statutory and regulatory framework, cannot defeat summary judgment on its own. That is especially true here, where the undisputed evidence presented to the district court showed that there was substantial hourly and weekly variation in pay and that the guarantees are therefore "computed in accordance with a bona fide commission payment plan or formula under which the computed commissions vary in accordance with the employee's performance on the job." 29 C.F.R. 779.416(b). We affirm.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Brenda Quinn, as administrator for the Estate of Travis Fredrickson v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., et al.,

Case No.: 20-1483

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

Focus: Prisoner Deliberate Indifference

Travis Fredrickson was a troubled person. Events not pertinent to this appeal landed him in Illinois's prison system, where he spent time at several institutions. Throughout that time, he received services to manage his serious mental-health problems, which included anxiety, depression, and the effects of long-term drug dependence. While in custody at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center (operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections, or IDOC), he died by suicide.

Frederickson's mother and representative, Brenda Quinn, filed this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for violations of her son's Eighth Amendment rights two years to the date after his death. She alleges that several IDOC employees, of whom two now remain, showed deliberate indifference to her son's risk of harm, and she accuses Wexford Health Sources, Inc., which contracts with Illinois to provide health services in its prisons, of failing to implement and follow procedures to ensure that incarcerated persons receive continuous mental-health services during transfers between IDOC facilities. The district court granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment. We agree with its assessment of the record, and so we affirm.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Jason L. White v. United States of America

Case No.: 17-2749

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

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines Enhancement

Jason White, convicted of possessing a firearm as a felon, petitions under 28...