DISCLAIMER:  The following unofficial case summaries are prepared by the clerk's office
                        as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
152964P.pdf   03/29/2017  Michael Biffle  v.  Sho-Me Power Electric, etc.
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  15-2964
   U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri - Jefferson City   
   [PUBLISHED] [Benton, Author, with Loken and Gruender, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Property law. Where defendant Sho-me Power had an easement 
   which gave it the right to install and use fiber-optic cables for internal 
   communications related to supplying electricity in connection with the 
   operations covered by the initial easement, the easements did not give it 
   and defendant Sho-Me Tech the right to use the fiber-optic cables 
   installed on easement land for commercial telecommunications purposes 
   unrelated to supplying electricity; this use constituted a trespass under 
   Missouri law; however, the district court erred in finding the plaintiffs 
   could use the theory of unjust-enrichment to recover damages for the 
   trespass, and the jury award of damages for unjust enrichment is vacated; 
   on remand, the landowner plaintiffs may chose to pursue damages on their 
   trespass claim; the district court did not abuse its discretion by 
   certifying a class of landowners in this matter. 
  
161285P.pdf   03/29/2017  Jeannie May  v.  Nationstar Mortgage, LLC
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  16-1285
                          and No:  16-1307
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Wright, Author, with Wollman and Smith, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Fair Credit Reporting Act. Punitive damage award in action 
   alleging defendant's debt collection actions constituted an invasion of 
   privacy under Missouri law is affirmed; there was sufficient evidence that 
   defendant acted with reckless indifference to plaintiff's rights to 
   support the jury's award of $400,000 in punitive damages; claim that the 
   award violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment rejected 
   as the damages were not a grossly excessive civil punishment; the conduct 
   was reprehensible and the ratio of the compensatory damages to punitive 
   damages - 1:8 - "did not set off alarm bells," given defendant's $1.2 
   billion net worth; on plaintiff's cross-appeal, the district court did not 
   err in excluding evidence of defendant's treatment of another borrower; 
   plaintiff did not make a substantive objection to the Real Estate 
   Settlement Practices Act violation instruction she now challenges on 
   appeal, but assuming the instruction was a misstatement of law, the error 
   did not entitle her to reversal under plain-error review as the court can 
   only speculate as to why the jury rejected plaintiff's RESPA claim given 
   the multitude of defenses defendant advanced; in any event, the award for 
   plaintiff does not show that the RESPA instruction error resulted in a 
   miscarriage of justice.