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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
JYOTI AGRAWAL,
Defendant-Appellant. |
No. 22-5931 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Lexington.
No. 5:21-cr-00047-1—Danny C. Reeves, Chief District Judge.
Argued: October 26, 2023
Decided and Filed: April 1, 2024
Before: MOORE, READLER, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Jyoti Agrawal successfully obtained over $1.5 million in
federal and state grants to research and develop a scanning electron microscope. But fraud
tainted these grants. Agrawal received the largest grant by forging a letter in her company’s
application to the Department of Energy. She later lied to the Department about how her
company had spent the funds, failing to disclose (among other things) that she had used a portion
to pay for her MBA. A jury convicted Agrawal of three financial crimes. The district court
found that her conduct had caused $1,548,255 in “loss” when calculating her guidelines range. It
also ordered Agrawal to pay that amount back in restitution and authorized the United States to
confiscate her house and personal financial accounts as part of a separate forfeiture judgment.
On appeal, Agrawal challenges the district court’s evidentiary and instructional rulings at
trial. She challenges the court’s estimate of the amount of the “loss” from her fraud, claiming
that the court should have reduced its estimate by the sums she legitimately spent on the
research-and-development project. She lastly challenges the court’s decision to find her personal
property forfeitable due to the fraud. But the alleged evidentiary and instructional errors were all
harmless. The district court also properly refused to offset its “loss” amount by her project
expenses because it reasonably found that the Department would not have awarded her most of
the grant funds if it had known of the fraud. And the court properly subjected her personal
property to forfeiture because she commingled that property with grant funds. We thus affirm. |
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FEDEX GROUND PACKAGE SYSTEM, INCORPORATED,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
ROUTE CONSULTANT, INC.,
Defendant-Appellee. |
No. 23-5456 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville.
No. 3:22-cv-00656—Aleta Arthur Trauger, District Judge.
Argued: January 31, 2024
Decided and Filed:
Before: SILER, MATHIS, and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
MATHIS, Circuit Judge. Companies are free to tout their own goods, services, and
business dealings. And they can talk about the business activities of other companies. But the
Lanham Act and the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) prohibit a company from
falsely advertising or misrepresenting the goods, services, and activities of another company, or
itself, if such false advertisement or misrepresentation damages the other company. 15 U.S.C.
§ 1125(a)(1)(B); Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 47-18-104(b)(8), -109(a)(1).
In this case, FedEx Ground Packaging Systems, Inc. (“FXG”) claims that Route
Consultant, Inc. publicized nine false or misleading statements about its business practices. FXG
claims that Route Consultant made the statements to foster discontent between FXG and its
contractors, which would damage FXG and benefit Route Consultant. So FXG sued Route
Consultant under the Lanham Act’s false-advertising provision and the TCPA’s statutory-disparagement provision. Because we agree with the district court that FXG failed to plausibly
allege that Route Consultant made a single false or misleading statement, we affirm. |
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