USCA11 Case: 22-11057 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/29/2022 Page: 1 of 9
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-11057
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
JON P. RUGGLES,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 9:20-cv-82389-AMC
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-11057
Before ROSENBAUM, NEWSOM, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Jon Ruggles appeals the district court’s grant of summary
judgment to the government, on its complaint to enforce a 2016
final administrative decision imposing an agreed-upon civil mone-
tary penalty and disgorgement for violations of the Commodity
Exchange Act, see 7 U.S.C. §§ 6b & 6c, and regulations. Ruggles
claims that his duty to pay under this decision was contingent on
certain future events affecting his ability to pay, such as the resolu-
tion of certain tax issues. But he fails to create a genuine issue of
material fact that the decision incorporated the alleged contingen-
cies or that the government ever agreed to them. So we affirm.
I.
In 2016, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(“CFTC”) and Ruggles reached a settlement to resolve allegations
of fraud and insider trading. Under that settlement, the CFTC is-
sued a final administrative decision against Ruggles in September
2016 (the “CFTC Order” or “Order”), which ordered him to pay—
by agreement of the parties—a civil monetary penalty of $1.75 mil-
lion and disgorgement of about $3.5 million, plus post-judgment
interest.
The CFTC Order provided that Ruggles “shall satisfy” the
monetary penalty and disgorgement by making payments as fol-
lows: (a) $1,051,261 immediately; (b) $650,000 within 6 months of
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22-11057 Opinion of the Court 3
the order; (c) five payments of $500,000 each within 12, 18, 24, 30,
and 36 months, respectively; and (d) a final payment of $550,045
within 42 months. The Order specified that the CFTC’s acceptance
of partial payment did not waive or alter Ruggles’s payment obli-
gation. And it warned that “[i]f any payment is not made by the
date the payment is required by this Order,” the “entire outstand-
ing balance. . . shall be due and payable immediately.” Nothing in
the Order made Ruggles’s adherence to the payment schedule con-
ditional on some other factor.
Between February and June of 2018, in the lead-up to a pay-
ment due at the end of June, Ruggles communicated by email with
Thomas Simek, Chief Trial Attorney for the CFTC, that he was
having difficulty making the required payments. Ruggles asserts
that these emails reflect an agreement to excuse or suspend the
payment schedule pending the resolution of certain matters affect-
ing his ability to pay.
In an email sent February 12, 2018, Ruggles explained that,
when he entered into the settlement agreement, he “based [his]
cash forecast on 1) deducting disgorged money and 2) having rea-
sonable tax efficiency.” He stated that both “assumptions have not
gone to plan,” since nearly 70% of his income was being withheld
between Canada and the United States, though he believed it
would “work out in the end.” He also expected to receive “more
than adequate funds” from the sale of a company in which he
owned a stake, which he “suspect[ed]” would occur “within 3
years,” plus some funds from other sources, including an
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-11057
anticipated release of withheld taxes by Canadian tax authorities
and a corporate dividend.
Responding on March 26, Simek thanked Ruggles for the up-
date, inquired about “further developments” regarding the Cana-
dian tax release and corporate dividend, and asked if he was “now
in a position to make some payment toward the settlement?” On
March 29, Ruggles stated that he was waiting for paperwork to go
through for the dividend, and that the Canadian tax release was “in
the middle of a challenge” but “should be coming to an end soon.”
He expressed hope of “returning to a normal payments schedule .
. . soon.”
In an April 17 reply, Simek thanked Ruggles for the update
and reiterated the Order’s payment schedule:
We appreciate the challenges you are facing, but in
order to demonstrate that you intend to abide by the
payment plan set forth in the settlement order, and to
avoid a determination that the amount you owe is un-
collectible, it will be important for you to make a pay-
ment toward the settlement obligation this quarter.
Please let us know if you do not expect to be able to
do so.
Ruggles responded on April 19 that a payment would be made soon
and before the deadline of June 30. On June 15, Simek advised that
the CFTC had “received no additional information from you re-
garding when you plan on making a payment toward the
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22-11057 Opinion of the Court 5
settlement obligation.” Ruggles replied that he had made a partial
payment the previous week.
Ultimately, Ruggles paid a total of approximately $1.5 mil-
lion toward the civil monetary penalty and disgorgement obliga-
tion. He made a payment of $1,051,261 in September 2016, a pay-
ment of $175,000 in March 2017, and a payment of $245,000 in June
2018.
In December 2020, after sending a demand letter the previ-
ous month, the government sued Ruggles to collect the remaining
amount due, which it asserted was approximately $3.8 million plus
interest. Ruggles filed an answer and asserted a single “affirmative
defense” based on his inability to pay according to the payment
schedule, relying solely on the 2018 email correspondence with the
CFTC we described above.
The district court granted summary judgment to the gov-
ernment. It concluded that the 2018 emails did not create a genu-
ine issue of material fact as to Ruggles’s obligation to pay under the
plain terms of the Order. It also found that he had not offered evi-
dence to support a defense of “commercial frustration” under Flor-
ida law. Accordingly, the court entered final judgment for the gov-
ernment in the amount of approximately $3.9 million. Ruggles
now appeals.
II.
We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, constru-
ing the evidence and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-11057
the nonmoving party. Carlson v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc.,
787 F.3d 1313, 1317 (11th Cir. 2015). Summary judgment is appro-
priate when the record shows that “there is no genuine dispute as
to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a
matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A dispute is not “genuine”
unless a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving
party. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.,
477 U.S. 242, 248
(1986).
III.
Without citing any supporting legal authority, Ruggles
maintains that his 2018 email correspondence with the CFTC re-
flects an agreement that the 2016 CFTC Order’s payment schedule
“depended upon the satisfaction of certain contingencies which the
CFTC knew about and accepted.”
Ruggles has not created a genuine issue of material fact re-
garding his duty to pay. The CFTC Order, which embodied the
settlement agreement and imposed the payment obligation, never
mentioned Ruggles’s alleged contingencies. 1 Nor did it suggest
that the payment schedule was subject to alteration. Rather, it
made clear that the CFTC’s acceptance of partial payment did not
excuse Ruggles’s compliance with the payment schedule, and that
missed payments—which could, of course, arise from an inability
1 “A settlement agreement is a contract” and is governed by principles of gen-
eral contract law from the applicable state. Schwartz v. Florida Bd. of Regents,
807 F.2d 901, 905 (11th Cir. 1987).
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22-11057 Opinion of the Court 7
to pay—would render the “entire outstanding balance . . . due and
payable immediately.” In short, nothing in the Order supports
Ruggles’s claim that his duty to pay was contingent on his ability
to pay.
Nor does the record support a reasonable inference that the
CFTC agreed to Ruggles’s contingencies, either before or after en-
try of the Order in 2016. For starters, Ruggles offers no evidence
close in time to the settlement agreement, and his 2018 emails do
not show that the alleged continencies were the subject of settle-
ment negotiations. Instead, his February 2018 email frames the
contingencies in terms of his personal reasons for agreeing to the
settlement: “When I agreed to our settlement agreement in 2016, I
based my cash forecast on 1) deducting disgorged money and 2)
having reasonable tax efficiency.” That Ruggles made these as-
sumptions when he agreed to the settlement, however, does not
mean that the CFTC agreed to make the duty to pay contingent on
them, even assuming it was aware of them. As we just noted, these
contingencies are completely absent from or are contradicted by
the Order’s plain terms.
And no reasonable jury could infer the CFTC’s agreements
to Ruggles’s contingencies based on the emails from CFTC attor-
ney Simek. In the email correspondence, Simek merely thanked
Ruggles for providing information about his finances, made some
inquiries about them, and pushed Ruggles to make at least a partial
payment by the end of the quarter. While he expressed sympathy
for Ruggles’s financial “challenges,” he made clear that Ruggles
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-11057
needed to make a payment by the upcoming deadline “in order to
demonstrate that [he] intend[ed] to abide by the payment plan set
forth in the settlement order.” In response, Ruggles did not suggest
his duty to pay had been excused or suspended; he simply said he
would make a payment by the deadline. Nothing in these emails
even arguably reflects that the CFTC agreed to suspend or excuse
Ruggles’s payment obligation.
Ruggles also briefly addresses the defense of “commercial
frustration,” but only insofar as it relates to his argument that the
CFTC Order contained two unstated conditions to payment that
excused his noncompliance with the payment schedule. He does
not address the court’s independent reasons for rejecting that de-
fense on the merits apart from a bare assertion that the court im-
properly weighed the evidence. Such a passing reference, without
supporting arguments or authority, is insufficient to properly raise
the issue for review on appeal. See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian
Ins. Co.,
739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014) (“We have long held
that an appellant abandons a claim when he either makes only pass-
ing references to it or raises it in a perfunctory manner without
supporting arguments and authority.”). Accordingly, we deem this
issue abandoned.
Finally, we note that Ruggles fails to present any evidence
that the contingencies affecting his ability to pay continued after
June 2018, when he made his last payment to the CFTC. So even
if he established that his duty to pay was excused or suspended in
2018, he has made no showing that such an excuse applied to
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22-11057 Opinion of the Court 9
subsequent missed payments under the payment schedule, any of
which would have made the “entire outstanding balance . . . due
and payable immediately” under the terms of the Order.
IV.
For these reasons, the district court properly granted sum-
mary judgment to the government.
AFFIRMED.
