The case involved an autistic student MG and his parents suing the Caldwell-West Caldwell school district and staff for alleged violations of constitutional rights under the U.S. Constitution, New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination, and tort claims, stemming from the use of physical restraints and isolation rooms in response to the child's escalating aggressive behaviors during the 2007-2008 school year. The district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on all federal claims. It reasoned that the school's policy of restraining and isolating MG was rationally related to the legitimate governmental purpose of protecting the child and others from harm, satisfying rational basis review and precluding an equal protection violation. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state claims and dismissed them without prejudice.
In United States v. Demings, the defendant, a convicted felon, was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) with possession of a firearm after Newark police officers stopped his car for an alleged parking violation, searched it, and recovered a gun, ammunition, and marijuana. Demings moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the stop and search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. After a hearing, the district court credited the defendant's account over the officers' testimony, which it found internally inconsistent and not credible, and concluded that the encounter lacked reasonable suspicion or probable cause. The court therefore granted the motion to suppress, holding that the seized items were inadmissible. The ruling turned on the application of Fourth Amendment standards to a street encounter initiated by police in the absence of observed criminal activity.
The case involved defendant John Howard, a convicted felon charged under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) with possessing a firearm, who moved to suppress the gun seized during a warrantless stop and frisk by Newark police officers. The officers testified that they approached Howard after seeing him appear startled outside a crack house and shove a black object into his waistband, leading to a pat-down that revealed the handgun; Howard countered with evidence including cellphone records showing he was using a phone at the time and claimed the gun was taken from his back waistband without prior furtive movements. After a suppression hearing, the court assessed witness credibility and found the officers' account inconsistent with the evidence and lacking in common sense, while Howard's version was more consistent. The court concluded that the Terry stop was unconstitutional because the facts did not establish reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or danger to the officers, and it granted the motion to suppress the evidence. The decision emphasized that police testimony in such cases must be truthful to avoid undermining the rule of law.
In this taxpayer refund action, Schering-Plough sought repayment of approximately $473 million in taxes after the IRS treated lump-sum payments from its foreign subsidiaries—received in exchange for assigning rights to future interest payments under swap agreements—as immediately taxable loans rather than deferrable sales of income streams. The court examined the transactions under the substance-over-form doctrine to determine their economic reality and applied the economic substance test to assess whether they served legitimate non-tax business purposes or functioned primarily as a means to repatriate offshore earnings without triggering Subpart F taxation. Central to the analysis was whether the arrangements were properly characterized as loans from the subsidiaries, which would validate the tax assessment, or as sales allowing amortization of the payments over the life of the swaps pursuant to IRS Notice 89-21.
This case is a Hatch-Waxman patent infringement suit in which EKR, the holder of the '405 patent covering a nicardipine pharmaceutical composition for parenteral administration (embodied in Cardene I.V.), sued Sun after Sun filed an ANDA seeking FDA approval to market a generic version and certified under Paragraph IV that its product would not infringe the patent. The court previously granted EKR summary judgment of infringement based on claim construction of the term 'isotonic' and comparison of Sun's ANDA product to the patent claims. On Sun's motion for reconsideration, the court denied relief, reasoning that the accused product literally met the concentration and isotonicity limitations when measured in the ampul as formulated, that the proper infringement analysis compared the ANDA product to the claims rather than the commercial embodiment, and that Sun's prosecution-history and waiver arguments lacked merit.
The case involved Coastal Outdoor Advertising Group challenging the Township of East Hanover's denial of a billboard permit under its sign ordinance, claiming violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the New Jersey Constitution. The court granted summary judgment to the township, dismissing the federal claims for lack of standing and on the merits, finding that the ordinance was a valid time, place, and manner restriction and that Coastal could not show causation or redressability. The state claims were dismissed without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.