Herbert Jay Stern

This case involves a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 by Morrison, who was convicted in a bench trial of rape and related charges after the admission of a bedsheet containing sperm and hair evidence seized without a warrant. The petitioner claimed ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to conduct discovery or timely move to suppress the evidence, which the State concedes was obtained unconstitutionally. On remand from the Supreme Court to apply the prejudice standard from Strickland v. Washington, the district court held that counsel's errors were prejudicial, as the improperly admitted evidence was central to the prosecution's case in a close factual dispute and there was a reasonable probability of acquittal without it. The court rejected the State's arguments that such claims are not cognizable on habeas or that testimony from the trial judge could be used to assess prejudice, and it granted the writ ordering a new trial.

criminal lawprocedurecivil rights

The case involved an unincorporated association of property developers challenging Hoboken Ordinance V-51, which required landlords to notify the city of apartment vacancies over 30 days and imposed daily fines for units vacant over 60 days unless a waiver was granted for maintenance, improvements, or family occupancy; the ordinance aimed to address a shortage of affordable rental housing by preventing 'warehousing' of units. Plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment that the ordinance violated federal constitutional and statutory rights and was preempted by New Jersey state law on condominium conversions. The court dismissed the complaint, as amended, finding no basis for the federal claims. The decision rested on the absence of any enforcement actions under the ordinance prior to suit, the plaintiffs' failure to demonstrate concrete injury or ripe claims, and the ordinance's exemptions and waiver provisions not triggering federal violations on their face.

propertybusiness & regulatory

In Anyanwu v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, Nigerian petitioners facing deportation after overstaying and working without authorization sought a stay from the INS Deputy District Director pending their motion to reopen and asylum application, claiming the journalist husband faced persecution due to ties to a government overthrown in a 1983 coup. The INS denied the stay, deeming the asylum claim frivolous and finding no health risks to their child from return. The court granted a preliminary injunction staying deportation, holding that the denial constituted an abuse of discretion under the applicable regulation because the director's summary rejection failed to seriously weigh evidence of potential harm, including letters from relatives and human rights reports documenting arbitrary arrests and prison conditions in Nigeria. The court emphasized that discretion narrows where human life is at stake and that deportation would moot the asylum claim. The decision was issued under habeas review as a non-final order not directly appealable to the circuit court.

immigration

The case concerns James Morgart's suit against Union Mutual Life Insurance Company alleging breach of his general agency agreement, which allowed termination on 30 days' notice, based on alleged written and oral promises not to terminate so long as sales quotas were met; the complaint also included claims for promissory estoppel, fraud, and other theories arising from the 1983 termination of all such contracts. The court had previously denied dismissal of the contract, estoppel, and fraud claims. On the pending motions, the court vacated a magistrate's order directing application of Maine law because the magistrate lacked jurisdiction over the choice-of-law issue and denied summary judgment, holding that genuine factual disputes existed as to whether Morgart's election of early retirement constituted voluntary relinquishment of his claims and whether a subsequent emeritus agreement extinguished any surviving rights under the original agency contract.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involved multiemployer pension plans under ERISA and the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act, where Progressive Supermarkets withdrew from two union pension funds upon liquidating its assets in 1983 and was assessed over $750,000 in withdrawal liability. The plaintiffs, the unions and pension funds, sued to compel Progressive to make interim payments pending arbitration and to hold that Progressive and a related partnership, B.E.G.M. Associates, constituted a single employer due to common control through shared ownership by William Margulis and his family trusts. The court granted the plaintiffs' motions for summary judgment and denied the defendants' motion, ruling that ERISA requires ongoing payments during disputes and that the entities qualified as a single employer under the statute's attribution rules for ownership interests exceeding 50 percent. The defendants' constitutional challenge to the withdrawal liability provisions was rejected as the court enforced the statutory mandates for payment and single-employer treatment.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatory

This case involves a dispute over a commercial lease for a New Jersey service station property, under which Shell Oil held a right of first refusal if the owner T&TR received a bona fide offer to sell, as well as a separate purchase option. T&TR sold the property to Herb C. Enterprises in 1985 for $198,250 without notifying Shell, in violation of the lease, and Shell sued for specific performance to compel conveyance of the property at that price. The court granted Shell's motion for summary judgment, ordering Herb C. to convey the property to Shell. It reasoned that specific performance is available against a purchaser with constructive notice of the lessee's rights under the lease, that the defendants could not deny the bona fide nature of the sale given the sworn statements in the deed and tax filings, and that Herb C. could not assert defenses unavailable to T&TR.

propertybusiness & regulatory

The case involved defendant Russell Liotard, who was previously acquitted in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiring to steal and transport trailers in late September 1985, and who faced a new federal indictment in New Jersey for conspiring to steal a separate trailer-load of Sony goods in early August 1985 from the same trucking company. Liotard moved to dismiss the New Jersey indictment on double jeopardy grounds and under the Petite policy against successive prosecutions for offenses arising from a single transaction, and after denial he sought reconsideration. The court denied the motion, holding that the two indictments charged distinct conspiracies because they involved different agreements, different overt acts, different participants in part, different time periods, different locations, and different objectives, such that evidence sufficient for one would not support conviction on the other under the same-evidence test. The court further found that Liotard had not made even a non-frivolous showing of double jeopardy to shift the burden to the government.

criminal lawprocedure

This case arose after First Jersey National Bank, acting as depository in Dome Petroleum's tender offer, mistakenly distributed funds and paid $3.5 million to the affected State Street Group; First Jersey then recovered from its insurer Employers under a loan agreement and successfully sued Dome for indemnification under their depository contract. Dome brought this action asserting subrogation rights to recover from Employers under the insurance policy. On remand from the Third Circuit, the district court denied defendants' motion for dismissal or summary judgment, holding that First Jersey had incurred a compensable loss under the policy, that Dome's indemnification did not make it an insurer whose coverage canceled Employers' obligations, that the subrogation and other-insurance clauses did not bar recovery, and that no time bar or equitable defense applied. The court reasoned that Dome stood in First Jersey's shoes for subrogation purposes and that the policy's terms and New Jersey law allocated the ultimate risk to Employers absent contrary provisions.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involved retired airline pilots who sued their brokerage firm, Paine Webber, alleging that the firm fraudulently induced them to open discretionary investment accounts, mismanaged those accounts, and issued false monthly statements, causing losses; the claims were brought under state law, section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the civil RICO statute. The defendants moved to compel arbitration under a clause in the investment contracts that covered controversies arising out of the handling of transactions referred to in the agreement. The court granted the motion in part, ordering arbitration of the mismanagement, misrepresentation, and most statutory claims but retaining jurisdiction over the fraudulent inducement allegations. The core reasoning was that the arbitration clause was narrowly drafted and did not encompass pre-contract inducement claims, while Supreme Court precedents such as Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc. established that section 10(b) and RICO claims are arbitrable absent congressional prohibition to the contrary.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involves a trademark dispute between two television production companies over the use of the mark "TEN." The defendant, an established California company that had been using "TEN" since 1983, sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the New Jersey plaintiff from using the same mark after the plaintiff began using it in 1985. The court granted the injunction, finding a likelihood of consumer confusion under the Lanham Act based on the identical marks, the strength of the defendant's prior use in relevant markets, and the competing nature of their services, despite the lack of federal registration. The decision emphasized the irreparable harm from potential loss of goodwill and the public interest in avoiding confusion.

business & regulatoryproperty

This case involves Charles Cannon's challenge to the termination of his Social Security disability insurance benefits by the Secretary of Health and Human Services after four years of receipt due to arteriosclerotic heart disease. The court considered Cannon's motion to vacate its prior remand order and instead reverse the termination, reinstate benefits, and award attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. The court decided to grant the motion in full, vacating the remand, reversing the Secretary's decision, ordering reinstatement of benefits, and awarding fees. The core reasoning was that the Administrative Law Judge applied the incorrect legal standard for benefit cessations rather than initial determinations as required by Kuzmin v. Schweiker, the decision lacked substantial evidence support, and the record demonstrated Cannon's ongoing disability.

healthcare

This case involved an appeal from a bankruptcy court's denial of a motion to appoint attorneys for the creditors committee retroactively (nunc pro tunc) after they had worked for fifteen months without prior court approval as required by the Bankruptcy Code. The district court held that bankruptcy judges have the equitable authority to grant such retroactive appointments in rare or exceptional circumstances, contrary to the bankruptcy judge's belief, but affirmed the denial because the attorneys' mere oversight or neglect did not qualify as such circumstances. The reasoning emphasized that allowing retroactive approval for simple negligence would undermine the court's control over attorneys and bankruptcy assets, as mandated by statute, and that the equities did not favor the skilled counsel who failed to ensure proper authorization.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involved crossclaims by Cheque Printers, an Australian company, against Alcoa for supplying non-A-wettable aluminum foil through Unifoil, which allegedly caused defective lottery tickets and resulting economic losses when the tickets had to be recalled. Alcoa moved to dismiss claims for fraud, breach of warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, breach of warranty of merchantability, and punitive damages. Applying New Jersey law under Spring Motors Distributors, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., the court dismissed the fraud and negligent misrepresentation claims because commercial buyers may not recover purely economic losses in tort from a remote manufacturer. The warranty of fitness claim was also dismissed for failure to plead Unifoil's reliance on Alcoa's expertise, but the merchantability warranty claim was allowed to proceed as a contract-based claim under the UCC, and the punitive damages demand on that claim survived the motion to dismiss.

business & regulatoryproceduretorts & liability

This case involved a shipping company, Sea-Land, seeking a declaratory judgment on whether it must honor IRS levies attaching the wages of three seamen employees to collect their federal tax debts, in light of a shipping law provision exempting seamen's wages from attachment or arrestment. The court denied the government's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, holding that the action was permissible because Sea-Land was a non-taxpayer not disputing the underlying tax liability. On the merits, the court granted summary judgment to the government on the validity of the levies, reasoning that the shipping law exemption did not bar federal tax collection based on legislative history indicating Congress did not intend such a prohibition and the Internal Revenue Code's provision of an exclusive list of exemptions from levy. The court also granted Sea-Land summary judgment declaring that compliance with the levies would not expose it to liability under the shipping laws.

taxesfederal powerbusiness & regulatory

The case concerns Maryland Casualty Company's action for a declaratory judgment that its employee benefits liability policy imposes no duty to defend or indemnify two former trustees of the Economy Bookbinding Corporation Pension Plan against seven ERISA-based claims in an underlying suit alleging fiduciary breaches causing plan losses. The court granted the insurer summary judgment on four claims (involving improper stock investments, failure to collect interest, disappearance of insurance loans, and statutory penalties), granted the trustees summary judgment on one claim (failure to detect embezzlement), and denied summary judgment to all parties on the remaining two claims (improper benefit calculations and attorney fees). The rulings rested on whether each alleged act qualified as a negligent act, error, or omission in the "administration" of the employee benefits program under the policy's explicit four-part definition, which the court interpreted as covering only routine ministerial tasks rather than investment or oversight decisions. The parties agreed New Jersey law governed the policy interpretation in this diversity case.

business & regulatorylabor & employmentprocedure

This case was a citizen suit brought by environmental groups under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act against AT&T Bell Laboratories, alleging that the company violated its NPDES/NJPDES permit by exceeding limits on pollutant discharges into the Whippany River from 1977 to 1982, based on the company's own monitoring reports. The plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment, civil penalties, and costs, while the defendant moved to dismiss arguing that suits could not address past violations under an expired permit, that plaintiffs lacked standing, and that statutes of limitations barred the claims. The court denied the motion to dismiss and granted plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment on liability, reasoning that the Act's citizen suit provision allows enforcement and penalties for past permit violations even after the permit is no longer active, that standing requirements were met, and that neither state nor federal limitations periods barred the action.

environmentfederal power

In Wheeler v. Heckler, the court addressed a request for attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b) following a successful claim for retroactive Title II Social Security disability benefits. The Secretary had offset the plaintiff's retroactive disability award by concurrent SSI benefits under 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-6 before calculating the 25% fee cap, resulting in a reduced fee amount of $813.47 instead of $1,796. The court held that the attorney was entitled to the full requested fee based on the unreduced disability benefits. It reasoned that the statutory offset was intended only to prevent windfalls from overpaid SSI and should not diminish the base for fees, as that would undermine Congress's goal in § 406(b) of encouraging legal representation for claimants.

federal powerhealthcareprocedure

The case concerned a joint labor-management trust fund suing an employer, Carco, Inc., for failing to make required contributions to the fund on behalf of its employees under a collective bargaining agreement governed by the Labor-Management Relations Act. The plaintiff sought unpaid contributions under 29 U.S.C. § 1132, along with interest, attorney’s fees, and an injunction. The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiff for the contributions, double interest, and fees, while denying the injunction based on the defendant’s representations that future violations would not occur. It reasoned that the defendant could not rely on alleged prior oral understandings or side agreements to alter the written contract terms, as such evidence was barred by the parol evidence rule and national labor policy under section 302(c) of the Act, and the defendant had ratified the agreement through subsequent payments.

labor & employment

In this case, New Jersey-based plaintiffs Starline Optical Corp. and Designs by El Pablo, Inc. filed a declaratory judgment action in federal court seeking a ruling that a design patent held by Texas resident Francis E. Caldwell was invalid or not infringed by their eyeglass display racks. The action followed a cease-and-desist letter sent by the defendant's Texas counsel asserting infringement. Defendant moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). The court held that it lacked in personam jurisdiction because the defendant's limited contacts with New Jersey—the letters and related communications—did not satisfy the minimum contacts required by due process for either general or specific jurisdiction in this non-tort patent action. The court ordered the case transferred to the Northern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. § 1631.

procedure

In this case, Christopher Wilson was convicted of manslaughter after shooting and killing his friend with a handgun during an incident involving heroin; he had raised a mistake-of-fact defense, claiming he reasonably believed the gun was unloaded after removing the magazine. The trial court instructed the jury that Wilson bore the burden of proving his mistake by a preponderance of the evidence to negate the recklessness element of the offense. On habeas review under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the district court granted the writ, holding that the instructions violated due process by improperly shifting the burden to the defendant on a defense that directly negated a material element of the crime, which the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The court rejected the state appellate division's view that aiming and firing a gun at another person establishes recklessness as a matter of law, precluding the defense. The ruling emphasized that such burden-shifting errors are unconstitutional even if the instructions also referenced the state's overall burden.

criminal lawgunscivil rights