The case involved two actions against the Texas & Pacific Railway Company, where the defendant moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, claiming it was not doing business in the Southern District of New York when the suits were filed in 1946. The court examined evidence showing that after a 1944 decision finding the company amenable to suit due to ticket sales, bill of lading issuance, and complaint handling, the defendant had curtailed its New York office activities to pure solicitation of freight and passenger business, with no authority to issue tickets or original bills of lading, settle claims, or make contracts. All substantive operations, including claim resolutions and corporate functions, occurred in Texas, and the New York office employed only eight people focused on solicitation. The court granted the motions to dismiss, concluding the limited activities did not constitute doing business in the district, and denied the plaintiffs' requests for depositions on the jurisdiction issue as the submitted affidavits were sufficient and uncontroverted.
The case involved a defendant indicted under 2 U.S.C. § 192 for willfully refusing, after being subpoenaed, to be sworn or testify before a House subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities. The defendant moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that no specific questions had been asked, that the certification procedure in § 194 had not been followed, that the committee’s authorizing resolution was unconstitutionally vague, and that it violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. The court rejected each ground, holding that refusal to be sworn constitutes a refusal to answer under the statute, that a grand jury may indict without the § 194 procedure, and that challenges to the committee’s scope or constitutionality were not properly raised on a motion to dismiss an indictment that does not yet allege particular questions. The court therefore denied the motion to dismiss and the request for a bill of particulars.
This case involved two lawsuits brought by plaintiffs Acker and Schmolka against defendants including Schulte, Park & Tilford, Inc., and Ira Haupt & Company, alleging violations of Sections 9(e) and 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and related SEC rules through stock price manipulation and misleading statements about an impending dividend in Park & Tilford common stock, which caused the plaintiffs to purchase shares at artificially inflated prices and suffer losses when the price later fell. The defendants filed motions seeking orders requiring the plaintiffs to post substantial security for costs and attorneys' fees under Section 9(e), primarily arguing that the actions lacked good faith. The court denied all motions, holding that security is not warranted absent a clear showing of bad faith or lack of merit in the claims, that the defendants' concerns about litigation expenses did not meet this standard, and that any assessment of costs or fees under the statute occurs only after trial.
This case involved a motion by the plaintiff's attorneys to substitute Philip B. Fleming, Administrator of the Office of Temporary Controls, as the plaintiff in place of Paul A. Porter, the former Price Administrator of the Office of Price Administration, following Porter's departure from office on December 12, 1946. The court granted the substitution, finding it timely under Rule 25(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and authorized by 28 U.S.C. § 780, as well as by Executive Order No. 9809 which transferred the Price Administrator's functions to Fleming. The defendants' objections—that the Emergency Price Control Act did not permit substitution, that Fleming's new title disqualified him, and that postwar conditions ended the President's authority—were rejected, with the court emphasizing that the suit was brought on behalf of the office rather than the individual and that the successor had received the predecessor's powers and duties.
The case concerned whether a French diplomat accredited to Bolivia, who was served with civil process while temporarily in New York en route to his post, could claim immunity from suit in a U.S. court. The court denied the plaintiff's motion to strike the defendant's immunity defense from the answer. It reasoned that Section 252 of Title 22, which codifies immunity only for diplomats received by the President, did not apply, but that the law of nations—reflected in treatises, foreign cases such as Magdalena Steam Navigation Co. v. Martin, and the 1928 Havana Convention—extends to ministers in transit the same exemption from civil jurisdiction that protects them in the country of accreditation, in order to ensure they can perform their functions without judicial interference. The court therefore upheld the defense and permitted the immunity claim to proceed.
This case involved a patent infringement dispute where an earlier judgment had found that Kastar, Inc. infringed claim 2 of U.S. Patent No. 1,577,821 by manufacturing and selling automobile steering stabilizer models 73 and 74. A Special Master was appointed to calculate the profits and damages owed to the plaintiffs for the period from December 1936 to March 1943, and the parties filed exceptions to the Master's report concerning allowable deductions such as officers' salaries as overhead, the treatment of prior-year losses, and whether the infringement was willful. The court overruled most exceptions, confirmed the report with one adjustment, and fixed the recoverable profits at $23,246.20, reasoning that the small company's owner salaries were properly included in general overhead allocated proportionally to sales, that pre-infringement losses could not offset later profits, and that the evidence did not support a finding of conscious infringement warranting enhanced damages.
