This case involves a female teacher employed by a New Jersey school district who applied for multiple administrative positions between 1974 and 1979 but was rejected in favor of male applicants, leading her to allege gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and New Jersey anti-discrimination statutes. The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that all but one of the Title VII and state claims were untimely filed outside the 300-day EEOC window and that the § 1983 claim was barred by the applicable statute of limitations. The court held that only the 1979 assistant principal application was timely, rejected the continuing violations doctrine as inapplicable to the earlier discrete applications, and determined that a 180-day limitations period borrowed from state law would govern the § 1983 claim, denying dismissal without prejudice pending factual resolution; it also declined to dismiss the individual defendants at that stage to allow further discovery. The ruling focused on statutory filing deadlines and the scope of the continuing violations theory under Third Circuit precedent such as Bronze Shields and Supreme Court authority like Delaware State College v. Ricks.
This case involves passengers injured in a train collision caused by an unsecured rail on a maintenance train operated by Amtrak, who sued for negligence and sought to amend their complaint to add a claim for punitive damages. The court granted the motion to amend, ruling that Amtrak is not an instrumentality of the United States government and thus not immune from punitive damages. The decision relies on the Rail Passenger Service Act, which explicitly states that Amtrak is a for-profit corporation and not an agency or establishment of the federal government, supported by legislative history and prior judicial interpretations.
This case is an appeal by Toscony Provision Co. from a Secretary of Agriculture order withdrawing federal meat inspection services under the Federal Meat Inspection Act until the company's president and major stockholder disassociates from the business, after he and the company pled guilty in 1979 to distributing sausage treated with a chemical to mask spoilage. The company challenged the order as arbitrary and capricious and in violation of due process. The district court upheld the withdrawal, holding that 21 U.S.C. § 671 permits the Secretary to find a recipient unfit based solely on the felony conviction without requiring proof that the sanction is necessary to prevent unwholesome meat from entering commerce, consistent with precedent in similar cases.
This case was a copyright infringement action brought by plaintiff Harvey Meltzer under the 1976 Copyright Act concerning architectural plans for a single-family home in Livingston, New Jersey. The court found that Meltzer held no copyright interest in the plans, which had been prepared by the Chirgotis architectural firm as stock plans using prior designs and inputs from the builder Xenco and the Meltzers themselves. The core reasoning was that the plans were owned by the architect as independent contractor work rather than a work for hire, that any common-law copyright claims were preempted by federal law under 17 U.S.C. § 301, and that the cause of action arising after the Act's effective date supported this outcome without retroactivity concerns.
This case involved a motion by defendant broker-dealer Philips, Appel & Walden, Inc. to disqualify plaintiff Joan Flego's attorney, William A. Despo, in a securities fraud action alleging unauthorized trading and churning of accounts under federal securities laws along with common law claims. Despo had previously worked as a compliance attorney at the American Stock Exchange, where he briefly investigated customer complaints involving the defendant's Wayne, New Jersey office, including interviews with its personnel. The defendant argued that this prior work created a violation of Disciplinary Rule 9-101(B) due to the appearance of impropriety and potential use of confidential information. The court denied the disqualification motion, finding no substantial overlap between the matters Despo handled at AMEX and the current litigation, and concluding that any appearance of impropriety was too attenuated to override the plaintiff's right to chosen counsel.
In United States v. Vaughn, the defendant sought dismissal of a criminal indictment returned in December 1980, arguing that pre-indictment delay from 1976 violated due process due to the death of a witness and personal strain, and that the Speedy Trial Act's 70-day clock had been violated because the indictment was sealed until January 1981. The court denied the dismissal motions, holding that no actual substantial prejudice was shown from the delay, which was investigative rather than tactical, and that the speedy trial period properly ran from the unsealing of the indictment and the defendant's arraignment, with a scheduled trial date falling within the limit. Discovery requests were also denied as unwarranted fishing expeditions or barred by grand jury secrecy protections under Rule 6(e). The opinion applied precedents such as United States v. Lovasco and United States v. Marion to require both prejudice and improper motive for dismissal on delay grounds.