Background: Beginning in 2009, New Jersey hired several major financial institutions — including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley — as remarketing agents (RMAs) for Variable Rate Demand Obligations (VRDOs), tax-exempt bonds the State uses to finance long-term projects at short-term interest rates. The agreements required each RMA to price bonds…
Held: Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Pierre-Louis reversed the Appellate Division. The Court held that the Opposition Amendment is procedural — not substantive — in nature and therefore applies to all pending cases upon its effective date, consistent with the Legislature's directive that it "take effect immediately." Under long-standing New Jersey law, codified in N.J.S.A. 1:1-14, procedural amendments govern pending…
Background: In December 2021, Brian C. Carruth drove from Ohio to Washington, D.C., with an unloaded Remington 783 bolt-action rifle locked in a padlocked case in the bed of his pickup truck and loose ammunition stored separately in the cab. Metropolitan Police stopped Carruth after observing the rifle case and, after an initially false denial, he…
Held: The court granted the government's unopposed motion to vacate Carruth's rifle-carrying conviction under D.C. Code § 17-306 and remanded for dismissal of that count, expressly declining to reach the merits of the Second Amendment challenge. The court grounded its discretionary vacatur on four factors: the United States' representation of a settled non-prosecution policy, which the court treated as an expression…
Background: In 2010, Tina Brown, her teenage daughter Britnee Miller, and co-perpetrator Heather Lee kidnapped Audreanna Zimmerman, beat her with a crowbar, stunned her repeatedly with a stun gun, poured gasoline on her while she was still conscious, and set her on fire. Zimmerman survived long enough to identify her attackers to emergency responders, then died…
Held: The Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the postconviction court's denial of all relief. On timeliness, the court agreed that Frazier's evidence was untimely because Frazier had been publicly known since she wrote a letter supporting Lee at Lee's 2012 sentencing, placing her within reach of diligent defense investigation for over a decade. As to Doyle, the court disagreed with the…
Background: Ramon Amador-Hernandez was charged with two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment under ORS 163.205(1)(a) after the Department of Human Services removed his daughters, G and T, ages eight and nine, from the home. A DHS caseworker described the scene as "the worst chronic neglect case" he had seen in fourteen years. A physician at CARES…
Held: The court, in an opinion by Justice Bushong, affirmed both the Court of Appeals and the circuit court. Applying its prior interpretation in State v. Baker-Krofft, 348 Or 655 (2010), the court confirmed that "withholds" means "keeps back" food or care that the defendant had the ability to access and provide. The court rejected defendant's contention that "withhold" requires proof…
Background: Airport Authority of the City of Omaha is a political subdivision of Nebraska responsible for operating Eppley Airfield. Park 'N Go of Nebraska, LLC operates a private off-airport surface parking lot and runs a shuttle service transporting customers to and from the airport. Airport Authority grants Park 'N Go and similar commercial operators access to…
Held: The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed and remanded with directions to dismiss Park 'N Go's complaint. Reviewing the equity action de novo, the court held that the charge imposed by the resolution was not an unconstitutional tax. The court declined to adopt any single bright-line test for distinguishing fees from taxes, reasoning that no universal formula can capture the variety of…
Background: Potomac Edison Company is a Maryland public utility that sells electricity generated out of state to Maryland customers. Electricity leaves generating facilities at roughly 18,000 volts—too low for efficient long-distance transmission and too high for retail use—and must be "stepped up" to as high as 765,000 volts for transmission, then progressively "stepped down" through a…
Held: The Supreme Court of Maryland affirmed that Potomac Edison's conductor, substation, and transformer equipment qualifies for the production-activity exemption. Applying contemporaneous dictionary definitions of "process"—"a systematic series of actions directed to some end"—the Court held that subjecting electricity to successive voltage transformations in order to deliver it to customers at a usable voltage constitutes "processing" of tangible personal property (electricity)…
Background: In August 2012, Jamal Cruz was shot and killed outside Monet Lounge in Providence, Rhode Island, following a verbal confrontation with two men — Terrel Barros and Stephen Bodden. A second victim, Rokiem Henley, was wounded. Officers on detail at the club arrived within seconds and arrested both men. Bodden was found with a concealed…
Held: The Rhode Island Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Long, unanimously affirmed the Superior Court's grant of postconviction relief. The central dispute was whether Parajon's testimony about Bodden's confessions was admissible as newly discovered evidence — specifically, whether Bodden's out-of-court statements qualified as declarations against penal interest under Rule 804(b)(3) of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence. The state…
Background: Mother had a lengthy history of drug use and drug trafficking, including a 2007 federal conviction for maintaining a drug-involved premises and a 2019 federal conviction for conspiracy to possess and distribute controlled substances. The latter conviction carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 180 months, with a projected release date of January 4, 2030. The…
Held: The South Dakota Supreme Court affirmed, unanimously. The Court first declined Mother's request to take judicial notice of the post-termination federal compassionate release order. The Court reasoned that the order was not part of the appellate record, was issued after both the final hearing and the notice of appeal, and could not be used to evaluate the circuit court's discretionary…
Background: On March 24, 2026, the Town of Clifton held a municipal election for a one-year Select Board seat between candidates Steve Armenia and Cynthia Grant. Before the election, a family member of two voters applied for absentee ballots on their behalf under Maine's statute permitting immediate family members to do so. That family member was…
Held: The majority held that all three grounds for challenge failed. On the primary ground — that a candidate applied for the ballots — the court construed 21-A M.R.S. § 673(1)(A)(5) according to its plain text: a ballot may be challenged on the ground that the voter "did not properly apply for an absentee ballot." Because every enumerated basis for challenge…
Background: In November 2020, the Investor Protection Unit (IPU) of the Delaware Department of Justice opened an administrative enforcement action against Swan Energy, Inc. and four individual respondents, alleging a long-running scheme to sell risky, unregistered oil and gas and mining securities to Delaware investors. The Second Amended Administrative Complaint comprised 71 counts charging violations of…
Held: On the jury-trial claim, the court applied the three-step framework established in Blue Beach Bungalows DE, LLC v. State of Delaware, 351 A.3d 1007 (Del. 2025). Because the Delaware Securities Act does not itself provide for jury trials, the dispositive question was whether the IPU's enforcement action is "sufficiently analogous to a cause of action at common law" to which…
Background: Ripple Labs Singapore Pte Ltd (RLSG) and I-Remit Inc (IRI), a Philippines-based remittance company, entered into a Master XRP Commitment to Sell Agreement in May 2022. In November 2022, IRI purchased XRP (a digital asset) from RLSG for US$16 million, with payment due on 18 November 2022. IRI failed to pay. Over the following two…
Held: Justice Kristy Tan upheld summary judgment, holding that RMA has a valid claim for the unpaid invoice. The court rejected IRI's defenses on two independent grounds. First, as a matter of contractual interpretation, clause 9(d) of the agreement (the "Successors and Assigns" clause) does not require notice of an amalgamation. The clause applies only to "assignments" of contractual rights in…
Background: In early 2020, police responding to a welfare check found six-year-old MA living in a filthy trailer with visible bruising, swelling, and thick ligature scarring on his wrists and ankles. His mother, Gwendolyn Alexander, and her partner Errown Scott were arrested after Alexander admitted to police that she and Scott had repeatedly tied MA up…
Held: In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Cavanagh, the Michigan Supreme Court held that Dr. Nazer's "medical torture" diagnosis testimony was improper on three independent grounds. First, the diagnosis was unhelpful to the jury under MRE 702 because it did not explain the nature, extent, or timing of MA's physical injuries in a way that assisted the jury in…