Peter G. Sheridan

The case involves a petitioner, civilly committed as a sexually violent predator at a New Jersey facility, who filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging a state judge's 2007 order suspending his participation in a furlough program after officials discovered his cousin had a prior sexual misconduct charge. The court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction, determining that challenges to furlough denials are outside the core of habeas corpus under Third Circuit precedent and must instead be brought as civil complaints. The petition was also found deficient due to unresolved ambiguities about exhaustion of state remedies, the status of the underlying investigation, and timeliness of filing. No certificate of appealability was issued.

criminal lawprocedurecivil rights

This case involved major news organizations seeking a preliminary injunction to conduct exit polling within 100 feet of about 40 New Jersey polling places during the November 2009 gubernatorial election, despite a state restriction stemming from a New Jersey Supreme Court decision. The court granted the injunction, permitting the plaintiffs to perform the polling under specified conditions. The core reasoning centered on the plaintiffs' First Amendment interest in gathering and reporting election news, the lack of any evidence that exit polling had caused disruption or intimidation at polling sites, and the public benefit of transparent, accurate election data collection that could also deter fraud.

electionsfree speech

In Perry v. Gonzales, plaintiff Haim Perry sued in federal district court after the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) failed to decide his naturalization application within the statutory 120-day period following his examination. While the lawsuit under 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b) was pending, CIS granted naturalization, raising the question of whether the agency retained jurisdiction to act once the complaint was filed. The court held that CIS and the district court have concurrent jurisdiction, so CIS's grant of naturalization was valid and rendered the case moot. It reasoned that Congress intended to permit the agency to continue processing applications even after a § 1447(b) petition, consistent with the statute's text and purpose of encouraging timely agency decisions, and therefore dismissed the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

immigrationprocedurefederal power

This case involves a contract and business dispute between a New Jersey corporation, International Business Software Solutions, and an Austrian corporation, Sail Labs Technology, arising from agreements for software marketing and distribution, along with related claims of oral representations. A parallel proceeding on the same facts was already underway in an Austrian court. The district court affirmed the magistrate judge's denial of the plaintiff's motion to remand the case to New Jersey state court and granted the defendant's motion to dismiss without prejudice on grounds of international comity, while also denying a motion to disqualify the defendant's attorneys due to an alleged conflict. The core reasoning was that comity favored allowing the Austrian court to address the claims first, as it had progressed further and could provide adequate remedies under Austrian law, and that the prior representations by the law firm were not substantially related to the current matter under New Jersey ethics rules.

business & regulatoryprocedure