This case involves a declaratory judgment action filed in Georgia by James Boone and related parties against Corestaff and affiliates, seeking to invalidate restrictive covenants in a non-compete agreement signed as part of Boone's employment as President and CEO. The agreement included a Delaware choice-of-law provision, and a parallel suit had been filed in Delaware alleging breach of fiduciary duties and contract. The court previously dismissed the Georgia action, finding that application of Delaware law did not violate Georgia public policy as it existed when the contract was formed and that the action did not encompass the full controversy. On the motion for reconsideration, the court applied the standard requiring new evidence or a manifest error of law, rejected the plaintiffs' arguments regarding public policy shifts and filing circumstances, and denied the motion along with the request for a hearing.
In Clincy v. Galardi South Enterprises, Inc., former dancers at Club Onyx sued the club owners and managers, alleging they were misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees under wage and hour laws. The court considered cross-motions for summary judgment focused solely on the first phase of discovery, which addressed the proper classification of the entertainers. After reviewing undisputed facts about the club's management structure, hiring auditions, rules enforcement by house moms and managers, dancer licensing requirements, and the economic realities of the dancers' investments and profit opportunities, the court applied the economic realities test to conclude that the plaintiffs were employees. Key factors included the club's control over operations and scheduling, the integral nature of the dancing to the business, and the limited ability of dancers to operate independently.
In United States v. Degaule, the defendant, charged with conspiring to launder drug trafficking proceeds along with several co-defendants, moved to suppress intercepted communications from wiretaps as well as evidence and statements obtained during a search and interview. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation in full and denied the motions. The court found that the defendant had given general consent to the search and seizure rather than a limited one, and that he had been advised of and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights without making an unequivocal invocation of the right to counsel or silence.
This case is a False Claims Act qui tam action in which relators alleged that a for-profit university and its parent company submitted false claims for federal Pell Grant and Stafford Loan funds by misrepresenting compliance with Title IV incentive-compensation prohibitions, accreditation standards, and student-eligibility rules in a Program Participation Agreement and in individual funding requests. The district court had previously denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that the complaint satisfied Rule 9(b)’s particularity requirement. Defendants then moved for reconsideration of that ruling, for certification of an interlocutory appeal limited to the sufficiency of PPA-based claims, and to strike portions of the complaint; the court denied all three motions, finding no clear error of law, no new controlling authority, and that the strike motion was procedurally barred under Rules 12(f) and 12(g).
This case is a putative securities class action in which investors alleged that Scientific-Atlanta and its executives engaged in channel-stuffing sales practices and improper revenue recognition under GAAP to conceal declining demand for transmission products during fiscal year 2001, thereby issuing materially false or misleading public statements that inflated the company's stock price in violation of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5. The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiffs could not establish loss causation. The court granted the motion, holding that the plaintiffs' expert reports failed to disaggregate the effects of the alleged misrepresentations from other market-wide and company-specific factors that could have caused the stock-price decline, and that allowing recovery without such proof would subject parties to unnecessary protracted litigation.
This case is an appeal by the Atlanta Independent School System from an administrative law judge's ruling that the district failed to provide S.F., a student with autism, a free appropriate public education under the IDEA, along with related counterclaims and third-party claims against two school officials alleging failure to implement the IEP, improper classroom conduct, and injuries to the student. The court denied the motion for oral argument on two pending motions to dismiss after reviewing the record. The ruling on oral argument rested on the determination that the written filings were sufficient to resolve the issues, while the background section outlines the ALJ's findings of FAPE denial, the need for compensatory education and private placement, and the factual allegations supporting the third-party claims.
