The case involved Montana Feeders' appeal from a Sheridan County District Court order finding the company in willful contempt and entering a $10,000 judgment against it. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the district court's judgment. The court reasoned that Montana Feeders' appellate brief failed to comply with rules and statutes requiring specific assignments of error, record annotations, a statement of the case, and a proper jurisdictional statement; as a result, the court treated the matter as presenting no reviewable error and found no plain error after examining the record.
In Myers v. Nebraska Investment Council, a taxpayer filed a class action on behalf of Nebraska taxpayers seeking to recover alleged losses of state retirement funds from investment contracts between the Nebraska Investment Council and private entities WG Trading and Westridge, claiming the contracts were speculative, illegal, and violated the Nebraska State Funds Investment Act. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the claims as moot, ruling that the contracts were unenforceable against the state due to statutory violations but not void ab initio, so the state had no right to avoid its obligations or seek disgorgement after the principal and income were returned. The court reasoned that a taxpayer's derivative claims could not exceed the rights of the governmental entity itself, and sovereign immunity did not bar the action but the lack of further recoverable relief rendered it moot.
In Kanne v. Visa U.S.A. Inc., consumers filed a class action against Visa and MasterCard alleging violations of Nebraska's Junkin Act and Consumer Protection Act through tying arrangements that forced merchants to accept debit card processing services alongside credit card services, resulting in inflated merchant fees passed on to consumers as higher retail prices; plaintiffs also asserted an unjust enrichment claim. The district court dismissed the action for lack of standing under a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the consumers' alleged injuries were derivative and remote from the defendants' conduct, precluding antitrust standing, and that no unjust enrichment occurred because Visa and MasterCard had settled parallel merchant claims for over $3 billion without retaining any benefit from the plaintiffs.
This case concerned whether Nebraska Secretary of State John A. Gale was required to place two 2006 initiative measures—the "3 Casinos Initiative" amending the constitution to allow casinos and the "K-12 Initiative" earmarking tax proceeds for education—on the November ballot. Gale had refused to verify signatures, determining that both measures were substantially similar to initiatives submitted in 2004 and thus barred by the resubmission clause in article III, § 2, of the Nebraska Constitution, which prohibits resubmitting the same measure more often than once in three years. The district court barred only the K-12 Initiative, but the Nebraska Supreme Court held on appeal that the resubmission clause precluded both measures because each was the same in essential substance as a 2004 initiative when compared by purpose, object, and effect. The court rejected cross-appeal arguments that applying the clause violated free speech or political association rights under the federal or state constitutions, as ballot access for initiatives is governed solely by state constitutional rules.
In State v. Davlin, the defendant appealed his second conviction for second-degree murder in the 1993 killing of Tamara Ligenza, following the reversal of his initial conviction on jury instruction grounds. The Nebraska Supreme Court considered claims regarding the district court's jury instructions on the elements of second-degree murder, denial of a continuance, admission of expert testimony and other evidence, double jeopardy protections after acquittal on first-degree murder, the verdict form, sentencing, and ineffective assistance of counsel. The court rejected each assignment of error, finding that the instructions were proper, the evidence was admissible and sufficient, prior rulings barred retrial only on first-degree murder, and remaining claims lacked merit or could not be resolved on direct appeal. It therefore affirmed the conviction and life sentence.
This case involved a boundary dispute between adjacent residential property owners who purchased lots from a common grantor. After a survey revealed that Huffman’s driveway encroached on the Petersons’ lot, Huffman filed an action to quiet title based on the common grantor doctrine, asserting that a tree and metal post marked the intended boundary, while the Petersons filed a cross-action for ejectment. The district court applied the common grantor rule to quiet title in Huffman’s favor. On appeal, the court affirmed, concluding that credible evidence of the grantor’s identification of the boundary markers and the parties’ subsequent conduct supported the marked line as the boundary between the lots.