This case is a pharmaceutical products liability action in which plaintiff Lisa Soldo alleged that her ingestion of Parlodel, a drug manufactured by defendant Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (now Novartis), caused an intracerebral hemorrhage. The defendant moved for summary judgment on medical causation grounds, arguing that the plaintiff's expert evidence failed to meet the scientific reliability requirements of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. Following a Daubert hearing, appointment of independent experts in epidemiology, neurology, and pharmacology, and review of extensive evidence, the court found the plaintiff's experts' methodologies unreliable due to insufficient evidence of a valid temporal relationship, inadequate exclusion of alternative causes in the differential diagnosis, and lack of support for vasospasm as the mechanism of injury given contradictory angiogram and diagnostic findings. The court therefore granted summary judgment to the defendant, excluding the expert testimony on general and specific causation.
Nancy Riding sued Kaufmann's Department Store and its parent company under Title VII and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, alleging she suffered gender and pregnancy discrimination when demoted from a salaried managerial role to hourly photographer positions in May and November 1998, that the employer retaliated against her complaints, and that she was constructively discharged in December 1998. The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case in full. The court found no genuine issues of material fact on any claim after reviewing the record, holding that Riding failed to present sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case of discrimination, retaliation, or constructive discharge or to show that the employer's stated reasons were pretextual. The opinion applied the McDonnell Douglas framework and noted that evidence of direct discriminatory bias was lacking.
The case involved parents of a toddler with chronic ear infections who sought an evaluation with an ENT specialist; the father, who is deaf and primarily communicates via ASL, requested a qualified interpreter for the appointment, but the doctor's office instead canceled it and suggested they seek care elsewhere, citing a preference for written communication. The parents sued the doctor, his practice, and associated physicians under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the ADA, alleging disability discrimination and seeking declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief. The court denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment, finding genuine issues of material fact regarding whether the office failed to provide a reasonable accommodation and acted with reckless indifference, and holding that the partner-physicians could be liable as owners of the public accommodation. Core reasoning included application of summary judgment standards under which disputes over the communications and cancellation letter precluded judgment as a matter of law, along with statutory obligations for public accommodations to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability.
In this case, a mother sued Armstrong County Children and Youth Services and related defendants after a school-reported physical altercation with her teenage daughter led to a CYS investigation and temporary placement with the father. The court granted summary judgment to all defendants on the substantive due process claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and pendent state claims, but denied the motions on the procedural due process claims. The ruling rested on undisputed facts showing the investigation did not shock the conscience and lacked evidence of willful misconduct for state claims, while allowing the procedural claims to continue based on the process followed.
In this case, defendant Ronald Edward Smith filed a pro se motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate or correct his 84-month federal sentence for crack cocaine conspiracy, arguing that the Bureau of Prisons improperly denied credit for time he served on concurrent state sentences and that his counsel was ineffective for failing to request a sentencing continuance or a non-binding BOP recommendation for concurrency. The district court granted the motion in part and denied it in part, finding a colorable ineffective assistance claim under Strickland that warranted an evidentiary hearing and appointment of counsel, while denying the defendant's related motion for equitable relief and summary judgment. The court reasoned that the BOP's treatment of the federal sentence as consecutive to the state sentences—despite the state courts' explicit concurrency orders and the federal sentencing court's consideration of the state offenses as relevant conduct—raised issues about counsel's potential deficiency in not addressing the interaction of federal and state sentences at the time of federal sentencing, though it declined to resolve the merits without further proceedings. The core dispute centered on the authority of courts versus the BOP in computing sentences when state and federal terms overlap.
This case is an appeal from a bankruptcy court's ruling that Patricia Hornick is personally liable for $87,614.76 in unpaid payroll taxes of her employer under 26 U.S.C. § 6672 as a responsible person, and that this debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court's decision because Hornick failed to provide a complete record, including the transcript of the evidentiary hearing, making it impossible to review whether the factual findings were clearly erroneous. The court therefore dismissed the appeal, upholding the liability and non-dischargeability determination.
