Clarence Newcomer, 82; Nixon Appointee to U.S. District Court

U.S. District Judge Clarence C. Newcomer, who sat on the federal bench for more than three decades, died of melanoma Monday night at his home in Stone Harbor, N.J., his daughter said. He was 82.

President Nixon appointed Newcomer to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1971.

Among Newcomer’s noteworthy cases were a 1993 ruling that a law firm had violated the civil rights of a female associate who had been denied promotion to partner; a 1997 ruling that states cannot pay new residents lower welfare benefits than longtime residents; and a 1980 case that ended a baseball-card trading monopoly.

He criticized Philadelphia police in 1985 for their roundup of Spanish-speaking residents after the death of an officer, calling the conduct disgraceful.

In April, Newcomer presided over a civil trial in which a jury awarded $12.83 million to residents displaced after Philadelphia police bombed the barricaded headquarters of radical group MOVE in 1985.

Newcomer graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1944 and, after military service, graduated from Dickinson School of Law in 1948. He practiced in the Lancaster, Pa., area and later was an assistant prosecutor there, becoming the county’s district attorney in 1968.

During World War II, Newcomer served as an executive officer on an amphibious landing craft in the Pacific. He later took a job as defense counsel at the Philadelphia Naval Base, saying his lack of legal experience at the time didn’t matter because the head of the court-martial board found everyone guilty.

“I like to think that this experience helped me to better understand the real meaning of the term ‘justice,’ ” he wrote in a memoir about his wartime service.

He is survived by his wife, two daughters, four grandchildren and a sister.