Not the case itself, but rather the limitations of the ability to identify the position of the lever/case.   Lots of short cuts for convenience really aren't short cuts.

"As the crew was flying at night, the pilot and co-pilot were wearing night-vision devices upon takeoff. Typically, night-vision devices, including monocular and binocular variants, severely limit the wearer’s ability to see at short distances.  Neither pilot recognized and removed the NVG case after loading operations were complete or during takeoff."

WashingtonPost article

awful fishy story. I work my elevator and rudder on the runway. If they would not function, i would not take off. I know 99.999% pilots do this also.

One of the features of AVS-9 scopes is eye relief giving the ability to look down at gauges and other objects unaided. It even gives relief for the user to wear eyeglasses. Pretty strange occurrence indeed. I have used AVS-9 scopes a lot and you can see a good bit by just looking down.

From what I read, the pilot was offloading the stuff from the back of the plane at JBAD.After taxing to the ramp to unload, he was pulling back on the stick to raise the elevators on the horizontal stabilizer to provide the ground crews more clearance to unload stuff. It sounds like he got tired of holding back the stick so he wedged a nod case in front of the yoke /stick to keep the elevators up.
He forgot about it which caused the aircraft to pitch up rapidly and stall upon takeoff.

Sounds like bad situational awareness and shortcuts. I'm not a pilot or loadmaster and I wasn't there.
I have taken many flights in and out of of JBAD at night on C130s though and could see something like this happening by taking shortcuts....not sure how much more I can say on a public forum.

Link from AF times
http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/04/18/c-130j-crash-killed-14-caused-forgotten-night-vision-goggle-case/83182244/

Why would you wear NOD on a C130 for takeoff from a known base?

Same here.

I even asked a buddy of mine that flies helos and he never had an issue with peeking below the NVDs to see his gauges.

NOD recert maybe? Or CO scheduled blackout night op training?

Or he wanted to, the same justification I use to walk around in my yard with NODs on.