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Legal help too slow in Texas arrest, high court says
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2008/06/24 08:06
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| A man whose life was turned upside-down by a wrongful arrest and weeks in jail should have been given access to a lawyer sooner so he could have shown the arrest was erroneous, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday.pThe high court ruled 8-1 in favor of Walter Rothgery. In 2004, three weeks after he arrived from Arizona to take a job managing an RV park in Gillespie County, Rothgery was arrested for carrying a gun as a convicted felon. No lawyer was provided at his first court hearing and his wife used their last $500 for bail./ppThe arrest was based on a mistake in a computer database that showed he was a felon, which left him unable to find a full-time job. By the time he was indicted six months later, he was broke, his bond had tripled and he was sent back to a county jail 100 miles from his home./ppA sympathetic warden helped Rothgery find an attorney to obtain documentation showing he had no felony record. He was released and the weapons charge finally was dropped./ppRothgery sued Gillespie County for violating his constitutional right to counsel. When a federal court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the case, his attorneys went to the Supreme Court. The ruling Monday returns his lawsuit to the lower courts./ppTexas really is part of America now, Rothgery, 57, told The Associated Press on Monday from Llano, where he works in an equipment rental store. I am fairly pleased. I was trying to keep an even keel. It got harder as we got to the end of June./ppNow I can let it loose. Before I was trying to hold back and try not get my hopes too high./ppRothgery's lawyers argued Texas should provide a defense lawyer for indigent clients once they've made a first appearance before a magistrate, even if no prosecutor was present./p |
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Court rejects case on fast track for border fence
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2008/06/23 07:29
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| The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.pHomeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas./ppThe case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built./ppI am extremely disappointed in the court's decision, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan./ppThompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal./ppEarlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction. /p |
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Former Milberg Weiss Partner Sues
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2008/06/18 07:58
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pA former partner in Milberg Weiss has sued four of its founding partners - Melvyn Weiss, David Bershad, Steven Schulman, and William Lerach - claiming they lied to him and other attorneys about their secret kickbacks to plaintiffs in shareholder class actions. Michael Buchman sued his former partners in Federal Court on Tuesday, as the firm, now known as Milberg, agreed to pay $75 million to the United States to settle criminal complaints in the scheme.
Buchman says he joined Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes amp; Lerach in January 1997 and was made a partner in December 2000. He worked in the antitrust division until he left the firm in February 2007. When Lerach left to set up his own office in 2004, the firm changed its name to Milberg Weiss Bershad amp; Schulman.
Buchman says the defendants lied to him, and to other attorneys, after federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment in which Seymour Lazar and Paul Selzer alleged that certain partners of Milberg Weiss had secretly paid them kickbacks to serve as plaintiffs in securities class actions.
Buchman's complaint states: In various meetings that occurred at Milberg Weiss after the Lazar Indictment, Defendants Weiss, Bershad and Schulman, who were united in interest, repeatedly represented to plaintiff and to other partners in Milberg Weiss hat the accusations contained in the Lazar Indictment were untrue, politically motivated, and that the government's case rested on mischaracterization of legitimate referral fees paid to other law firms, which assertedly had been duly reported to the government of Forms 1099. Weiss, for example, vigorously denied that the alleged payments had been made to Lazar, and represented that Lazar's sold motivation for pursuing multiple class actions had been to recover for his own injuries and to serve as 'a crusader.'
Believing these representations of fact by defendants, plaintiff continued to serve as a partner in Milberg Weiss. Similarly, most other Milberg Weiss partners who had no prior knowledge of defendants' unlawful and unethical acts also continued throughout the rest of 2005 to serve as Milberg Weiss partners.
Defendants had a fiduciary duty to plaintiff and to other Milberg Weiss partners to be honest and forthcoming with government authorities. Were the allegations made in the Lazar Indictment true, defendants had a duty truthfully to reveal their unethical and unlawful conduct to the authorities and to take personal responsibility for such conduct. Instead, defendants refused to acknowledge the truth and continued to misrepresent the facts to government authorities, thereby putting Milberg Weiss as a firm, and the financial and professional interests of plaintiff and other innocent Milberg Weiss partners, in grave jeopardy./p |
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Subscription Bill for $11.83 Brings $5 Million Award
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2008/06/13 07:33
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A bill for $11.83 led a customer to file a federal class action accusing XM Satellite Radio of illegally renewing subscribers' contracts without proper notice. Damages are estimated at more than $5 million.
On behalf of all XM subscribers in New York, Richard Vacariello claims XM violates New York General Obligations Law §50903 by failing to notify subscribers 15 to 30 days before automatically renewing their subscriptions.
Vacariello took a 3-year subscription and used it in a leased automobile, then turned in the car and let the XM subscription expire - he thought. After he turned in the car, he says, XM sent him a bill for $359.64. (It is not clear from the complaint whether this was a bill for another year or for another three years.) Vacariello says he objected, and that XM told him it had automatically renewed the contract.
So Vacariello says he canceled the contract immediately, only to have XM send him another bill - for $11.83 - for the period after the 3-year contract expired, and before he canceled the automatic renewal.
Vacariello says XM refused to cancel the $11.83 bill, so he paid it under protest, for fear of harming his credit. Then he filed this class action. He estimates class damages at more than $5 million. He demands compensatory damages and an injunction. |
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