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Pa. senator, sister to be tried on ethics charges
Legal Business |
2010/07/22 04:49
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A western Pennsylvania lawmaker and one of her sisters will stand trial on charges they used the state senator's taxpayer-funded staff for campaign work for herself and another sister, a state Supreme Court justice, a judge ruled Wednesday.
State Sen. Jane Orie and her sister, Janine, were charged in April with using Jane Orie's legislative staff to conduct campaign business. Janine Orie was an aide to their sister Joan Orie Melvin while she was on the Superior Court and during the judge's two previous runs for the Supreme Court. Janine Orie is on paid suspension from that job. pAfter three days of testimony from former staffers, Allegheny County Judge Donna Jo McDaniel heard brief closing arguments and immediately ruled that the sisters were to stand trial on all charges./ppAttorneys for both women said they were not surprised at the judge's decision but said they were confident of their chances at trial./ppJane Orie's attorney, William Costopoulous, called the evidence put forth by prosecutors as trivial. He acknowledged staff members performed campaign work, but said they did so at their own volition or on compensatory time./p |
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Massey settles lawsuit over miner's death in 2008
Legal Business |
2010/07/19 09:29
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Massey Energy has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a contract worker killed at one of the company's West Virginia coal mines.
Boone County Circuit Court records show Massey paid the family of Steven Cain $2.1 million. Cain died in an accident at Massey's Justice No. 1 mine in October 2008.
Government investigators concluded Cain, who had just a few months of mining experience, was crushed to death between an underground railroad car and the wall of the Boone County mine.
Virginia-based Massey owns the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, where 29 men died and two were injured in an April 5 explosion. The blast is the subject of civil and criminal investigations. Massey operates mines in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. |
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Self Representation Hurting Individual Cases, Courts
Legal Business |
2010/07/12 09:57
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| pIn a survey released today by the American Bar Association, judges indicated that a lack of representation in civil matters is hurting those individuals’ cases, and is negatively impacting courtrooms. /ppApproximately 1,000 state trial judges responded to the survey, which posed questions about their dockets, self-representation and the impact on the courts.nbsp; More than half of the judges stated that their dockets increased in 2009, with the most common areas of increase involving foreclosures, domestic relations, consumer issues such as debt, and non-foreclosure housing issues such as rental disputes.nbsp; /ppSixty percent of judges said that fewer parties are being represented by lawyers, with 62 percent saying that parties are negatively impacted by not being represented.nbsp; The impact is exemplified, through a failure to present necessary evidence (94 percent), procedural errors (89 percent), ineffective witness examination (85 percent), failure to properly object to evidence (81 percent) and ineffective argument (77 percent). /ppThe ABA has a resource page on its website that can help individuals find legal assistance — a href=http://www.findlegalhelp.orgwww.findlegalhelp.org/a. nbsp; /ppDuring a time when state budgets are constrained, agencies as well as courts are being asked to become more efficient.nbsp; However, the increase in non-represented parties makes this more difficult for courts.nbsp; The lack of representation has a negative impact on the court, said 78 percent of the judges, and 90 percent of judges stated that court procedures are slowed when parties are not represented. /ppNearly half of the judges responding believe that there is a middle-class gap with respect to access to justice, stating that the number of people who are not represented and who do not qualify for aid has increased. /ppLamm announced the findings during a news conference earlier today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.nbsp; /ppThe survey of judges on the impact of the economic downturn on representation in the courts was conducted for the ABA Coalition for Justice.nbsp; Respondents came from around the country. /p |
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Gun rights, campaign spending top high court term
Legal Business |
2010/07/01 09:22
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pTwo conservative-driven decisions with potentially broad consequences will likely define the just-completed Supreme Court term: freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they like in campaigns for Congress and president, and ruling that Americans have a right to a gun for self-defense wherever they live./ppA key member of the five-justice majorities in both cases, and the author of the guns opinion, was Justice Samuel Alito. Though he has been on the court less than five years, Alito has had an outsize influence in firming up the court's conservative bloc./ppHis appointment to replace the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, more than any other choice in the last decade shows the importance of Supreme Court nominations. It also points up that Elena Kagan's nomination to take the place of the like-minded John Paul Stevens almost certainly will not have the same short-term impact as Alito has had./ppOf all the changes in personnel during this time of rapid change at the court, the Alito-for-O'Connor switch has clearly been the most consequential, said Paul Clement, who was top Supreme Court lawyer for then-President George W. Bush./ppIndeed, nothing is likely to alter the court's current path in either direction unless President Barack Obama has the chance to replace a right-leaning justice, or a future Republican president gets to add another solid conservative vote./ppThe conservative trend on the court might be even stronger as long as Democrats hold Congress and the White House, said Paul Smith of the Jenner and Block law firm in Washington. The conservative majority is going to continue to feel a need to push back in a lot of areas, Smith said./ppThe credit, or criticism, for many of the court's high-profile decisions goes variously to Chief Justice John Roberts, the putative leader of the court's conservatives, or Justice Anthony Kennedy, who dislikes the label swing justice, but is always in the majority when the other eight justices split along liberal and conservative lines./ppTheir influence certainly was in evidence this term. Roberts was in the majority more than any other justice — 92 percent of the time — and Kennedy wrote the campaign finance decision as well as one in which the liberal justices prevailed, ruling out life prison terms with no prospect of parole for juvenile offenders in other than murder cases.
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