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Sparks Justice Court to be open four days a week
Industry News |
2011/07/25 08:28
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Sparks Justice Court is planning to go to four-day work weeks because of budget cuts.
Justice of the Peace Kevin Higgins says court staff will work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and take only a half-hour lunch. Public access will be 8-5 on those days.
He says the court like other agencies is under a mandate to cuts wages and benefits by 7 percent, and the compact work week was the only option allowing the court to continue services without losing more staff.
He says judges will still be available for emergency matters, such as processing search warrants and protective orders.
The change needs confirmation from the Washoe County Commission, but is expected to take effect Aug. 15 and last the rest of the fiscal year. |
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Judge wants agency to investigate Meijer lawyer
Industry News |
2011/07/25 08:28
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A judge believes a lawyer committed perjury when he denied knowing anything about the role of Meijer Inc. in a 2007 recall election of township officials in northern Michigan's Grand Traverse County.
Judge Philip Rodgers said he has referred the matter involving Timothy Stoepker to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, a watchdog agency.
I believe it occurred, and I have an ethical responsibility to report it, Rodgers told the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
Stoepker, an attorney at the firm Dickinson Wright in Grand Rapids, represented Meijer during a dispute over a new store in Acme Township. Voters rejected the store in 2005, and township officials were targeted for recall in 2007.
Meijer, a major Midwestern retailer, later acknowledged illegally financing the recall effort and subsequently paid a $190,000 fine.
During a deposition in a civil lawsuit by a township official, Stoepker was asked what he knew about Meijer's role. I have no knowledge of that at all, he replied. |
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Biesecker named to NC investigations, court beats
Industry News |
2011/07/12 09:24
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Michael Biesecker, an award-winning reporter and investigative journalist for The News amp; Observer of Raleigh, has been hired by The Associated Press to cover federal courts, investigations and politics in North Carolina.
Biesecker is a North Carolina native and has spent his 15-year-career in his home state. He worked at the Winston-Salem Journal in a variety of positions including as a columnist and reporter before going to work for The News amp; Observer in 2003. He has covered the state capital for the newspaper since 2009.
His work probing the failings of North Carolina's mental health care system in 2008 uncovered more than 80 questionable deaths in state mental hospitals. The newspaper's series Mental Disorder: The Failure of Reform led to new policies on how state facilities report deaths and monitor care. He has won numerous awards from the North Carolina Press Association, including for general news and for investigative reporting. In 2008, he was part of a team that won an Associated Press Managing Editors Association First Amendment Award for reporting on access to email written by public officials.
The appointment was announced Monday by South Editor Lisa Marie Pane, Chief of Bureau Michelle Williams and Carolinas News Editor Evan Berland.
Biesecker has some serious reporting chops and we're looking forward to his using those to cover the vitally important federal courts beat and being involved in some important investigative projects, Pane said. |
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Orange County judge to restrict Costa Mesa layoffs
Industry News |
2011/07/06 08:44
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An Orange County judge said Tuesday that she will issue a court order to restrict Costa Mesa from laying off nearly half of the city's workforce and outsourcing jobs.
Superior Court Judge Tam Nomoto Schumann said she would grant the Orange County Employees Association's request for a preliminary injunction. But the city has until Friday to file objections before she issues her ruling.
The union filed suit in May, arguing that the city's plan to outsource municipal jobs violates state law and the union contract.
In March, the Costa Mesa City Council majority voted to outsource jobs to mostly private companies in a drastic move to plug a $15 million budget hole.
Soon afterward, 213 of 450 employees got layoff notices that would take effect in September.
Union spokeswoman Jennifer Muir said the court order would protect employees' jobs until the case against the city goes to trial.
Schumann said the city must follow proper procedures when laying off workers, but she didn't explain what those procedures are.
Assistant City Attorney Harold Potter contends the city has been following procedures while pursuing austerity measures.
The judge's ruling won't stop the city from exploring outsourcing options, he said. |
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Law school enrollment in Missouri lags as legal jobs dry up
Industry News |
2011/07/02 00:14
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Missouri law schools expect fewer students in the fall after several years of significant enrollment growth both regionally and nationally.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported this week that the University of Missouri's flagship campus in Columbia has received 17 percent fewer applications this year. Applications at Washington University dropped 13.3 percent, while St. Louis University is seeing a nearly 20 percent decline.
A national group that tracks law school enrollment says that applications are down more than 10 percent overall compared to this time last year.
The economic downturn means that law school graduates can no longer count on landing lucrative jobs straight out of college. The declining interest comes one year after many schools reported record enrollment.
The stories about the legal market have certainly dampened some people's enthusiasm, said Paul Pless, assistant dean for admissions and financial aid at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Applications at Illinois are down nearly 8 percent so far this year.
Melissa Hamilton, 35, is a recent University of Missouri law school graduate still looking for a job. She's applied for a few government positions but is waiting until she passes the bar exam before making a stronger push. She's also looking into jobs where she could also use her master's degree in social work. |
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Administration supports lesbian employee's case
Industry News |
2011/07/01 00:15
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In a strongly worded legal brief, the Obama administration has said the federal act that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman was motivated by hostility toward gays and lesbians and is unconstitutional.
The brief was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco in support of a lesbian federal employee's lawsuit claiming the government wrongly denied health insurance coverage to her same-sex spouse.
The Justice Department says Karen Golinski's suit should not be dismissed because the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.
The official legislative record makes plain that DOMA Section 3 was motivated in large part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals and their intimate relationships, and Congress identified no other interest that is materially advanced by Section 3, the brief reads, referring to the section in the act that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Though the administration has previously said it will not defend the marriage act, the brief is the first court filing in which it urges the court to find the law unconstitutional, said Tobias Barrington Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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Court won't revive Clemens lawsuit against trainer
Industry News |
2011/06/28 22:29
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div class=entrydiv class=articlepThe Supreme Court won't revive baseball star Roger Clemens' lawsuit against his former personal trainer for claiming he injected the pitcher with steroids and human growth hormones./ppThe high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from the seven-time Cy Young winner, who has an upcoming perjury trial in Washington./ppThe 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Clemens' defamation suit against his longtime trainer Brian McNamee, saying a Texas federal court didn't have jurisdiction over Clemens' claims involving statements McNamee made in New York./ppClemens wanted that decision overturned, but the high court refused to take up the case./ppMcNamee said in New York he had injected Clemens with steroids and HGH and repeated those allegations during an interview at his New York home to a writer for a href=http://si.com/SI.com/a./ppClemens has denied using performance-enhancing drugs, and testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in February 2008 that he never used drugs in his 24-year career./ppProsecutors say that was a lie and have charged him with false statements, perjury and obstruction of Congress. The former pitching star's criminal trial is expected to begin on July 6./p/div
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