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Colo. senators go to court to halt recall efforts
Headline Legal News |
2013/07/17 23:15
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Two Colorado Democratic state senators facing recalls over their support for new gun restrictions argued Wednesday to stop the proceedings, telling a judge the petitions against them are invalid and that no election should be set until judicial review is complete.
State Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Pueblo Sen. Angela Giron argue the recall petitions against them were improperly worded and didn't ask for an election to appoint a successor.
Denver District Court Judge Robert Hyatt heard arguments Wednesday and will rule Thursday afternoon whether to grant a preliminary injunction.
Supporters of the recall maintain their petitions are valid. The Secretary of State's office has agreed and is seeking a court order to force Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper to set an election date. |
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NJ court overturns award for view lost to dune
Legal News Digest |
2013/07/09 00:34
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New Jersey's highest court on Monday overturned a $375,000 jury award given to an elderly couple who complained that a protective sand dune behind their house blocked their ocean views.
In a ruling seen as a wider victory for towns that want to build barriers to protect themselves from catastrophic storms, the state Supreme Court faulted a lower court for not allowing jurors to consider the dune's benefits in calculating its effect on property value. The high court ruled that those protective benefits should have been considered along with the loss of the ocean views.
The sand dune in question saved the elderly couple's home from destruction in Superstorm Sandy in October.
The 5-year-old case is being closely watched at the Jersey shore, which was battered by Sandy. Officials want to build protective dune systems along the state's entire 127-mile coastline, but towns fear they won't be able to if many homeowners hold out for large payouts as compensation for lost views.
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Court rejects cat hoarders' appeal of convictions
Headline Legal News |
2013/07/08 00:35
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The Montana Supreme Court has denied the appeal of a northwestern Montana couple's conviction of aggravated cruelty to animals after 116 cats were found living in filthy, snowbound trailers.
The Daily Inter Lake reports the court announced the decision July 2 involving Edwin and Cheryl Criswell.
The cats were found in December 2010 and a jury the following year found the couple guilty. In October 2011 Cheryl Criswell received a two-year sentence deferred over six years. Edwin Criswell received a two-year suspended sentence but later violated his probation by testing positive for marijuana and methamphetamine. In January he was sentenced to two years in prison.
In September 2006, the Criswells entered Alford pleas to 10 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty in northern Idaho in what officials then called the largest animal hoarding case in state history involving 430 animals.
In the Montana case, the Criswells contended they were wrongly convicted because during the trial Flathead County Deputy Attorney Ken Park called them "professional freeloaders," prejudicing the jury.
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Appeals court to hear dispute over BP settlement
Legal Business |
2013/07/06 00:35
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A federal appeals court is wading into a high-stakes dispute over the terms of a multibillion-dollar settlement of claims arising from BP's massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments Monday by attorneys for the London-based oil giant and for Gulf Coast businesses that say the nation's worst offshore oil spill cost them money.
BP asserts that the judge who approved the deal and a court-appointed claims administrator have misinterpreted the settlement, allowing thousands of businesses to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for inflated and fictitious losses.
"The result is that thousands of claimants that suffered no losses are coming forward in ever-increasing numbers, seeking and obtaining outrageous windfalls and making a mockery of what was intended to be a fair and honest court-supervised settlement process," company attorneys wrote in their brief for the hearing. |
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Court in NYC upholds insider trading conviction
Headline Legal News |
2013/07/02 10:38
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A stock trader nicknamed "the Octopussy" because he had access to so many sources of inside information was properly convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, a federal appeals court concluded Monday.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of Zvi Goffer and two others in a case the government had once touted as the biggest insider trading prosecution in history.
In all, more than two dozen defendants were convicted, including a one-time billionaire whose hedge funds had commanded as much as $7 billion.
The Israeli-born Goffer was convicted with two others in 2011 in a conspiracy to pay bribes to two lawyers at a Manhattan law firm. The government said Goffer and others earned more than $10 million illegally.
Goffer, whose nickname is a reference to a James Bond film, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after prosecutors said he arranged to pay two attorneys nearly $100,000 in 2007 and 2008 for inside tips on mergers and acquisitions. Prosecutors said Goffer's network used prepaid cellphones to avoid detection and destroyed them after each successful tip.
His lawyers challenged his conviction and sentence on several grounds, including that wiretap evidence should have been suppressed, that jury instructions were erroneous and that Goffer was punished for refusing to plead guilty.
A three-judge panel of the Manhattan appeals court noted the novelty of using wiretaps in a securities fraud case as it rejected defense arguments that the law permitting wiretaps does not list securities fraud as an offense for which it can be used. |
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