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Lawyer accused of laundering money to request bail
Criminal Law |
2012/11/15 11:54
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A U.S. lawyer who faces charges of laundering more than $600 million for a Mexican drug cartel is scheduled to ask to be released on bail.
Marco Antonio Delgado will have his detention hearing Wednesday in federal court in El Paso, Texas.
Prosecutors say Delgado conspired to launder a cartel's drug profits from July 2007 through December 2008. The indictment doesn't say which cartel.
Delgado is a former Carnegie Mellon University trustee and gave a $250,000 endowment to create a scholarship named after him to assist Hispanic students.
A profile later removed from the university's website says he left his professional duties to work with Mexican president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto. Pena's team denies knowing Delgado. The university says the biographical information was submitted by Delgado. |
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Limits on class-action lawsuits at Supreme Court
Class Action |
2012/11/06 09:41
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The Supreme Court appeared divided Monday in two cases in which businesses are trying to make it harder for customers or investors to band together to sue them.
The justices heard arguments in appeals from biotech company Amgen Inc. and cable provider Comcast Corp. that seek to shut down class-action lawsuits against the businesses.
Amgen is fighting securities fraud claims that misstatements about two of its drugs used to treat anemia artificially inflated its stock price. Comcast is facing a lawsuit from customers who say the company's monopoly in parts of the Philadelphia area allowed it to raise prices unfairly.
Last year, the Supreme Court raised the bar for some class-action suits when it sided with Wal-Mart against up to 1.6 million of its female employees who complained of sex discrimination. In the Wal-Mart case, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at the nation's largest private employer to wrap into one lawsuit.
Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments.
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Campaigns lawyered up for election overtime chance
Court Watch |
2012/11/05 09:41
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Legions of lawyers are ready to enter the fray in case Election Day turns on a legal challenge. One nightmare scenario would be for the results in a battleground state like Florida or Ohio to be too close to call, with thousands of absentee or provisional ballots yet to be counted.
The key, experts say, is whether the difference in votes between the two candidates is within what's known as the "margin of litigation" — that is, the number of outstanding votes must be much greater than the margin separating Obama and Romney when the smoke clears. And, it must be in a state that's decisive.
"You'd have to have a state whose Electoral College votes are absolutely pivotal or there would have to be a massive problem involving voters," said Richard Hasen, law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and founding editor of the Election Law Journal. "There not only have to be problems in an election. They have to be widespread enough or the margin close enough that litigating would actually make a difference."
Legal and campaign officials on both sides say lawyers are poised at both the national level and in the key states to respond immediately if a court challenge is needed. The political parties have gained a lot of experience in legal fights over U.S. Senate and House seats. The last major legal battle over the presidency was the 2000 race, settled by the U.S. Supreme Court favoring George W. Bush over Al Gore. |
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Former US Attorney taking job at law firm in Chicago
Law Firm News |
2012/11/01 09:45
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Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has a new job. Fitzgerald plans to join Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Fitzgerald will become a partner in the corporate law firm's Chicago office on Oct. 29.
Ads by GoogleDuring his tenure as U.S. attorney, Fitzgerald gained recognition for leading investigations into terrorism and organized crime, as well as the prosecutions of two Illinois governors. He stepped down as the top federal prosecutor in Chicago earlier this year.
Fitzgerald says he picked Skadden over other large firms because of its global reach and the opportunity to do some public-interest work.
Skadden has about 1,800 lawyers in 23 offices around the world, including about 170 attorneys in Chicago.
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Lawyer for NY man suing Facebook wants out of case
Court Watch |
2012/11/01 09:41
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The latest lawyer to represent a New York man in what authorities now say is a fraudulent lawsuit against Facebook is seeking to withdraw from the case.
Dean Boland, in a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, did not publicly say why he wants off Paul Ceglia's case, instead providing the reason in a private document to the judge.
The Lakewood, Ohio, lawyer did say, however, it has nothing to do with any belief that Ceglia engaged in fraud.
Given media coverage of the case, Boland wrote, "it is important to emphasize in the strongest terms possible, that the reasons underlying this request, provided to the court for its review, have nothing to do with any belief by the undersigned that plaintiff is engaged in now or has been engaged in during the past, fraud regarding this case."
Boland is among more than a half dozen lawyers and law firms to have signed on and then withdrawn from Ceglia's 2010 lawsuit. Ceglia claims in the suit that he's entitled to half-ownership of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook based on a 2003 contract with founder Mark Zuckerberg when he was still at Harvard.
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Retail group against revised card settlement
Legal Business |
2012/10/26 16:26
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A proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by retailers and trade groups against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. fails to protect merchants from abuse by credit card companies, a national retail group says.
The lawsuit, which dates to 2005, centers on the subject of swipe fees — charges banks collect every time a Visa or MasterCard is used to pay for a purchase.
The proposed settlement terms, initially disclosed in July, were revised and filed Friday with U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
But changes to the deal failed to win over many of the retailers represented by the National Retail Federation.
In a statement Mallory Duncan, the trade group's general counsel, said that the proposed deal does virtually nothing to protect retailers or their customers, and it attempts to silence any objections for years to come.
"Retailers would rather take their chances in court than accept this one-sided swindle written by the card industry for the card industry," he added.
The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, is not a party to the lawsuit.
In a statement Friday, Visa called the settlement a fair and reasonable compromise.
Under the proposed settlement, stores will be allowed to charge customers more if they pay with a credit card. The pact covers only U.S. transactions. |
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Fla. to execute mass killer after court lifts stay
Breaking Legal News |
2012/10/24 16:25
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A convicted mass killer from the 1970s is again scheduled for execution Tuesday after an appeals court lifted a last-minute stay that was based on his mental illness. His attorneys sought a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The execution of John Ferguson, 64, was tentatively back on for 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison pending a final order from the governor's office, state corrections officials said. Ferguson has been on Florida's death row for 34 years.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday lifted a stay put in place over the weekend by a judge in Florida. Ferguson's lawyers argued he is mentally ill and therefore the Constitution prohibits the state from executing him.
His attorneys sought reinstatement of the stay in an emergency filing Tuesday morning with the U.S. Supreme Court. There was no immediate ruling from the justices.
Ferguson was convicted of killing eight people in South Florida in 1977 and 1978, including a teenage couple.
Two of the three appeals court judges in Atlanta ruled that U.S. Judge Daniel Hurley "abused" his discretion on Saturday when he issued a stay in the case. |
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Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet. |
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