Polsinelli Shughart PC has completed its move to Lower Downtown Denver, the firm announced Monday in a letter to clients.

Effective Monday, the law firm is now located the newly built 1515 Wynkoop office building in the LoDo Historic District. Before, its offices were in downtown's Independence Plaza at 1050 17th St.

Earlier this year, Shughart Thomson & Kilroy PC, a Kansas City-based law firm with a Denver office, merged with Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus PC, a larger Kansas City firm that did not previously have a Denver presence.

The national law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP announced today that a foundation it established following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is helping its attorneys and staff affected by the recent devastating floods in Georgia. The firm is currently accepting assistance applications from the Georgia employees of Fisher & Phillips who suffered damage.

Chairman and Managing Partner Roger Quillen said: “The attorneys and staff of our firm who were not directly affected by the flooding have displayed the same desire to aid their co-workers as they did when Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed the homes of our people in Louisiana. It does my heart good to see how our extended law firm family comes together in a time of need.”

Robert Christenson, chair of the firm’s Employee Benefits Practice Group, pointed out that any employer can create a charitable fund to provide immediate disaster relief assistance to its own employees. When properly organized and operated, donors receive a tax deduction for contributions to such a fund, and recipients of assistance do not pay income tax on money they receive. Employers have been permitted to set up such funds since the 9/11 disaster. Following that tragedy, Congress enacted the Victims of Terrorism Tax Relief Act of 2001, which allows an employer to establish a 501(c)(3) private foundation for the purpose of providing timely disaster relief assistance to its employees and their families (an “Employer-Controlled Foundation”). Disasters such as Katrina and the Georgia floods are covered by the Act.

Christenson said: “A foundation such as ours gives employees the opportunity to aid their colleagues who have been affected by a disaster or tragedy. Our attorneys are ready to assist any company that wants to move quickly to establish its own foundation to help during this time of need. We will put together the organizational documents, help with the tax filings, and explain the law to ensure that employers properly establish their foundations.”

The Fisher & Phillips Foundation provides money for such things as living expenses and uninsured repairs. All assistance is purely “needs based” and a committee ensures that the funds are properly distributed. Following Hurricane Katrina 17 attorneys and staff received a total of $77,000 from the foundation. The firm donated $60,000 to start the fund and lawyers and staff donated an additional $22,000. The firm has committed to donate an additional $40,000 to the fund as needed and the foundation is also accepting donations from attorneys and staff to help the Georgia flood victims.

A former aide to Danielle Steel is facing time in federal prison after admitting she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the romance novelist.

Federal prosecutors announced Monday that 47-year-old Kristy Watts, who also goes by the name Kristy Siegrist, pleaded guilty last week to one count of wire fraud and four counts of tax evasion.

Prosecutors say Watts admitted stealing at least $400,000 while handling accounting and other duties for Steel.

Watts worked for the best-selling author from 1993 to 2008.

Investigators determined Watts had deposited checks from Steel's accounts into her own account and used Steel's credit cards for herself.

Sentencing is set for Feb. 4 in federal court in San Francisco.

A federal judge in California has vacated a temporary restraining order that directed Google Inc. to deactivate a Gmail account in response to a complaint filed by the Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming.

In an order issued Friday, Judge James Ware, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, also vacated a hearing on the case which had been scheduled for today. The decision came after a motion had been jointly filed by Google and the bank asking the court to quash the restraining order.

Rocky Mountain Bank had mistakenly sent a file containing confidential account information belonging to 1,325 of its customers to the Gmail address in August. When the bank discovered the error, it immediately sent an e-mail to the Gmail address asking the recipient to delete the e-mail and the attachment. The bank also asked the recipient to contact the bank to discuss what actions had been taken to comply with the bank's request.

When it received no reply, the bank sent an e-mail to Google asking whether the Gmail account was active and what it could do to prevent unauthorized disclosure of the leaked information.

The Afghan-born man at the center of a U.S. anti-terrorism probe pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to allegations he plotted a bomb attack in the United States, and a federal judge ordered him held without bail.

Prosecutors accuse Najibullah Zazi, 24, a Colorado airport shuttle driver and a legal U.S. resident born in Afghanistan, of plotting bomb attacks in the United States. He is accused of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction - homemade bombs. He and others allegedly bought chemicals at beauty supply companies to cook up a poor man's explosive known as triacetone triperoxide, or TATP.

A look at key issues in the health care debate:

THE ISSUE: Why do medical costs increase at a rate faster than inflation?

THE POLITICS: Health care spending over the past year increased by 3.2 percent even as overall consumer prices dropped 2.1 percent. That's not unusual in the United States, where health care spending rises at rates substantially higher than inflation. Analysts agree on any number of reasons for the increases, but tend to disagree on which cause is most responsible. Among the reasons:

_Americans get too much unnecessary care — too many tests, treatments and hospitalizations that do not improve their health. The reasons for this vary: Many doctors have a financial interest in new technology, doctors and hospitals fear malpractice lawsuits and patients are indiscriminate consumers because they are shielded from health care costs through insurance or government health plans.

_Easy access to expensive new medical technologies.

_Inefficient health insurance companies with high administrative costs that don't have anything to do with actual health care.

_Unhealthy living habits that strain the system, including smoking and obesity.

WHAT IT MEANS: Curbing the rising costs of health care is at the heart of the current debate on overhauling the nation's health care system. Rising costs have placed Medicare, the federal government insurance program for the elderly, on an unsustainable trajectory that would be responsible for exploding government deficits. At the same time, employers and their workers have met with rising health insurance costs that are straining business and family budgets.

Perrysburg Township trustees are suing a Toledo law firm, contending that one of the lawyers asked for several thousand pages of copies in a public records request but did not pay for them.

The suit, filed yesterday in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, names Cosme, D’Angelo, & Szollosi and lawyer Joshua Hughes. It requests complete payment for the copies and punitive damages in excess of $3,000 “for intentionally causing the expenditure of public money for a private purpose with no intention to make repayment and to deter abuse of the public records law of the State of Ohio.”

The suit says the firm requested copies of all documentation pertaining to the Perrysburg Township fire station/EMS/police facility addition project. Because the request meant copying hundreds of documents, the township notified the firm it would be outsourced, and the firm would be responsible for the billing. The total was $1,343.79.

According to letters with the suit, Mr. Hughes responded that the firm was not liable for extra “office supplies” such as binders, and that only fair copy costs and postage would be paid. The township received a check for $338.89.