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Human rights court rules against Greece in Sharia law case
Corporate Governance |
2018/12/14 10:51
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Greece violated a prohibition on discrimination by applying Islamic religious law to an inheritance dispute among members of the country's Muslim minority, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Wednesday.
The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, ruled Greece violated the European Convention on Human Rights by applying Sharia law in the case, under which a Muslim Greek man's will bequeathing all he owned to his wife was deemed invalid after it was challenged by his sisters.
The man's widow, Chatitze Molla Sali, appealed to the European court in 2014, having lost three quarters of her inheritance. She argued she had been discriminated against on religious grounds as, had her husband not been Muslim, she would have inherited his entire estate under Greek law.
The European court agreed. It has not yet issued a decision on what, if any, penalty it will apply to Greece.
"Greece was the only country in Europe which, up until the material time, had applied Sharia law to a section of its citizens against their wishes," the court said in its ruling.
"That was particularly problematic in the present case because the application of Sharia law had led to a situation that was detrimental to the individual rights of a widow who had inherited her husband's estate in accordance with the rules of civil law but who had then found herself in a legal situation which neither she nor her husband had intended."
Molla Sali's husband had drawn up his will according to Greek law, and both a first instance and an appeals court initially ruled in her favor in the dispute with her sisters-in-law. But further court decisions ruled that inheritance issues within the Muslim minority had to be dealt with under Islamic religious law, and the will was deemed invalid.
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Polish president signs bill reinstating Supreme Court judges
Labor & Employment |
2018/12/13 10:53
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Poland's president signed legislation Monday that reinstates Supreme Court judges who were forced into early retirement despite the European Union condemning the removals as a violation of democratic standards.
Earlier in the day, the EU's top court, the European Court of Justice, ruled that Poland needed to suspend a law that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges and to put about two dozen justices the law had affected back on the bench.
President Andrzej Duda signed the revisions that removed the early retirement provisions, presidential aide Pawel Mucha said late Monday. The quick response comes amid a broader push by Poland's conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, to ease tensions with the EU.
Monday's ruling confirmed the Court of Justice's interim judgment from October ordering Poland to reinstate justices who were forced to step down when the retirement age was lowered from 70 to 65. The European Commission, which enforces EU law in member countries, had asked the court to review Poland's law.
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Thai court extends detention of refugee sought by Bahrain
Business |
2018/12/11 11:06
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A Thai court ruled Tuesday that a soccer player who holds refugee status in Australia can be held for 60 days pending the completion of an extradition request by Bahrain, the homeland he fled four years ago on account of alleged political persecution and torture.
Hakeem al-Araibi, who was detained Nov. 27 upon entry at Bangkok's main airport, was denied release on bail during his court appearance. Thai officials said he was originally held on the basis of a notice from Interpol in which Bahrain sought his custody because he had been sentenced in absentia in 2014 to 10 years in prison for vandalizing a police station, a charge he denies. He came to Thailand on vacation with his wife.
Al-Araibi says he fears being tortured if sent to Bahrain. Australia, which granted him refugee status and residency in 2017, has called for his release and immediate return to his adoptive home. He had played for Bahrain's national soccer team and now plays for Melbourne's Pascoe Vale Football Club. He has been publicly critical of the Bahrain royal family's alleged involvement in sports scandals.
He also has alleged he was blindfolded and had his legs beaten while he was held in Bahrain in 2012. |
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Supreme Court won't hear Planned Parenthood case
Bankruptcy |
2018/12/11 11:05
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The Supreme Court is avoiding a high-profile case by rejecting appeals from Kansas and Louisiana in their effort to strip Medicaid money from Planned Parenthood over the dissenting votes of three justices.
Lower courts in both states had blocked the states from withholding money that is used for health services for low-income women. The money is not used for abortions. Abortion opponents have said Planned Parenthood should not receive any government money because of heavily edited videos that claimed to show the nation's largest abortion provider profiting from sales of fetal tissue for medical research.
Investigations sparked by the videos in several states didn't result in criminal charges.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have heard the case.
It takes four votes on the nine-justice court to grant review, so neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor new Justice Brett Kavanaugh was willing to join their conservative colleagues to hear the Medicaid funding challenge.
Thomas wrote for the three dissenters that the court seems to be ducking a case it should decide because it involves Planned Parenthood. "But these cases are not about abortion rights," Thomas wrote.
The issue is who has the right to challenge a state's Medicaid funding decisions, private individuals or only the federal government. The states say that the Medicaid program, a joint venture of federal and state governments to provide health care to poorer Americans, makes clear that only the Secretary of Health and Human Services can intervene, by withholding money from a state. |
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Defamation lawsuit against activist continues in state court
Corporate Governance |
2018/12/08 11:07
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A Maine activist who accused an orphanage founder in Haiti of being a serial pedophile asked the state supreme court on Tuesday to dismiss a defamation lawsuit that was moved from federal court.
An attorney for Paul Kendrick told justices that the assertions were protected by a Maine law that protects people from meritless suits aimed at chilling First Amendment rights.
The argument that invoked Maine's Anti-SLAPP statute was met with skepticism from justices who questioned whether the law was intended to apply to harassment and cyberbullying.
But Supreme Court Chief Justice Leigh Saufley suggested there's a balancing act when between free speech and defamation.
"Are we not sliding into an areas where we have to be very careful not to chill the voices of people who say we must speak up in support of children who have been abused?" she asked an attorney at one point. "We know that if people are afraid to speak up that abuse can go on for decades."
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Court deadlines set stage for more Russia probe details
Corporate Governance |
2018/12/07 11:12
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the cases of two men who worked closely with President Donald Trump.
The special counsel and federal prosecutors in New York will have to file separate memos in court detailing the cooperation of longtime Trump legal fixer Michael Cohen, who has admitted lying to Congress and orchestrating hush-money payments to protect the president. And Mueller’s team will also be disclosing what they say former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied about when his plea deal fell apart last month.
Cohen and Manafort are among five former Trump associates whom prosecutors have accused of lying either to federal investigators or to Congress.
The court filings will close out a week in which Mueller’s team for the first time provided some details of the help they’ve received from former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Prosecutors, who said Flynn’s assistance was “substantial” and merited no prison time, disclosed that he had cooperated not only with the Russia investigation but also with at least one other undisclosed criminal probe.
The new details about Mueller’s investigation are set to become public as Trump continues to lash out at the Russia investigation and those who help prosecutors. Trump singled out Cohen, accusing him of lying to get a reduced prison sentence. The president also praised another associate, Roger Stone, for saying he wouldn’t testify against him, and Trump said a pardon for Manafort isn’t off the table.
In the latest filings Friday, prosecutors will weigh in on whether Cohen deserves prison time and, if so, how much. In doing so, they’ll have to provide a federal judge with at least some description of the assistance he’s provided to their investigations — the Russia probe and a separate investigation led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, including tax evasion and campaign finance violations. He said Trump had directed him before the 2016 election to arrange payments to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom alleged they had affairs with Trump. |
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Supreme Court to hear closely watched double jeopardy case
Breaking Legal News |
2018/12/06 09:35
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The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments about an exception to the Constitution's ban on being tried for the same offense. The outcome could have a spillover effect on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The justices are taking up an appeal Thursday from federal prison inmate Terance Gamble. He was prosecuted separately by Alabama and the federal government for having a gun after an earlier robbery conviction.
The high court is considering whether to overturn a court-created exception to the Constitution's double-jeopardy bar that allows state and federal prosecutions for the same crime. The court's ruling could be relevant if President Donald Trump were to pardon someone implicated in
Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein joked at a Washington event before the term began in October that the high court case should be called New York v. Manafort, a reference to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Trump has refused to rule out an eventual pardon for Manafort, who has been convicted of federal financial fraud and conspiracy crimes. It's by no means certain that the high court ruling will affect future prosecutions.
But Trump's Justice Department is urging the court not to depart from what it says is an unbroken line of cases reaching back nearly 170 years in favor of allowing prosecutions by state and federal authorities. Thirty-six states that include Republican-led Texas and Democratic-led New York are on the administration's side, as are advocates for Native American women who worry that a decision for Gamble would make it harder to prosecute domestic and sexual violence crimes.
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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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