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Court rejects Polanski bid to disqualify LA judges
Court Watch |
2009/02/03 08:36
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Roman Polanski's attorneys have lost their bid to disqualify all Los Angeles Superior Court judges from considering their request to dismiss the 31-year-old sex case against the fugitive director.
The California 2nd District Court of Appeal issued the decision Monday, and also lifted a stay on all proceedings.
Polanski's attorney, Chad Hummel, claimed the entire Los Angeles Superior Court bench is biased against the director. Prosecutors countered that the claim was frivolous. Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1978 but fled to France before he could be sentenced. Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini says a new date for the hearing will be set Tuesday. |
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Man guilty of false report in Harrison gun case
Court Watch |
2009/01/29 08:38
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| A Philadelphia man who says he was shot by Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison has been convicted of a misdemeanor for giving police false information about the incident. The April 28 shooting occurred near Harrison's car wash in North Philadelphia. Investigators said the shots came from a gun owned by Harrison, but said they have conflicting accounts of who fired it. Dwight Dixon said he will appeal Tuesday's misdemeanor conviction for filing a fictitious report. Police said he initially gave them a fake name and told them two unknown men shot him during a robbery attempt. The judge dismissed two related misdemeanor counts. Dixon later said Harrison was the shooter and filed a civil suit filed against the NFL player. |
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Court: Christian school can expel lesbian students
Court Watch |
2009/01/28 09:41
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A California appeals court has ruled that a Christian high school can expel students because of an alleged lesbian relationship.
The 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside on Monday upheld California Lutheran High School's right as a private, religious organization to exclude students based on sexual orientation.
Two girls sued claiming they were discriminated against after they were expelled from the Wildomar school in 2005. A lower court said the school isn't bound by the same anti-discrimination laws as a business establishment. John McKay, attorney for California Lutheran, says the school's goal is to educate based on Christian principles. The attorney for the girls could not be immediately reached Tuesday. |
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Cheerleading is a contact sport, Wis. court rules
Court Watch |
2009/01/27 11:11
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| High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a case being closely watched in the cheerleading world. The court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a teammate who failed to stop her fall while she was practicing a stunt. The court also said the injured cheerleader cannot sue her school district. The National Cheer Safety Foundation said the decision is the first of its kind in the nation. At issue in the case was whether cheerleaders qualify for immunity under a Wisconsin law that prevents participants in contact sports from suing each other for unintentional injuries. It does not spell out which sports are contact sports. The District 4 Court of Appeals ruled last year cheerleading doesn't qualify because there's no contact between opposing teams. But all seven members of the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to overturn that decision. In the opinion, Justice Annette Ziegler said cheerleading involves "a significant amount of physical contact between the cheerleaders." As an example, she cited stunts in which cheerleaders are tossed in the air. The lawsuit was brought by Brittany Noffke, who was a varsity cheerleader at Holmen High School in western Wisconsin. Practicing a stunt in 2004, Noffke fell backward off the shoulders of another cheerleader and suffered a serious head injury. |
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Gatehouse and New York Times Co. settle lawsuit
Court Watch |
2009/01/26 08:09
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An agreement has been reached in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by GateHouse Media against The New York Times Co.
GateHouse sued the Times, the parent company of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com Web Site, last month, claiming the Globe's new community Web sites use GateHouse's newspaper headlines and lead sentences without permission.
GateHouse claims Boston.com violates copyright and trademark laws by taking GateHouse material published on its "Wicked Local" Web sites. A clerk to U.S. District Judge William Young said the two sides reached an agreement over the weekend just before the case was set to go to trial Monday in U.S. District Court. No details have been announced. Lawyers for GateHouse declined comment Monday morning. |
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Court turns away suit over Confederate flag shirts
Court Watch |
2009/01/23 08:36
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A full federal appeals court won't hear a lawsuit by three Tennessee students threatened with suspension if they wore Confederate flag T-shirts.
A three-judge panel ruled in August that Blount County, just south of Knoxville, could ban the clothing. On Friday, the judges denied a request for a hearing by the full federal appeals court in Cincinnati.Students Derek Barr and Craig and Chris White argued their free speech rights were violated by the ban on clothes with the flag, which is considered a symbol of racism and intolerance by some and an emblem of Southern heritage by others. School officials said their ban came after racial tension at William Blount High. There have been a string of similar claims from Texas to South Carolina since the 1990s. |
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Court sides with police officers in search case
Court Watch |
2009/01/22 08:34
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| The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police officers in Utah who searched a suspect's home without a warrant cannot be sued for violating his constitutional rights. In ruling unanimously for five officers attached to the Central Utah Narcotics Task Force, the court also abandoned a rigid, two-step test that it adopted in 2001 to guide judges in assessing alleged violations of constitutional rights. Trial and appellate judges "should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion" in evaluating such claims, Justice Samuel Alito said in his opinion for the court. Under the 2001 ruling, courts first had to determine whether an action amounts to a violation of a constitutional right and then decide whether the public official, often a police officer, should be immune from the civil lawsuit. Officials can't be held liable in situations where it is not clearly established that their actions violated someone's constitutional rights. The case grew out of a search of the home of Afton Callahan of Millard County, Utah, in 2002. An informant contacted police to tell them he had arranged to purchase drugs from Callahan at Callahan's trailer home. |
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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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