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Kagan Sided With Investors in Two Notable Securities Cases
Headline Legal News |
2010/05/10 09:25
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pThe federal government has opposed business interests in two closely watched securities cases during Elena Kagan's time as solicitor general, although her brief tenure has overlapped with just a handful of notable business cases. /ppMs. Kagan has a light record on business issues outside of her 14 months of service as solicitor general, a role in which she represented the government at the high court. She hasn't served as a judge and her professional career has largely been devoted to government service and academia. /ppWith Ms. Kagan as solicitor general, the Obama administration has taken a friendlier approach to investor lawsuits. Ms. Kagan's office filed a legal brief supporting investors in a case that examined when shareholders could sue mutual-fund managers for allegedly charging excessive fees. Ms. Kagan argued that a lower-court ruling in the case did not provide enough of a check on potentially excessive fees. /ppIn another case, Ms. Kagan's office argued that shareholders of Merck amp; Co. Inc. didn't wait too long to file lawsuits alleging the drug maker misrepresented the safety of painkiller drug Vioxx. /ppThe Supreme Court, which decided both cases this spring, unanimously agreed with Ms. Kagan's position each time.
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US women due in court in Philly in terrorism case
Headline Legal News |
2010/05/03 08:19
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pTwo American women charged in a global terrorism plot allegedly aimed at killing a Swedish artist are due in court in Philadelphia./ppCourt papers show the case is largely built on e-mails and online postings allegedly made by 46-year-old Colleen LaRose of Pennsburg and 31-year-old Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Leadville, Colo./ppThe Colorado woman's defense lawyer, Jeremy Ibrahim, says he will ask Monday for copies of computer evidence. A judge may have to screen it first because prosecutors say some of it may be classified./ppLaRose is also expected to enter a plea to a superseding indictment. Both women have previously pleaded not guilty. They were arrested this year after returning from Europe.
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Brit on Texas death row loses high court appeal
Legal News |
2010/05/03 06:20
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pThe Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman on death row in Texas for killing a young mother./ppThe justices on Monday rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a woman whose child she also snatched in Houston in 2001. Carty has complained that her trial lawyers were deficient./ppThe British government and human rights groups have aided Carty's cause./ppCarty is one of 10 condemned women in Texas. She is a former teacher from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands./ppIn September, a taped voice recording of Carty begging Britons to help save her life was broadcast into London's Trafalgar Square.
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Florida Probing Law Firm in Foreclosures
Headline Legal News |
2010/05/02 09:24
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pThe Florida attorney general's office is investigating possible misconduct by a large law firm that files foreclosures for banks, according to a posting on its Web site./ppThe Web site said the office is looking at whether Florida Default Law Group, based in Tampa, was involved in fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases. Mortgage documents that are used to prove a bank has a right to foreclose have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient, the Web site said./ppA spokeswoman for Florida Default declined to comment. Ryan Wiggins, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill McCollum, said the investigation began last fall./ppThe civil probe comes as some judges and federal prosecutors in Florida are paying close attention to how banks—and so-called foreclosure-mill law firms that work for banks—are attempting to take control of homes from borrowers in default. Judges across the country have chastised banks and their attorneys for attempting to seize properties they can't prove they own. /ppLast month, a Florida judge said that a mortgage document filed by a bank in a foreclosure case was part of an intentional effort to mislead the court.
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Put an age limit on Supreme Court justices
Headline Legal News |
2010/04/28 08:53
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pWhen President George W. Bush and his lawyers were insisting the commander in chief had the sole power to run the new war on terror, Judge Diane Wood sharply criticized that view./ppWood, now on President Obama's list as a possible Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a 2003 Chicago law review article that in a democracy, those responsible for national security must do more than say ‘trust us, we know best.' Secret prisons and secret evidence do not comport with the rule of law, she said./ppWhen the Bush administration argued that a Chinese Muslim could be held indefinitely as a Guantanamo Bay prisoner because he had gone to Afghanistan and may have associated with the Taliban, Judge Merrick Garland disagreed./ppGarland, also on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court, wrote two years ago for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington that Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has ‘said it thrice' does not make the allegation true. There was no evidence that the Uighurs were enemy combatants, he said.
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US lawmaker urges action on Russian lawyer's death
Lawyer Media News |
2010/04/28 07:53
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pA U.S. senator urged the State Department on Monday to deny entry to the United States for all Russian officials allegedly responsible for the prison death of a lawyer./ppSergey Magnitsky died in November after spending almost a year in jail. He was awaiting trial on tax-evasion charges linked to his work with a British investor barred from Russia because of allegations he was a security risk./ppSen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., released a letter he wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking her to deny entry to the United States of several senior officials from the Russian Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Tax Service./ppMagnitsky's colleagues and attorney believe the public officials listed by Cardin were involved in the lawyer's death./ppWe can take the concrete action to ensure those public officials and others who share responsibility for this crime should be denied entry visas to the United States, Cardin wrote. Since the death, a number of prison officials have been fired, but no one has been prosecuted for his torture or death, nor for participating in the corruption he exposed.
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