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Dedicated to Your Personal & Financial Recovery
Court Line News |
2022/04/01 18:33
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Since 1962, the law firm of Krol, Bongiorno & Given, Ltd. has been a leader in the field of workers’ compensation law, protecting the rights of tens of thousands of workers injured on the job. KBG provides our clients with a team of attorneys that are aggressive, experienced, client-focused and trial ready. We have handled well over 30,000 claims for injured workers throughout the state of Illinois and have consistently generated some of the largest settlements and awards at the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission (“IWCC”).
KBG handles claims for both union and non-union injured workers. All claims are handled on a contingency basis, meaning there are $0 in up-front costs to our clients. We do not get paid until your claim is favorably resolved.
We know this is a very trying time in your life and we are sensitive to the stresses you have as a result of your injury. We work hard to develop a professional and personal relationship with our clients in order to provide them with outstanding service and representation. This attorney-client relationship is crucial to helping our clients overcome the challenges they have during the pendency of the claim.
<a href="https://www.krol-law.com/no-fault-workers-compensation-in-illinois/">What Is Meant by ‘No-Fault’ Workers’ Compensation in Illinois?</a>
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Judge won’t halt execution over intellectual disability
Topics in Legal News |
2022/03/29 16:20
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A judge on Tuesday dismissed a motion to declare a Tennessee death row inmate intellectually disabled, a move that would have prohibited his upcoming execution.
Senior Judge Walter Kurtz wrote that federal courts had previously determined Byron Black was not intellectually disabled and therefore was ineligible to have the decision considered once again. The 45-page decision comes despite agreement between Nashville’s district attorney and Black’s lawyers that he is intellectually disabled and should not be put to death.
Black is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 18 for his murder convictions in the April 1988 killings of his girlfriend and her two young daughters.
Black’s attorneys had argued the 65-year-old should be spared under a 2021 law that made Tennessee’s prohibition against executing people with intellectual disability retroactive, pointing out there is a different standard in place now than in 2004 — when the court found that Black didn’t meet the now-obsolete definition of “mental retardation.” Previously, Tennessee had no mechanism for an inmate to reopen a case to press an intellectual disability claim.
However, Kurtz ultimately concluded that the new state law does not apply to death row inmates who had previously received a ruling from a prior court.
“This Court fails to see how the federal courts’ resolution of petitioner’s intellectual disability claim can be seen as anything other than an adjudication on the merits under the legal and medical principles which are embodied in the most recent version of (Tennessee law),”Kurtz wrote. “Given the above, the Court finds that Mr. Black had a full and fair previous adjudication on the merits of his intellectual disability claim.”
Black was convicted by a Nashville court in the deaths of girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakesha, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work release while serving time for shooting and wounding Clay’s estranged husband.
Earlier this month, District Attorney Glenn Funk — Nashville’s lead prosecutor — announced that he agreed with Black’s legal team that the inmate was intellectually disabled and should instead face a sentence of life in prison.
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Retired judges will hear divorce cases to clear backlog
Legal Marketing News |
2022/03/28 16:20
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The Maine court system will assign retired judges to divorce proceedings to clear a growing backlog of more than 6,000 cases that have been delayed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The program began last week and will assign the former judges as referees to divorce cases where both sides involved have lawyers. The referees would work to resolve the cases without a trial, The Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday.
“The goal is to add capacity in the short term to allow us to address the backlog without adding work to existing personnel,” Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill said.
Judges who volunteer as referees will be paid the same full-day $350 stipend amount as other active retired judges who work in the court system.
According to Alyson Cummings, an employee for the administrative office of the courts, the cost of the program and the number of cases the judges will handle have not been determined yet.
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New York’s top court rules in favor of fantasy sports bets
Legal Marketing News |
2022/03/27 16:20
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New York’s highest court ruled Tuesday that fantasy sports contests like those run by FanDuel and DraftKings are allowed under the state constitution, turning back a challenge to the popular games.
The state Court of Appeals reversed an appeals court’s decision last year that found interactive fantasy sports violated the state constitution’s ban on gambling. The games allow players to assemble a roster of athletes in a sport, using individuals performance statistics to determine the winner. They annually bring in hundreds of millions in entrance fees statewide.
The lawsuit was bought several years ago and did not target mobile sports betting, which began in New York earlier this year.
In a 4-3 ruling, New York’s top court clarified the scope of that the state’s constitutional prohibition on gambling. Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wrote that the gambling prohibition doesn’t include skill-based competitions in which players who win a prize exercise “substantial influence” over the contest’s outcome.
DiFiore wrote that the outcome of a interactive fantasy sports contest “turns — not on the performance of real-life athletes, as it would with respect to a bet or wager — but on whether the participant has skillfully composed and managed a virtual roster so as to garner more fantasy points than rosters composed by other participants.”
The fantasy sports measure signed into law by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2016 cleared the way for companies like DraftKings and FanDuel to operate and be regulated in New York. DraftKings and FanDuel both said they were pleased with the decision. |
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Hearing opens for Jackson, 1st Black female high court pick
Court Line News |
2022/03/26 16:20
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The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday opened the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated for the nation’s highest court.
Jackson, 51, is to give her opening statement later Monday and answer questions on Tuesday and Wednesday from the panel’s 11 Democratic and 11 Republican senators.
Barring a significant misstep by the 51-year-old Jackson, a federal judge for the past nine years, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins intend to wrap up her confirmation before Easter. She would be the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, as well as the first Black woman on the high court.
“It’s not easy being the first. Often, you have to be the best, in some ways the bravest,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee chairman, said shortly after the proceedings began.
The committee’s senior Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, promised Republicans would “ask tough questions about Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy,” without turning the hearings into a ”spectacle.”
Jackson’s testimony will give most Americans, as well as the Senate, their most extensive look yet at the Harvard-trained lawyer with a resume that includes two years as a federal public defender. That makes her the first nominee with significant criminal defense experience since Marshall. |
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Courts, BMV act after license retained after fatal crash
Legal Interview |
2022/03/14 15:44
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The Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles and court officials have scrambled to close a gap in tracking and sharing information about criminal convictions that should result in license suspensions.
The problem surfaced when a man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter following a fatal crash during a police pursuit was arrested for causing another crash while being chased by police. Two others were injured, one of them critically, in the crash on March 4 in Paris, Maine.
The man being chased by police shouldn’t have had a license after pleading guilty last summer to the earlier crash that killed a 70-year-old driver.
A one-page document that would have allowed the BMV to process his suspension was never sent by court staff despite the BMV’s requests, and court officials suggested it was not their duty to send the paperwork because the conviction was not technically considered a driving offense under state law, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The state court’s response hinged on a technicality — he was convicted not of a driving offense but manslaughter. In Maine, there’s no separate conviction for “vehicular manslaughter.”
On Friday, officials including Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Valerie Stanfill, chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, came to an agreement on correcting the problem, the newspaper reported.
But the Portland Press Herald reported that representatives of the courts and secretary of state declined to discuss specifics.
The agreement with the courts will encompass convictions connected to use of a vehicle but not specifically included in the driving statute, said Emily Cook, spokesperson for Bellows.
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