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Court could deal blow to porn star, award Trump legal fees
Legal Marketing News |
2018/12/01 13:46
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Lawyers for President Trump want porn actress Stormy Daniels to pay them $340,000 in legal bills they claim they earned successfully defending Trump against her frivolous defamation claim.
The attorneys are due in a Los Angeles federal courtroom Monday to make their case that they rang up big bills because of gamesmanship and aggressive tactics by attorney Michael Avenatti, who represents Daniels.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, alleges she had a one-night affair with Trump in 2006. She sued him earlier this year seeking to break a non-disclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 election about the tryst as part $130,000 hush money settlement. Trump has denied the affair.
Despite the deal to stay quiet, Daniels spoke out publicly and alleged that five years after the affair she was threatened to keep quiet by a man she did not recognize in a Las Vegas parking lot. She also released a composite sketch of the mystery man.
She sued Trump for defamation after he responded to the allegation by tweeting: "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!"
U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero ruled in October that Trump's statement was "rhetorical hyperbole" against a political adversary and was protected speech under the First Amendment. Trump is entitled to legal fees, Otero said.
Trump's team of lawyers have accounted for more than 500 hours of work — at rates as high as $840 an hour. |
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Nebraska high court rejects Omaha killer's latest appeal
Legal Marketing News |
2018/11/16 22:15
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The Nebraska Supreme Court has rejected the latest appeal by a man convicted of killing a University of Nebraska at Omaha student whose body has never been found.
The high court Friday upheld a lower court's denial of Christopher Edwards' second motion for post-conviction relief. The court found that Edwards' appeal saying the lower court should have held an evidentiary hearing on his claim that his attorney was ineffective was filed too late.
Edwards was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2006 disappearance of 19-year-old Jessica O'Grady, whose body was never found. Edwards was sentenced to 100 years to life.
The high court rejected Edwards' first post-conviction relief motion in 2012. In that motion, Edwards argued that a corrupt Douglas County crime scene investigator planted blood evidence to frame him.
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Imelda Marcos convicted of graft, court orders her arrest
Legal Marketing News |
2018/11/08 15:02
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A Philippine court found former first lady Imelda Marcos guilty of graft and ordered her arrest Friday in a rare conviction among many corruption cases that she's likely to appeal to avoid jail and losing her seat in Congress.
The special anti-graft Sandiganbayan court sentenced Marcos, 89, to serve 6 to 11 years in prison for each of the seven counts of violating an anti-corruption law when she illegally funneled about $200 million to Swiss foundations in the 1970s.
Neither Marcos nor anyone representing her attended Friday's court hearing and no one issued any reaction on her behalf.
The court disqualified Marcos from holding public office, but she can remain a member of the powerful House of Representatives while appealing the decision.
Imelda Marcos's husband, former President Ferdinand Marcos, was ousted by an army-backed "people power" revolt in 1986. He died in 1989.
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North Carolina top court orders study of courtroom portraits
Legal Marketing News |
2018/10/25 23:10
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The North Carolina Supreme Court has directed a commission to study the portraits hanging inside its courtroom amid a complaint about one of a pro-slavery judge.
The News & Observer reported Thursday that the state's top court formed a commission tasked with making a recommendation by Dec. 31, 2019.
Also on Thursday, the newspaper published an op-ed from UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Eric Muller and former Chapel Hill Councilmember Sally Greene drawing attention to the courtroom's portrait of Thomas Ruffin. Ruffin served on the court from 1829 to 1852.
He's best known for his decision in State v. Mann, in which he overturned the assault conviction of a slaveowner who shot a slave in the back for refusing him. Ruffin's portrait is the courtroom's largest, hung behind the justices' bench. |
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Bill Cosby's day of reckoning arrives in court
Legal Marketing News |
2018/09/26 10:40
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The woman Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting said in a statement released at the comedian's sentencing Tuesday that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt that have left her "stuck in a holding pattern."
Andrea Constand, 45, said her training as a professional basketball player had led her to think she could handle anything, but "life as I knew it" ended on the night in 2004 that Cosby knocked her out with pills and violated her.
The statement was released as Judge Steven O'Neill weighed Cosby's punishment and whether to declare the 81-year-old TV star a "sexually violent predator," a legal scarlet letter that would subject the comedian to monthly counseling for the rest of his life and would require that neighbors, schools and day care center be notified of his whereabouts.
The comic once known as America's Dad faced anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison after being convicted in April in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.
Prosecutors asked a judge to give Cosby five to 10 years behind bars, while his lawyers asked for house arrest, saying the former TV star is too old and helpless to do time in prison.
Constand said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people.
"When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement.
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Trump picks combat over caution in court fight
Legal Marketing News |
2018/09/21 10:37
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White House aides and congressional allies worked all week to keep President Donald Trump from unloading on the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.
But as Kavanaugh's nomination hung in the balance, Trump couldn't contain his frustration any longer and unleashed a direct Twitter attack on the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades ago during a high school party.
Friday's tweet landed with a splat in the noxious brew of gender and politics that has taken over a high-stakes confirmation battle playing out against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement. In keeping with Trump's natural instinct to fight back when under attack, as well as his long pattern of defending powerful men against the claims of women, the president's tweet reflected growing anger over all the focus on Ford's accusation.
Trump initially believed he could support his nominee without wading into the specific allegations against Kavanaugh since they did not involve him. But that began to change as Trump watched ongoing coverage of the accusations, particularly on Air Force One TVs tuned into Fox News on his long flight Thursday from Washington to Las Vegas, according to a White House official and a Republican close to the White House. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations. |
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