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Court: California can force inmates to submit DNA
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/25 09:53
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A divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday that California law enforcement officials can keep collecting DNA samples from people arrested for felonies.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement’s interest in solving cold cases, identifying crime suspects and even exonerating the wrongly accused outweigh any privacy concerns raised by the forced DNA collections.
The 2-1 ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by four Californians who were arrested on felony charges but never convicted.
The arrestees sought a court order barring collection of DNA from people who are arrested but not convicted, arguing the process is an unconstitutional search and seizure since some suspects will later be exonerated.
The DNA samples are obtained with a swab of the cheek and stored in the state’s DNA database, which contains 1.9 million profiles. Arrestees who are never charged with a felony can apply to have their samples expunged from the database.
The state Department of Justice said it has had roughly 20,000 “hits’’ connecting suspects with previous crimes since it began collecting the DNA profiles.
Judge Mylan Smith Jr., writing for the two-judge majority, said the useful law enforcement tool wasn’t any more intrusive than fingerprinting.
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Strauss-Kahn has March court date in US
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/23 09:45
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A New York court has scheduled a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the woman who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel.
Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn last year, but his accuser has demanded damages in civil court.
The March 15 hearing will deal with issues that must be resolved before a trial, which has yet to be scheduled.
Strauss-Kahn wants the lawsuit dismissed because he says he had diplomatic immunity. He isn't required to attend the March court session.
The hotel maid who says she was attacked and forcibly sodomized by Strauss-Kahn is Nafissatou Diallo (na-fee-SAH'-too dee-AH'-loh). Her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, says she is "looking forward to her day in court and can't wait to get to trial." |
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US justice rejects death penalty law he wrote
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/15 13:03
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As a young state senator 30 years ago, Paul Pfeifer helped write Ohio's death penalty law. Today, as the senior member of the state Supreme Court, he's trying to eliminate it.
It's not uncommon for sitting judges to change their mind on the death penalty — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said in 1994 he would no longer "tinker with the machinery of death" — but Pfeifer may be the only one to argue so ardently against a capital punishment law he himself created, and yet continue to rule on death penalty cases.
"I have concluded that the death sentence makes no sense to me at this point when you can have life without the possibility of parole," Pfeifer said in his most recent public comments, testifying in December in favor a bill to abolish Ohio's law. "I don't see what society gains from that.
After the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972, states spent several years rewriting their laws. Ohio's first attempt, in 1974, was found unconstitutional, but the second try, when Pfeifer was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was enacted in 1981 and has never been successfully challenged. Lawmakers pledged at the time to draft a law reserved for the most heinous murders.
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Lehman Brothers sues Citigroup for $2.5B
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/10 09:27
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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its creditors are suing several units of Citigroup Inc. to recover $2.5 billion the failed investment bank transferred to a backup account at Citi months before seeking bankruptcy court protection.
In the complaint filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Lehman claims that Citibank is wrongfully withholding the money as a potential source of funds in a dispute over derivative contracts.
Lehman also is asking the court to disallow what it says are $2 billion of "inflated and legally unsupported" claims that Citibank has asserted against it.
In a statement Thursday, Citigroup vowed to defend itself and its right to recover losses from Lehman's collapse. It called the lawsuit unjustified and accused Lehman of trying to renege on its obligations and claw back assets to which it has no right.
According to the lawsuit, Citi demanded on June 12, 2008, that Lehman transfer between $3 billion to $5 billion into an account to cover potential overdrafts by Lehman subsidiaries that were using Citi's clearing and settlement services.
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BofA investor lawsuit wins class-action status
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/08 09:40
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Investors suing Bank of America Corp won class-action status for their lawsuit accusing the bank of fraudulently misleading them about the 2008 takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co and the size of Merrill's losses and bonus payouts.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan on Monday rejected the second-largest U.S. bank's argument that the investors could not prove they suffered losses by relying on materially misleading statements or omissions.
Among the other defendants who were also sued and opposed class certification were former Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, former Merrill Chief Executive John Thain, former Bank of America Chief Financial Officer Joe Price, and Bank of America's board of directors.
Lewis had won initial praise for saving Merrill from possible collapse when he agreed to buy it on September 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc went bankrupt.
But investors later faulted the bank for not disclosing the scope of Merrill's soaring losses, which reached $15.84 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, before December 2008 shareholder votes on the merger. They also objected to Merrill's having paid $3.6 billion of bonuses despite the losses. |
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Goldman to face mortgage debt class-action lawsuit
Breaking Legal News |
2012/02/03 10:01
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Goldman Sachs Group Inc was ordered by a federal judge to face a securities class-action lawsuit accusing it of defrauding investors about a 2006 offering of securities backed by risky mortgage loans from a now-defunct lender.
U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in Manhattan certified a class-action lawsuit by investors led by the Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi.
These investors claimed they lost money in the GSAMP Trust 2006-S2, a $698 million offering of certificates backed by second-lien home loans made by New Century Financial Corp, a California subprime mortgage specialist that went bankrupt in 2007.
Thursday's decision is a setback for Goldman, which had sought to force investors to bring their cases individually.
Class certification lets investors pool resources, which can cut costs, and can lead to larger recoveries than if investors are forced to sue individually.
Goldman spokesman Michael Duvally declined to comment.
The bank is one of many accused by Congress, regulators and others of having fueled the nation's housing crisis and 2008 financial crisis in part by having misled investors about the quality of mortgage debt they sold. |
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CA Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction
Breaking Legal News |
2012/01/31 10:15
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The California Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a man's second-degree murder conviction for killing a well-known San Diego surfer, overturning a 2010 ruling by a state appeals court that had reduced it to voluntary manslaughter.
The state's highest court said it disagreed with the decision by the 4th District Court of Appeals that cited insufficient evidence of implied malice by Seth Cravens when he delivered the single fatal punch to 24-year-old Emery Kauanui in 2007.
Cravens was found guilty in November 2009 of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 year to life in prison. The court ruling Monday means he will continue to serve that sentence.
If the voluntary manslaughter conviction had stuck, he could have faced a maximum of 16 years in prison.
Nicknamed the "Flying Hawaiian," Kauanui was a fixture at San Diego's Windansea Beach, where his favorite surf break is now called "Emery's Left."
Prosecutors said Cravens and four other men had gone to the La Jolla house of the surfer's mother to retaliate after Kauanui accidentally spilled beer on one of the men earlier in the evening at a bar.
After a group attack on Kauanui, Cravens delivered the punch to his head that prosecutors said fractured his skull. He fell then died at a hospital four days later. |
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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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