Free Republic

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities. There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning. One alternative would be to do what the board has done for the past three years - seat its president near floor level, instead of the ornate, elevated podium that would require a significant retrofit of the historic room. Board President Aaron Peskin said he would like to find a...

WICHITA, Kan.—A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a patient-advocacy group to sue the federal government on behalf of patients of a physician who is charged with running a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown urged about 40 of Dr. Stephen Schneider's patients, some of whom had come to the hearing on crutches, to seek care at the emergency room, not the court. "If someone can prevent a criminal prosecution by filing a civil suit, there would be a flood of civil suits," Brown told the courtroom. The judge said the patients...

New Orleans (AP) -- A federal judge threw out a key class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding from a levee breach after Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over the failure of a wall on the 17th Street Canal that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. The suit led to 350,000 separate claims by businesses, government entities and residents, totaling billions of dollars in damages against the agency. The fate of many of those claims was pinned to that lawsuit...

San Francisco (AP) -- Lawyers for environmental and native Alaska groups are asking a federal appeals court in San Francisco to block an oil company's plans for exploratory drilling near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

SAN FRANCISCO - A lawsuit by animal-rights advocates accusing UCSF of illegally spending state money on painful and unnecessary experiments on dogs and monkeys was dismissed Tuesday by a San Francisco judge, who said Congress has designated federal regulators, not the courts, to oversee the research. "You want to have the court become the regulator of this particular lab," Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney told a lawyer for six health professionals who filed the taxpayer suit against the university. "I don't think that's what Congress intended." The plaintiffs wanted Mahoney to halt what they called illegal experiments and appoint a...

Spanish-speaking couple sues, accuses entities involved with mortgage, of negligence, misrepresentation -- ANTIOCH -- When it came time to sign her mortgage documents, Judy Murillo said she heard something in English that made her stop signing. The terms of her loan didn't sound right. "We weren't supposed to have Mello-Roos," she said, her brow furrowing as she sat at her dining room table. Although Murillo speaks some English, she is more comfortable with Spanish, the language she and her husband used when communicating with her real estate agent, who was also her loan consultant, and his assistant. She said...

A federal judge has dismissed the bulk of a civil rights lawsuit that accused Contra Costa sheriff's deputies of traumatizing the housemates of Scott Dyleski as they searched for Dyleski after the killing of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and television commentator Daniel Horowitz. Deputies had the right to enter the home on Hunsaker Canyon Road without warrants, as they believed Dyleski might be destroying evidence, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a ruling Monday. Kim and Fred Curiel and their three children, along with Mike Sikkema and his wife, Hazel McClure, and their two children, said deputies...

A judge dismissed three Ecuadorians from a lawsuit against San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., saying attorneys "manufactured" their claims that the company's chemical dumping in their country caused cancer. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco threw out the claims against Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company, Aug. 3. He blamed lawyers representing the Ecuadorians for fabricating their illnesses. Seven residents of Ecuador's Oriente region sued, claiming they contracted cancer due to Texaco Inc. and Texaco Petroleum Co.'s, now part of Chevron, contamination of rain forests. The case relies in part on Gloria Chamba, who in the complaint claimed her...

Four men who were allegedly refused ladies' night discounts at a Los Angeles nightclub have the right to sue on the grounds of discrimination even if they never demanded equal treatment from the club, the state Supreme Court said Thursday. California's Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits a broad range of discriminatory business conduct, including sex-based pricing, and does not require customers to demand that a company change its policies before going to court, Chief Justice Ronald George said in the unanimous decision. A lower court had thrown out the case because the men had not complained first. The ruling addressed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited workers' ability to sue employers for pay discrimination that results from decisions made years earlier. The court, in a 5-4 ruling, said that employers would otherwise find it difficult to defend against claims "arising from employment decisions that are long past." The case concerned how to apply a 180-day deadline for complaining about discriminatory pay decisions under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lilly Ledbetter sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., claiming that after 19 years at the company's Gadsden, Ala., plant, she was making $6,000 a...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a doctor who accused KFC of not telling customers that it used trans fats to fry its chicken. In an occasionally sarcastic opinion, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Dr. Arthur Hoyte could not show that he was harmed by KFC's use of the artery-clogging fats. That was enough to doom the lawsuit, but Robertson also noted other flaws in the case. "While it might be appropriate for this court to find, as a matter of law, that the consumption of fat — including trans fat —...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights filed suit in San Francisco today on behalf of Kebin Reyes, a 6-year-old U.S. citizen, saying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents violated the child's civil rights when they took him into custody on March 6. Kebin was detained along with his Guatemalan-born father, Noe Reyes, 37, during immigration raids in San Rafael that were part of the national campaign "Operation Return to Sender," which has picked up more than 18,000 people nationwide on immigration violations. Their attorneys charge the federal government violated Kebin's rights...

An appeals court ruling could spell trouble for New Yorkers suing the Environmental Protection Agency and its former chief for saying that sooty Lower Manhattan air was safe to breathe after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. A three judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared this week that EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and other agency officials can't be held constitutionally liable for making rosy declarations about air quality after the World Trade Center's destruction. The opinion, written by the court's chief judge, Dennis Jacobs, said opening EPA workers up to lawsuits for giving out bad...

LOS ANGELES - A lower court's decision to toss a $33 million jury verdict against the city and Budget Rent a Car was upheld by an appeals court. Jurors recommended the money be paid to Florida urologist Angelo E. Gousse, who filed a lawsuit in 2001 claiming he was manhandled by police when he was arrested for driving a rental car with stolen license plates. But Superior Court Judge Elizabeth A. Grimes tossed the jury award and the 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed there was insufficient evidence of emotional and physical injuries to support the large verdict. Gousse, who...

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal. James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam. In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become ''a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet...

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the social networking Web site MySpace filed by the family of a 13-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met online. The $30 million lawsuit accused the site of having no measures to protect children who use it. The lawsuit also named MySpace's parent company, News Corp., and the 19-year-old, whose criminal case has not yet gone to trial. In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said MySpace is protected under the Communications Decency Act and cannot be expected to verify the age of...

The Capitol's "tort war" began in 1975 when doctors, hospitals and other purveyors of medical care pressured the Legislature and then-Gov. Jerry Brown into placing a cap on "pain and suffering" compensation in medical malpractice lawsuits. They cited a steep increase in malpractice insurance premiums. The medicos blitzed the Capitol. Physicians' wives staged a sleep-in in the governor's office foyer to impose the $250,000 compensation limit, which resulted in a sharp drop in malpractice insurance premiums. The cap became a model for similar efforts in other states. It was a huge wake-up call for what was then called the California...

San Francisco -- A coalition of San Francisco lawyers is asking the California State Bar to investigate whether a Bush administration official violated legal ethics when he called for a boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Bar Association of San Francisco announced Thursday it wanted an investigation into the conduct of Charles "Cully" Stimson, a deputy defense secretary for detainee affairs and member of the California State Bar. On Jan. 11, Stimson told a radio audience that he was outraged that big law firms were assisting Guantanamo Bay detainees. He called for the boycott of firms...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday blamed delays in trying terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay on legal challenges filed by their lawyers. Those trials may start by this summer, Gonzales told Associated Press reporters and editors. He said rules for the military commission are being sent up to Capitol Hill this week. "It's not for lack of trying," Gonzales said, when asked about the legal fate of detainees who have been held at the military facility, in some cases for five years. "We are challenged very step of the way." "We are trying as hard as we can to bring...