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Prominent attorney Brian Loncar was injured Thursday night when a fire engine collided with his Bentley in the Oak Lawn area, Dallas police said. Mr. Loncar, 47, was transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital. His condition was not immediately available. The accident happened shortly before 7 p.m. as a fire truck responding to an alarm headed northbound on Lemmon Avenue, police said. snip Dallas police Lt. Scott Bratcher said that the accident remains under investigation. But he said the accident will likely be ruled as Mr. Loncar's fault because he "failed to yield right of way to an emergency vehicle."

COLORADO SPRINGS — An El Paso County District judge ruled Tuesday that the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and officials of Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish in Colorado Springs must resolve their $17 million property dispute at trial. District Judge Larry E. Schwartz concluded that he cannot make a decision based solely on matters of law because "there is virtually no agreement as to the facts."

Opinion just released.

The city of Half Moon Bay found itself in serious financial trouble last year after U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the city had to pay a local developer $37 million - $41 million with legal fees added. The judgment amounted to close to four times the city's annual budget, or more than $3,000 per resident in this city of fewer than 13,000. Bankruptcy loomed. Walker found that a city drain project inadvertently had created wetlands on developer Charles "Chop" Keenan's property. When Half Moon Bay later cited those same wetlands as grounds to stop Keenan from developing...

A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California. Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan's Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to "go 'hang out' in the bathroom" about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the "jump seat" she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said. Mutlu was traveling on a a...

NEW YORK—A popular restaurant has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit with a lesbian who said a bouncer chased her out of the women's bathroom and forced her to leave because she looked masculine. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the settlement Tuesday on behalf of Khadijah Farmer. The Caliente Cab Company, while denying the allegations, also agreed to add gender identity to its nondiscrimination policy, amend its employee handbook with a section on customer restroom use and adopt a gender-neutral employee dress code. Farmer said the confrontation at the Greenwich Village eatery occurred June 24...

Rick Paul, owner of Rick's White Light Diner, was found in contempt of court Monday and must pay $1,000 to a charity of his choice, for again infringing on the Derby-Pie trademark. Before U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood in a Lexington courtroom, Paul was found in contempt of court for violating a 1997 permanent injunction signed by Hood, ordering Paul not to infringe on Kern's Kitchen Inc.'s trademark Derby-Pie. Paul also must pay Kern's Kitchen's attorney fees and costs. "I am disappointed with the judge's ruling and I accept it," Paul said today. "Our proof was considerably different than Derby...

NY man sues airline over flight spent in toilet Mon May 12, 2008 6:52pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York man who says he was denied a seat on a five-hour jetBlue flight and was instead told to "hang out" in the plane's bathroom has sued the airline for $2 million, saying he suffered "extreme humiliation." When Gokhan Mutlu arrived to check in for a jetBlue flight from San Diego to New York in February he was told the flight was full, according to the lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court. But Mutlu was allowed to...

HIZBOLLAH VICTIMS BRING HISTORIC CIVIL SUIT AGAINST MEGA-BANK May 12, 2008 For Immediate Release VICTIMS OF HIZBOLLAH MISSILE ATTACKS BRING HISTORIC CIVIL ACTION AGAINST UBS IN NEW YORK FEDERAL COURT A group of American victims of Iranian sponsored terror have filed a civil action in the United States District Court for the Southern District against the Swiss mega-bank, UBS AG. The plaintiffs, all of whom had family members injured or killed in Iranian-backed terror attacks, allege that UBS' unlawful eight year-long provision of financial services to the Islamic Republic at the time Iran was providing material support to terrorist organizations...

A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California. Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan's Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to "go 'hang out' in the bathroom" about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the "jump seat" she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said. Mutlu was traveling on a a...

Print This E-mail Link Send Letter Send Correction Groton (AP) - Connecticut's Episcopal Diocese has filed a lawsuit against the leadership of the Bishop Seabury Church, demanding it turn over control of the church property after voting to leave the national church in a dispute over theology and the appointment of a gay bishop. The Rev. Ronald Gauss was suspended from Bishop Seabury on May 3, when the diocese appointed another priest, the Rev. David Cannon, to take over. Rev. Gauss and 12 former and current church leaders were served this week with the lawsuit, which was filed in Superior...

Harold Heckle in Madrid, Spain Associated PressMay 9, 2008 Spain formally laid claim Thursday to an 1804 shipwreck that yielded a reported U.S. $500 million treasure, saying Spain has proof the vessel was Spanish. Officials demanded the return of the booty recovered last year by a U.S. deep-sea exploration firm, saying the 19th-century shipwreck at the heart of the dispute is the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes—a Spanish warship sunk by the British Navy southwest of Portugal in 1804 with more than 200 people on board. Tampa, Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration on Thursday disputed Spain's claim. In May 2007, Odyssey...

The Weather Channel did not need Doppler Radar to track this storm. It needed a lawyer. For almost two years, co-anchors Bob Stokes and Hillary Andrews seemed to make a good team on air and enjoyed good ratings. But behind the scenes, Stokes was sexually harassing Andrews and sabotaging her work on the air, her ongoing lawsuit against Stokes contends. According to Andrews' lawsuit, Stokes, 50, once a popular meteorologist at the cable network, was a serial sexual harasser. Stokes had already harassed a former co-anchor and then became sexually obsessed with Andrews when she began working at the cable...

In this Alert: 1. Court Shoots Down Bloomberg! 2. National Parks Ending Gun Ban? 3. The National Anthem Bloomberg A 3 judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has dismissed a lawsuit by the city of New York attempting to hold firearms manufacturers responsible for the costs of “gun crime” in the city. The court ruled that the suit should have been dismissed under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed by the congress in 2005. The 2-1 decision affirmed the constitutionality of that law and criticized Federal Judge Jack Weinstein for failing...

WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- Supervisors in the U.S. Secret Service exchanged e-mails with racist jokes, some of them sexual, a document filed in federal court Friday said. The filing came in a discrimination lawsuit filed in 2000 by 10 black Secret Service agents, The New York Times reported.

Victim Says Theme Park Was Negligent. ORLANDO, Fla. -- A woman beaten in an attack while waiting in line for a ride at Disney World is suing the theme park, alleging that its negligence has caused her permanent damage. Aimee Krause, of Clermont, was beaten by Victoria Walker, of Alabama, at the Mad Tea Party ride in May 2007. Krause claims in the lawsuit that security at Disney World failed to prevent the attack from occurring and did not do enough to investigate the incident. Walker was found guilty last month of battery and sentenced to 90 days in jail...

WASHINGTON - Former CIA operative Valerie Plame is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity. A federal judge dismissed Plame's lawsuit last year, saying there was no basis to bring a case. Plame's lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Vice President Dick Cheney; his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; former White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State...

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Today, a Manhattan-based federal appeals court ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against firearms manufacturers by the City of New York that sought to hold the manufacturers responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms. Court Decision Judge Robert J. Miner, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals, held the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, enacted in 2005, is constitutional and that Brooklyn, NY, federal court judge Jack B. Weinstein misinterpreted the law by not dismissing the case. “We think Congress clearly intended to protect from vicarious liability members of the firearms industry who engage...

In the community of Shady Grove Woods, trees are becoming more and more scarce. Residents and other anti-Intercounty Connector activists marched through the neighborhood on Saturday, pointing out the trees that were cut down to make way for the six-lane highway. ‘‘It’s just that we didn’t have a say in it in so many ways and we’re not talking about a two-lane road, we’re talking about a major highway running through here,” resident Sam Chim said of the ICC. ‘‘We have a lot of nice, private woods back here and now we’re going to have a highway running through instead....

Protest groups sue in Denver Groups aiming to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Denver have filed a lawsuit, claiming the Secret Service and city are impeding free speech. The suit, brought Friday to U.S. District Court, claims the Secret Service and city of Denver are thwarting many groups' plans to hold demonstrations at the August political convention by delaying security and permit regulations, The New York Times reported Saturday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado reportedly is representing 12 groups involved in the legal action. As the convention approaches, groups are putting pressure on the court to...

DOCUMENTS AT PAULVCLINTON.COM NOTE: thanks to caller Shannon for finally raising the issue. Unfortunately, Rush gave an answer that is gibberish. I'll give my comments after you read the transcript. First, however, let's go back in time to last year. A FReeper posted an old story of David Rosen being indicted, but the headline did not reflect that it was from the FR archives. Drudge posted it on his website and Rush picked it up, reading the story as if it were news. Drudge quickly dropped it from his site (I'll go find the screen shot), and Rush has...

PHOENIX — A Tennessee couple who lost their son in Iraq want an Arizona merchant to pay more than $40 billion in damages to survivors of soldiers whose names are on the anti-war shirts he is selling online.

The ACLU of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver to ensure that protesters are within "sight and sound" of delegates attending the Democratic National Convention this August. "Ultimately, it's the federal courts that are sort of the last resort protectors of constitutional rights," Mark Silverstein, the ACLU's legal director, said today. "It's been the federal courts that are the ones to say law enforcement has not struck the proper balance here between security concerns and citizens' fundamental First Amendment rights," he said. Silverstein said the city is dragging its feet...

The Senate has unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen, eligible to be president of the United States. That is the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, then under U.S. jurisdiction. The bad news is that the nonbinding Senate resolution passed Wednesday night is simply an opinion that has little bearing on an arcane constitutional debate that has preoccupied legal scholars for many weeks.

Can you sue a snakeoil salesman? Al Gore may be facing a potential lawsuit over Global Warming according to the British newspaper, the Telegraph. The medicine peddlers used a number of tricks and stunts. The larger traveling shows, employing advance men to herald their arrival, entered town with circus-like fanfare, typically with a band leading the procession of wagons. Skits and other diversions were used to attract audiences, who eventually were treated to the "Lecture" (which, when medicine shows expanded into radio, became the commercial). Assistants who moved through the crowds were often garbed as Quakers to lend an air...

DETROIT -- Newly released text messages in the City Hall scandal surrounding Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick show that the mayor had handpicked and promoted the head of Internal Affairs, the guy who would be in charge of investigating him if corruption charges ever surfaced.

A posh pet shop that has peddled dogs to Paris and Britney is headed to court over some sick puppies. A fraud and false advertising lawsuit against Pets of Bel Air claims animals the store said were from private breeders actually came from puppy mills and were less than healthy and hardy.

Priya Venkatesan ‘90, a former Writing 5 lecturer and research associate at Dartmouth Medical School, is threatening to name seven of her former students in a potential civil rights lawsuit against the College, DMS and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Venkatesan announced Friday. Venkatesan also plans to write an autobiographical book that will include details of her experience at Dartmouth and name the seven students in question, all of whom were members of her Winter term Writing 5 class in 2008, she said.

N.J. Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against LifeLock Alleging Deceptive Marketing Regarding Limited Level of Protection Against Identity Theft NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., March 31, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- A class action lawsuit was filed on Friday, March 28 against LifeLock, Inc. and its CEO Richard "Todd" Davis by Dr. Warren Pasternack and his wife, Susan Pasternack, on behalf of themselves as well as all other New Jersey LifeLock subscribers. The Pasternacks allege that LifeLock misled them about the limited level of identity protection the company provides, and failed to warn them about the potential adverse impact those services could have...

RESIDENTS of the Greek island of Lesbos have launched a legal case against a gay group, insisting they are the real Lesbians. Two inhabitants of the island of Lesbos along with a member of a nationalist pagan association today launched a legal case to ban the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (OLKE) from bearing the name "lesbian". Lesbos was the home of the poet Sappho, who expressed her love of other women in lyric verses written in the early sixth century BC. Lesbos residents now suffer "psychological and moral rape" from the "seizure" of their island's name by gays, said...

the scandal girl who had the New York governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned from his post – is again in the news. It is said that the New Jersey woman has filed a suit on Monday (April 28) against Joe Francis, founder of the ’Girls Gone Wild’. She claimed that Francis had exploited her name, image, photographs and videos for profit in a wrong way. Dupree’s name, images, voice, etc have been posted and written in a number of websites and ad campaigns. More than 10 million dollars is what she has filed the lawsuit for, against the damages done to...

MIAMI (AP) — The call girl linked to former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is suing the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series for more than $10 million. Ashley Alexandra Dupre filed a lawsuit Monday in Miami federal court claiming she never gave "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis permission to use her name and likeness to advertise the videos. Dupre contends she was 17 and not old enough to sign a contract when the videos were taken in 2003 in Miami Beach.

After decades of ignoring the polygamous sects of the American Southwest, state and federal officials are now cracking down on the child abuse and other illegal activity within them. Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has been convicted of being an accomplice to rape and sentenced to two five years-to-life terms. Mohave County, Arizona, charged eight others for sexual conduct with minors in 2005. In March, 2006, the federal government fined one contractor over $10,000 in child labor law violations for using FLDS boys. Washington County, Utah, prosecutor Brock Belnap is investigating deaths of children in the...

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending. But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement. Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from...

Animal Rights by: Deborah Lambert, April 24, 2008 It used to be so easy owning a pet. You were the boss, Fido was the dog. Today, if you get home late from work, he might sue you. Thanks to a new legal specialty called Animal Protection Litigation, there is a rapidly growing niche for those concerned with the rights of animal companions. Some say it’s growing because animals are no longer just “property,” but have true legal standing as “partial beneficiaries of estates, subjects of lawsuits and victims of abuse,” according to the Raleigh News and Observer. Proponents of the...

Lawyers suing Pilgrim’s Pride in Alabama said Wednesday’s roundup of undocumented employees at other company plants underscores their claims that the chicken-processing giant illegally is hiring immigrant workers to suppress wages. “Assuming that these individuals being detained are found to be in this country illegally, I think it reinforces our contention that there has been an ongoing practice of employing illegal workers at Pilgrim’s Pride,” said Jeremy Hutchinson, a Little Rock, Ark., attorney who is soliciting plaintiffs for a potential class-action suit against the company. Pilgrim’s Pride, the nation’s largest chicken company with more than 54,000 employees at 37 plants,...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A judge has upheld the issuance of Indiana license plates bearing the message "In God We Trust," dismissing a constitutional challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. Marion Superior Court Judge Gary L. Miller wrote in a 13-page opinion that the plates were comparable to standard plates issued by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and were created specifically as such by the Legislature. "Courts are not to second-guess the Indiana General Assembly when it comes to calculations of this sort," Miller wrote, contrasting the In God We Trust plates with other specialty plates that require the...

court in Wisconsin has been asked to suspend immediately a policy in the Tomah Area School District that bans Christian symbols in students' artwork, but allows Hindu, Buddhist and satanic representations. The motion was filed yesterday by the Alliance Defense Fund, which has taken on the case of a student identified by the initials A.P. The ADF launched a lawsuit on the student's behalf after a teacher refused to give him a grade on a project because his work included "John 3:16" as well as "As sign of love." The school district, however, openly acknowledged and publicized various pieces of...

The state has agreed to give 21 families of the Virginia Tech massacre $11 million in blood money to avoid lawsuits that would attempt to assign responsibility to anyone other than the lone nut job. This reflects the grievance-minded culture of the day and unscrupulous lawyers ever willing to sue businesses, institutions and private citizens over the flimsiest reasons. People are killed each day, each loss of life as painful as the next, none more financially worthy than the next, unless apparently you are related to one of the 32 dead and 24 wounded on the Blacksburg, Va., campus. Then...

SANTA FE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Premise Media is ready to challenge the unfounded copyright infringement claims asserted recently by representatives of XVIVO, LLC concerning original animation Premise Media created for the documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.....

A community college in New York has been presented with a demand letter from the American Center for Law and Justice to halt a professor's classroom practices that allegedly have damaged at least one student – so far. The letter from the ACLJ targets Suffolk County Community College and will be the prelude to a federal lawsuit if the issue isn't resolved, the organization said. At issue is a professor's demand that students "change their own personal viewpoints or state that they are unsure of whether their own personal beliefs are correct" on religious issues, according to the letter. That...

COLUMBUS - Ten years ago, Ohio won the tobacco lottery. It was among 46 states to join a lawsuit accusing tobacco producers of using unfair advertising to get smokers addicted to nicotine. Smelling bankruptcy, 11 tobacco companies and industry trade groups agreed to a settlement, promising the states $260 billion in payments spread out over 25 years. Bob Taft, as the newly elected governor, convinced the state legislature to budget nearly half of Ohio's $10 billion share of the settlement for school construction projects - the state was entangled in a major lawsuit over school funding at the time -...

Washington, DC) – The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, said today it is demanding that a community college in New York end its hostility toward a Christian student who has been punished because of her religious beliefs. The ACLJ represents Gina DeLuca, a student at Suffolk County Community College (SCCC), who has received lower grades and has been labeled “closed-minded” by a professor who requires students to acknowledge the possibility that God does not exist in order to participate in a philosophy class. The ACLJ has sent a letter demanding that the school end...

Nutter defiantly signs five gun laws Council's measures appear to fly in the face of state law and legal precedent. The NRA says it will sue. By Jeff Shields Inquirer Staff Writer Mayor Nutter likened himself and City Council members yesterday to the band of rebels who formed this country as he signed five new gun-control laws that defy the state legislature and legal precedent. "Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change," Nutter said as...

A Christian law firm will appeal a ruling by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission fining a photographer who refused to take photos of a homosexual commitment ceremony.  Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jon, who co-own Elane Photography in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are both Christians. So when a lesbian couple asked them to photograph their "commitment ceremony" in Taos, the Huguenins politely refused. In response, Vanessa Willock filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission claiming the Huguenins discriminated against her because of her "sexual orientation." On Wednesday, the Commission found the Christian couple guilty of discrimination under...

Breaking: The judge in Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS has issued a motion to dismiss most of the case. CBS News confirms. Developing... > More: TVNewser has learned most of issues of the lawsuit have been dismissed. What remains is the contract dispute: whether Rather was utilized appropriately in the remaining months of his deal as a correspondent on 60 Minutes. Jim Quinn, lead counsel for CBS tells TVNewser, "We're thrilled with the results. The core of the allegations of fraud and fair dealing have been thrown out. What's left is a garden variety contract dispute." In the meantime, the...

Durham, N.C. — Attorneys for three former Duke University lacrosse players filed a motion this week asking a judge to lift a stay that keeps them from suing former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January, listing a debt of $180.3 million and David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann – as well as three other players who filed suit – as unsecured creditors, each owed $30 million. Attorneys for Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann, however, say in the April 8 filing that bankruptcy was a tactic he used to avoid a federal civil rights...

What is good for the goose evidently isn't so good for the gander when it's New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine doing the honking about New York City's congestion-pricing plan. Leading up to yesterday's deadline for New York state lawmakers to vote on the proposal, Corzine weighed in last week by saying that he was dismayed by the scheme and would bring suit against New York if it went ahead with the proposal to charge motorists $8 and truckers $21 to drive into the most heavily trafficked parts of Manhattan; the N.J. governor was angry as well that the fees...

Note to American readers: Here's what Canadians have to put up with. Covet your freedom of speech - it's rare, even in the so-called 'free world'. That self-serving legal maladroit Richard Warman is making waves again with his so-called Maximum Disruption Campaign. The latest has the anti-rightwing, anti-conservative, anti-freedom of speech legal beagle launching an all-out attack against a number of conservative writers and internet forums.

Do you smoke? Well, you better be careful where. I don't smoke, and I don't like the smell, but what some people are doing to smokers makes me say give me a break. For the last 12 years, Galila Huff has owned Caffé la Fenicé, a restaurant serving Italian food on the Upper West Side of New York City. Smoking there is forbidden. New York state bans it in all restaurants and bars. Huff's apartment is a few blocks away at The Ansonia, an ornate turn-of-the-century building that both Babe Ruth and Arturo Toscanini once called home. Huff lives there...