Free Republic

Anthony Lawrence and Shamel King are charged with dealing drugs - but the city doled out $157,500 to them in legal settlements. Mayor Bloomberg Sunday defended city bureaucrats who handed out half a million bucks to members of a violent Brooklyn drug gang who sued the Police Department. "The city gets sued 200 times a week," Bloomberg told the Daily News. "We take as many cases to trial as we possibly can, but we would [go] bankrupt if we tried to defend every one of them." The mayor was reacting to a front-page News exclusive that exposed a city practice...

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

As yet more proof that Andree Mcleod not only has no respect for Alaskan law, nor the taxpayers wallets, this loser of human has now filed her sixth attempt to throw mud at Sarah to see if she can get anything to stick. To say hell hath no fury may be an understatement when it comes to this one... You might also recall Ms. Mcleod (photo to left) was also the same wacko that appointed herself the state government employees fashion facist... complaining there was just "too much cleavage" being shown by the staffers. Just a week before she walks...

Last month, the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University, released "Science Suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA," a report which accuses the media "of ignoring the extensive research of respected scientists and major health agencies in the United States and around the world, which found BPA was not only safe but played an important role in ensuring food safety."   It also confirms what countless previous studies have said; BPA is safe. If you're unfamiliar with Bisphenol A (BPA), it is a chemical used to make lightweight, versatile, durable, high-performance plastics.  It's...

Alexa Longueira Suffers Deep Cuts, Bruises After Landing In Raw Sewage, Blames DEP For Leaving Hole Unattended: Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness. She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer. "It was just really gross and it...

We have seen quite a bit of Orly Taitz - derived material here on FR. The Taitz "crusade" was (as nearly as I can tell) based on original assertions by Phillip Berg -a Hillary Clinton supporter- about the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama for presidential office. Disagreements between the Berg and the Taitz "camps" have come to a boil recently, and a lawsuit has been filed in Federal District Court by Mr. Berg and others. The link provided shows the details of the 85 (?) page complaint for any who may be interested.

Being dragged from a car by Calgary police brought back memories for a Chechen refugee of the civil war in which he lost both legs, a lawsuit says. The $350,000 claim, filed by Calgary resident Suleyman Salamov, alleges cops even broke one of his artificial legs before letting him go without even a charge. Salamov's lawsuit says he was a passenger in a car on Feb. 26, 2008, when it was pulled over and the driver arrested. Police stopped the vehicle being driven by Elcha Khazayev, smashed the driver's side window and removed him from the car, the claim says....

QUEBEC, April 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter. The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting "inappropriate pictures of herself" online. The girl's father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class' graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do...

If you were hit with an overdraft fee from Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) (or one of the banks it acquired) between 2000 and 2007, you may be in for a little cash. Bank of America recently settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged it (and by extension, Fleet Bank, LaSalle Bank and U.S. Trust Company, which it acquired during that period) changed the posting order of transactions and embarked on other activities in order to increase the revenue it received from non-sufficient funds fees, overdraft fees and similar charges. The lawsuit, which was settled for $35 million, also alleged that the...

Washington, D.C. (Vocus/PRWEB ) January 15, 2009 -- The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom said today that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard University Law School professor tapped by President-elect Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has a secret aim to push a radical animal-rights agenda in the White House. Sunstein supports outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits, and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption. In a 2007 speech at Harvard University, Sunstein argued in favor of entirely "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating." He also proposed: "We ought...

A former flight attendant for Continental Airlines who was fired for inappropriate behavior on a flight in 2002 has lost an attempt to sue the company for age discrimination. In a ruling released Monday, a state appeals court upheld a lower court ruling dismissing the lawsuit filed by Melissa Mersmann and ordering her to pay $2,500 in attorneys' fees to Continental. The lawsuit stemmed from events in early 2002, when Mersmann was fired for her conduct during a Feb. 17 flight from Aruba to Newark. In court filings, the company claimed Mersmann "as a result of being intoxicated, engaged in...

Even as the financial crisis has businesses, consumers and governments pinching pennies, litigation costs in America continue to swell. The direct costs of tort litigation reached $247 billion in 2006, and contract disputes cost many billions more. As a percentage of GDP, Germany spends only half as much on litigation as does the U.S., and France and the United Kingdom spend roughly one-third what we do. While some litigation is necessary, too many American lawsuits are filed by plaintiffs' attorneys who know they have no legal merit, but who hope to extract a settlement payment from the targeted defendant anyway....

The Ivory Bench by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 22, 2008 It turns out that another modern-day concept bizarre to some of us old-timers—that of judges acting as de facto school boards—also, like so many other exotic trends, has its roots in academia. “Judges commissioned studies when they could not find guidance on school funding issues in their state constitutions,” Wake Forest political scientist John Dinan told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute on October 15. “Judges are looking for a rationale on school finance in academic studies.” Dinan is the author of the book, The American State Constitutional Tradition....

Is Credit Default Swap Litigation the Next Big Thing? Robin Sparkman 10-03-2008 It seems that hardly a day goes by anymore without someone predicting with utmost confidence that boom times for litigators are just over the horizon. Thursday's prognostication, courtesy of a media lunch hosted Wednesday by Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker: It's going to be all about the credit swaps. Robert Claassen, chair of the firm's derivatives group, and Keith Miller, chair of the credit crisis group, told reporters that the banking industry's implosion means that banks with a piece of the $43 trillion market in these unregulated instruments...

We have become a nation of second-guessing Hamlets. Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of "thinking too precisely." His poor Danish prince lost "the name of action" as he dithered and sighed that "conscience does make cowards of us all." With gas above $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the U.S. has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil — and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks...

At NRO, Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses our society as being in a chronic state of hesitation, a nation of “Jittery Hamlets:” The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn’t. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile, a less fussy and more confident world abroad drills and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams, and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted. There is an inverse side to all this dithering: the rush to...

WAYNE, N.J. — A New Jersey couple, whose son was struck in the chest with a line drive, is planning to sue the maker of a metal baseball bat used in the game. An attorney says Domalewski will need millions of dollars worth of medical care for the rest of his life.

Plaintiffs have filed approximately two private lawsuits a day related to subprime mortgages in the US this year, setting case volumes on course to exceed levels not seen since the aftermath of the savings-and-loan ­crisis, a study has found. During the first quarter of this year, 170 new civil cases were filed in federal courts, approaching the 181 filings made during the final six months of 2007, according to a review by Navigant Consulting, published on Wednesday. They were overwhelmingly dominated by class-action lawsuits, which accounted for 76 per cent of new cases. “Like the credit crunch itself, the litigation...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- An energy company has agreed to pay residents of a polluted waterfront neighborhood and to clean up the massive contamination that turned the soil under their homes blue, lawyers for the neighbors said Wednesday, though the company said a deal had not been reached. Attorneys Robert McConnell and Mark Roberts, who represent nearly 100 property owners, told The Associated Press they reached a tentative settlement with Southern Union Co., but said the terms were sealed so they would not discuss details. Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Houston-based Southern Union, said the case had not been resolved. The...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Hispanic homeowner sued Lehman Brothers Bank on Thursday, accusing the lender of charging minority mortgage applicants higher fees and interest rates than white customers. Pedro Rivas, who described himself as a Latino homeowner living in Pecoima, California, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, charging the wholly owned unit of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc with implementing a policy that causes "minority borrowers to pay subjective fees such as yield spread premiums and other mortgage-related finance charges at higher rates than similarly situated non-minority borrowers." Rivas said Lehman's "pattern of discrimination is not the result...

A western Pennsylvania couple has sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home that appear on the Web site's "Street View" feature violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering. **snip** The couple's attorney, Dennis Moskal, said that is not the point. He said the Borings' privacy was invaded when the Google vehicle allegedly drove onto their property. Removing the image does not undo that damage — nor will it deter the company from doing the same thing in the future, he said. "Isn't litigation the only way to change a big business' conduct with the public?"...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court tossed out an $800 billion class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies on Thursday brought by smokers who said they were deceived into believing "light" cigarettes were healthier. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the smokers could not sue collectively. The decision means each individual smoker must prove that she or he had selected the product for perceived health benefits. The smokers had sued the tobacco companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, contending they were misled by the industry's marketing and branding efforts into believing "light" cigarettes...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The term "freedom's watch" is not distinctive enough to warrant a lawsuit over trademark infringement, a federal judge has ruled in a case that pitted a one-time hero of conservatives against former aides and financial backers of President Bush. Larry Klayman, who persistently took President Clinton and his administration to court a decade ago, lost his fight against a well- financed group that is planning to be a major presence in this year's elections and beyond. The group, called Freedom's Watch, is positioning itself as the conservative alternative to liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org and has recently...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - She was an ambitious lawyer and TV commentator who starting going to Atlantic City casinos to relax, and soon was getting high-roller treatment that included limousines whisking her to the resort. Arelia Margarita Taveras says she was even allowed to bring her dog, Sasha, to the blackjack tables, sitting in her purse. But her gambling spun out of control: She said she would go days at a time at the tables, not eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn't have to leave. She says her losses totaled nearly $1 million....

SMYRNA, Ga., Dec. 5 — In Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign to remove illegal guns from New York City’s streets, he sued 27 out-of-state gun dealerships last year over what he said were illegal sales. Most agreed to settle, while others chose to take their chances in court. But here, in this town of 48,000 where Julia Roberts was born, the fight has become deeply personal. Jay Wallace, who owns Adventure Outdoors, one of the major gun distributors in the area and a defendant in one of the city’s lawsuits, is countersuing Mr. Bloomberg, alleging fraud, slander and libel. A...

Mayor Phil Mitman said he grew up sledding in Nevin Park and later watched his children do the same. But we live in such a litigious society that a municipality's primary job today is to find ways to avoid lawsuits, he said. Anyone who headed to Hackett or Nevin parks this week for the season's first snow was greeted by signs banning sledding, tubing, skiing and snowboarding at the risk of a $300 fine. "If people wouldn't sue the city, we wouldn't have to do this," Mitman said Wednesday. "Those signs protect the city of Easton in a court of...

JACKSON, Miss. - An attorney has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe a judge and is assisting federal prosecutors in a case involving one of the nation's wealthiest trial lawyers, according to court documents. Timothy Balducci entered the plea late Tuesday after initially pleading not guilty. According to court papers, Balducci was accused of delivering $40,000 to a judge at the behest of prominent attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs for a favorable ruling in a civil case. The case before the judge involved a dispute between Scruggs and other lawyers over $26.5 million in fees from a mass settlement of lawsuits...

Litigation in America by: Alan Moretti "There are nutty judges and nutty juries out there. And when you get them in the same room, you sometimes come up with nutty verdicts." - Coale A frivolous lawsuit in America's distant past was rare. The mighty courts of our land prosecuted criminals, deviants and "evil doers" alike. Yet somewhere in our nation's developing prosperity the court's attention was diverted and started going after us, the law abiding citizens of America. The courts don't have to attack us directly as indivuals, but rather by upsetting our country's free market economy. It appears clearer...

Litigation in America by: Alan Moretti "There are nutty judges and nutty juries out there. And when you get them in the same room, you sometimes come up with nutty verdicts." - Coale A frivolous lawsuit in America's distant past was rare. The mighty courts of our land prosecuted criminals, deviants and "evil doers" alike. Yet somewhere in our nation's developing prosperity the court's attention was diverted and started going after us, the law abiding citizens of America. The courts don't have to attack us directly as indivuals, but rather by upsetting our country's free market economy. It appears clearer...

But the underlying causes of these monster fires aren't as well understood. Why do they keep happening at such intensity? One reason is that for years, groups that literally make a living by obstructing government efforts to manage forests have filed myriad lawsuits intended to delay, stall or stop anything resembling science. They seek to prevent the federal government from implementing balanced efforts to manage the land, including efforts to thin forests and brushland to help prevent catastrophic wildfire. Just last year in Southern California, an environmental advocacy organization filed a lawsuit against reasonable forest management impacting more than 3.5...

Picture this: A dramatic rise in attacks on minorities by white supremacist skinhead and similar groups occurs. Members of the White Aryan Resistance, the Aryan Brethren Church and others come out of the woodwork and begin to appear on television news venues, articulate and very dapper as they play the role of apologists for the former, but always with a hint of validation and justification as they disavow the escalating violence. For some unfathomable reason, they are soft-balled by the media, legitimizing them further with each passing day. Would this scenario disturb you? In this space last week, I excoriated...

A fight is brewing in New York between some families of September 11 victims and the city over where to hold an annual memorial ceremony after officials said the World Trade Center site was an unsafe venue. The memorial has been held every year at Ground Zero but this year construction is taking place and city officials ruled it unsafe. They have relocated the ceremony to a nearby park.

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — A northern Idaho woman says a funeral home cremated her husband without permission and in the process destroyed an artificial leg worth more than $7,000. DeeDee Strimas also claims in a lawsuit that English Funeral Chapels & Crematory gave her the cremated remains of someone other than her husband. She is suing for the value of the leg and for damages of more than $10,000 for "emotional and physical distress." She suffers from "headaches, depression, insomnia accompanied by nightmares, and fear that the remains are not those of her late husband," her lawsuit says. John Strimas...

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club. Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He...

WASHINGTON - A judge had to leave the courtroom with tears running down his face Tuesday after recalling the lost pair of trousers that led to his $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner. Administrative law judge Roy L. Pearson had argued earlier in his opening statement that he is acting in the interest of all city residents against poor business practices. Defense attorneys called his claim "outlandish." He originally sued Custom Cleaners for about $65 million under the District of Columbia consumer protection act and almost $2 million in common law claims. He is no longer seeking damages related...

The ACLU sues an American company for helping the war effort. President Bush must envy Franklin Roosevelt. Although he faced a difficult two-front war in Asia and Europe, after Pearl Harbor Roosevelt led a united nation.

The case of a jet-setting tuberculosis patient might soon shift from the hospital wards to the courts. The patient, Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta personal injury attorney, could sue the federal government for being quarantined on the basis of federal regulations that some scholars see as unconstitutional. Or Speaker could be sued by fellow airline passengers, especially if any caught the disease from him — which some legal scholars say is much more likely. "He may be personally liable if someone contracts TB" from being near him on his recent flights to and from Europe, said Peter Jacobson, a University of...

A federal judge said yesterday that the city of San Diego must pay more than $900,000 in legal fees to the attorney for Philip Paulson, the atheist who sued over the presence of the Mount Soledad cross on city land. U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. ordered that the city pay lawyer James McElroy $962,673.28 for his work on the case over the past four years. Thompson is the same judge who ruled in 1991 that the cross on city land violated the state constitution's ban on government preference for religions – a ruling that touched off an epic legal...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A nutrition advocacy group sued Burger King Holdings Inc. on Wednesday over the hamburger chain's use of frying oil that contains artery-clogging trans fats. In court papers filed in Washington, D.C. superior court, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said Burger King is the only leading restaurant chain that has not yet committed to eliminating trans fats from its menu. "Burger King not only sells food cooked with this harmful ingredient, it does so without warning its customers about life-threatening consequences," the suit said. "Consumers have no way to guard against the risk of...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- An attorney for eight homosexual couples told the Connecticut Supreme Court yesterday that their constitutional rights have been violated by the state's refusal to grant them marriage licenses. Connecticut was the first state to allow civil unions without court pressure, but the couples say that's not enough. They want the court to rule that the state's marriage law is unconstitutional because it applies only to heterosexual couples, effectively denying homosexual couples the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage. "What is denied to these families is something that goes to the heart of equal protection, which...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (May 9) - The owner of an upscale steakhouse in Louisville said he asked O.J. Simpson to leave his restaurant the night before the Kentucky Derby because he is sickened by the attention Simpson still attracts. "I didn't want to serve him because of my convictions of what he's done to those families," Jeff Ruby said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "The way he continues to torture the lives of those families ... with his behavior, attitude and conduct." Simpson, an NFL Hall of Famer and Heisman Trophy winner, was found innocent in 1995 of killing his ex-wife,...

Is somebody getting taken to the cleaners? A $10 dry cleaning bill for a pair of trousers has ballooned into a $67 million civil lawsuit. Plaintiff Roy Pearson, a judge in Washington, D.C., says in court papers that he's been through the ringer over a lost pair of prized pants he wanted to wear on his first day on the bench. He says in court papers that he has endured "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort." He says he was unable to wear that favorite suit on his first day of work. He's suing for 10 years of weekend car rentals...

A line of greeting cards targeting women who have had an abortion stirred up trouble when an apparent typo reminded some recipients of one of the more gruesome aspects of certain abortion procedures. The errant line on one of the “e-cards” designed by a California group called “Exhale” was “May you find piece after your abortion.” “This typo has conjured up images of dismembered fetuses,” said Howard Cutter, CEO of Exhale. “This is not the message we wanted to convey. We’re trying to bring calm and peace to women who have made the difficult decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.”...

Six imams who are suing an airline and an airport for removing them from a flight also have aimed the lawsuit at passengers who the imams believe reported some of their activities. The suit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis names as defendants "John Does" who "contacted US Airways to report the alleged suspicious behavior" of the imams before the Nov. 20 flight -- an inclusion some lawyers, who are not connected to the litigation, say will have a "chilling effect" on airline security. "If such a suit could proceed, it would have a chilling effect on...

I. Mr. Weinstein’s Cyst When historians of the future try to identify the moment that neuroscience began to transform the American legal system, they may point to a little-noticed case from the early 1990s. The case involved Herbert Weinstein, a 65-year-old ad executive who was charged with strangling his wife, Barbara, to death and then, in an effort to make the murder look like a suicide, throwing her body out the window of their 12th-floor apartment on East 72nd Street in Manhattan. Before the trial began, Weinstein’s lawyer suggested that his client should not be held responsible for his actions...

A split within the Episcopal Church has begun and is on its way to court -- something akin to "divorce court," it seems. More than 100 Episcopal parishes -- and some dioceses -- have either left the denomination or requested alternative oversight within the worldwide Anglican Communion. One of them is St. Stephen's Church in Heathsville, Va. "We left the Episcopal Church because we could no longer be under the leadership of people who have the attitude that they did about the authority of Scripture," said the Rev. Jeffrey Cerar, rector of St. Stephen's. "Starting several years ago, the Episcopal...

Mostafa Tabatabainejad The UCLA student who was shocked repeatedly with a Taser gun in November by campus police filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles against the university. "I suffered an unprovoked act of police brutality," said Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 24, in a statement issued by his attorney. "I hope that no one else will ever have this experience at UCLA or anywhere else again." Tabatabainejad, who grew up in the Sacramento area, said his civil rights were violated in the Nov. 14 incident at the campus library that was captured on a cell phone camera and broadcast over the...

Already under fire for allegations that he promoted his paramours, former LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Berkow was accused Friday of discriminating against 11 other officers when he reorganized a key Internal Affairs division. The officers have filed suit against the Los Angeles Police Department, and accuse Berkow - who is now chief in Savannah, Ga. - of harassment and discrimination. In one lawsuit, a female officer alleges Berkow ignored her complaints that she was being harassed by co-workers because of her sexual orientation. In a separate lawsuit, six African-American and Latino officers allege Berkow removed them from a prestigious assignment...

In sharp questioning, a three-judge panel yesterday challenged arguments by federal officials seeking dismissal of a Pakistani man’s suit charging that because of his religion, race or national origin, he, like others, was held for months after 9/11 in abusive solitary confinement before being cleared of links to terrorism and deported. In the mahogany and marble splendor of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Lower Manhattan, lawyers for former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other government officials argued that the officials were entitled to immunity from the lawsuit filed by the man, Javaid Iqbal, who had been known as...

The law supposedly separates civilization from the jungle: it protects us from predators. In Putnam County, W.Va., trial lawyer greed has turned that notion on its head, twisting the law to permit predators to prey on the civilized. As a result, the 55,000 residents of this small West Virginia county will lose their only hospital later this month.