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High court sets oral arguments in campaign lawsuit
Court Center |
2011/07/16 05:21
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A conservative group fighting campaign finance rules in Montana says in a recent filing that it agrees disclosure laws can apply to corporate speech, but Western Tradition Partnership argues it isn't subject to current disclosure laws because its attack mailers fall outside the definition of "electioneering."
The Montana Supreme Court has set oral arguments for September in the state's challenge to a district court decision that tossed out the outright ban on corporate political spending.
Western Tradition Partnership first filed the lawsuit last year piggybacking on the high-profile Citizen's United case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The group aims to undo Montana's century-old restriction on corporate political spending.
Western Tradition is separately fighting a decision that it failed to report campaign expenditures. The group argues its activities are not intended to influence elections.
In a brief filed earlier this month with the Supreme Court on the main case fighting the ban corporate campaign spending, WTP made it clear it believes campaign finance regulation is OK.
"If the State is truly concerned with accountability, the state has other means at its disposal, such as disclosure laws, to make sure that people know who is speaking," Western Tradition argued in the brief. "It is inappropriate, and indeed, unconstitutional, to completely outlaw corporate political speech." |
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Court documents shed light on Bulger travels
Court Center |
2011/06/23 05:39
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Newly-unsealed court documents detail some of the early travels of James "Whitey" Bulger and his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig following Bulger's 1995 indictment.
In an affidavit dated April 25, 1997, then-FBI Special Agent Charles Gianturco writes that Bulger and Greig spent time in New York on Long Island and in Grand Isle, La., in 1995 and 1996.
According to the affidavit, Bulger and Greig checked into a hotel under the names "Mr. and Mrs. Tom Baxter" in the fall of 1995, and that Bulger had also used that name when he befriended a man in neighboring Selden told him he was a merchant seaman.
The criminal complaint against Grieg was unsealed Thursday in Boston following the arrests of Bulger and Grieg in Santa Monica, Calif. It charges Greig with harboring and concealing Bulger. |
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Court rules against Anna Nicole Smith's estate
Court Center |
2011/06/22 05:39
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The Supreme Court has ruled against the estate of Anna Nicole Smith in its quest to capture some of the $1.6 billion estate left behind by her late Texas billionaire husband.
The high court on Thursday ruled that a bankruptcy court's decision to give the now-deceased Playmate $475 million from the estate of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall was decided incorrectly.
Smith and Marshall were wed in 1994, and he died the next year.
His will left his estate to his son, E. Pierce Marshall, and nothing to Smith. A California bankruptcy court awarded Smith part of the estate, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal said that a bankruptcy court could not make a decision on an issue outside of bankruptcy law. |
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Ohio judge says Ford must pay dealers $2B
Court Center |
2011/06/11 06:54
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Ford Motor Co. must pay nearly $2 billion in damages to thousands of dealerships in a 2002 class-action lawsuit that said the automaker violated dealer agreements, an Ohio judge ruled Friday.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan in Cleveland issued the ruling based on a Feb. 11 jury determination that the company overcharged dealers for commercial trucks over an 11-year period.
The $2 billion award covers more than 3,000 dealerships and about 474,000 trucks. It includes a judgment of about $781 million and about $1.2 billion in interest.
"In awarding the dealers the amount of money they overpaid for trucks, the jury verdict places ... the dealers in the financial position contemplated by the terms of the contract," said James Lowe, a Cleveland attorney for Westgate Ford Truck Sales Inc., a dealership in Youngstown that represents the class.
Ford's annual report, filed on Feb. 28, says the class action included all dealers who purchased a 600?series or higher truck from Ford from 1987 to 1997. It says the lawsuit accused the automaker of failing to reveal that price concessions were given to some dealers. |
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US appeals court overturns release of detainee
Court Center |
2011/06/11 06:54
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A Yemeni detainee ordered to be freed from Guantanamo Bay has to stay now that a U.S. appeals court has overturned his release.
The U.S Court of Appeals in Washington says circumstantial evidence of terrorist ties can be enough to keep a prisoner like Hussain Salem Mohammad Almerfedi at the U.S. naval prison in Cuba.
Almerfedi was captured in Iran after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and eventually transferred to U.S. authorities through Afghanistan. Government attorneys argue he was staying at an al-Qaida-affiliated guesthouse, based on the testimony of another Guantanamo detainee. Almerfedi denied it, and a lower court judge found the testimony against him unreliable and ordered him released.
But the appeals court said the judge erred in finding the testimony unreliable and found it was likely Almerfedi was part of al-Qaida. |
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Court says Microsoft must pay in patent case
Court Center |
2011/06/10 06:55
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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Microsoft Corp. must pay a $290 million judgment awarded to a small Toronto software company for infringing on one of its patents inside its popular Microsoft Word program.
The high court unanimously refused to throw out the judgment against the world's largest software maker.
Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool used in Microsoft Word. The technology in question gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way to edit XML, which is computer code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document's contents.
The lower courts say Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft willfully infringed on the patent, and ordered the world's largest software maker to pay i4i $290 million and stop selling versions of Word containing the infringing technology.
Microsoft wanted the multimillion dollar judgment against it erased because it claims a judge used the wrong standard in instructing the jury that came up with the award.
The software company said a jury should determine a patent's validity by a "preponderance" of the evidence instead of the more heightened "clear and convincing" evidence standard instructed by the judge.
The Supreme Court said the "clear and convincing" standard was the correct one.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the court's opinion, said the courts have interpreted the law the same way for 30 years. During this period, Congress has often amended the patent law, she said. |
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China rights lawyer resurfaces after detention
Court Center |
2011/04/27 16:20
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China has released a crusading rights lawyer who was detained more than two months ago in a massive security crackdown aimed at preventing any Middle East-inspired unrest. Teng Biao returned home Friday afternoon but it was not convenient for him to speak with the media, his wife Wang Ling said. She declined to comment on his physical or mental well-being. Other lawyers and activists released after similar detentions have also declined to speak to the media, perhaps as a condition of their release. China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong rights advocacy group, said earlier that Teng disappeared Feb. 19 and that officers searched his home and seized two computers, a printer, articles, books, DVDs and photos of another rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng. A law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, Teng was among dozens of well-known lawyers and activists across China who have vanished, been interrogated or criminally detained for subversion as China's authoritarian government, apparently unnerved by events in the Middle East and North Africa, has moved to squelch dissent. |
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