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Ex-Delaware pediatrician guilty of child sex abuse
Top Legal News |
2011/06/23 18:39
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A former Delaware pediatrician who decorated his office with Disney characters and miniature amusement park rides was found guilty Thursday of sexually abusing scores of his young patients.
Earl Bradley, 58, recorded homemade videos of the abuse, said prosecutors, who presented the judge with more than 13 hours of videos showing sex crimes against more than 80 victims, most of whom were toddlers.
Superior Court Judge William Carpenter Jr. announced the verdict in business-like fashion, avoiding any personal remarks about Bradley. An indictment against Bradley initially contained 470 counts, but attorneys agreed before the trial to consolidate them into 24 counts.
Bradley was found guilty on 14 counts of first-degree rape and five counts each of second-degree assault and sexual exploitation of a child.
Bradley, who will be sentenced on Aug. 26, faces up to life in prison on each rape charge.
He showed no reaction when the verdict was announced, but some of the spectators cried.
Carpenter presided over a one-day trial in which prosecutors called two witnesses and presented the judge with an external hard drive containing the videos, recorded from December 1998 to Dec. 13, 2009. Bradley was arrested after a 2-year-old girl told her mother the doctor hurt her after an office visit, an accusation that came just days before the last video was recorded.
In a footnote to his verdict, the judge wrote that he was unable to discern the video activity for one alleged victim and there was no video for another. |
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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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Kansas court system works to improve efficiency
Headline News |
2011/06/23 05:39
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Judges and court workers have completed the data-collection part of a study aimed at making Kansas' court system more efficient.
The Wichita Eagle reported that the data will be analyzed by the National Center for State Courts. That national nonprofit group works to improve the justice system and lobbies on behalf of courts at the federal level.
The results of the $200,000 consultant study of how judges and other court workers spend their time will go to a panel that will recommend changes if they are needed.
Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss said the panel also is gathering public input on ways to improve the courts. The two initiatives are called "Project Pegasus," after the winged horse in Greek mythology.
The goal is to prevent situations like last year when courts were closed four days.
"When our budget is cut or when we don't have enough money, it is our people who suffer, they're the ones who have to get sent home," Nuss told members of the Wichita Pachyderm Club, a Republican group, this past week. "Unfortunately that also comes at the expense of Kansas citizens, because when we have no money and we have to close the courts, the citizens no longer have access to justice."
Nuss said most of the consultant study is being paid for mostly from salary and benefit savings accrued after appellate Judge Jerry Elliott died in April of last year and former Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Davis died last August. |
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2011 Chambers USA Guide Ranks 9 Greenberg Traurig Phoenix Attorneys
Press Releases |
2011/06/22 05:40
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Chambers and Partners, an annual guide featuring the leading U.S. lawyers and law firms, announced that 9 attorneys from Greenberg Traurig’s Phoenix office have been selected for inclusion in its Chambers USA 2011 guide. Chambers and Partners selects attorneys based upon thousands of interviews with practicing lawyers and with clients around the world. This stringent research and review process yields an exclusive compilation of the leading attorneys in their respective fields.
The following Greenberg Traurig Phoenix attorneys have been honored by Chambers USA in its 2011 Guide:
Brian H. Blaney - Corporate/M&A
Rebecca Lynne Burnham - Real Estate
Robert S. Kant - Corporate/M&A
Leslie Klein - Labor & Employment: Employee Benefits & Compensation
Bruce E. Macdonough - Corporate/M&A
Daniel B. Pasternak - Labor & Employment
Lawrence J. Rosenfeld - Labor & Employment
Lesa J. Storey - Real Estate
Quinn Williams - Corporate/M&A
About Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, full-service law firm with approximately 1800 attorneys serving clients from more than 30 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. In the U.S., the firm has more offices than any other among the Top 10 on The National Law Journal’s 2011 NLJ 250. In the U.K., the firm operates as Greenberg Traurig Maher LLP. Greenberg Traurig has a strategic alliance with the independent law firm, Studio Santa Maria in Milan and Rome. The firm was Chambers and Partners' USA Law Firm of the Year in 2007 and among the Top 3 in the International Law Firm of the Year at the 2009 The Lawyer Awards. For additional information, please visit http://www.gtlaw.com. |
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Casino owner cited in complaint against Ala. judge
Legal News |
2011/06/22 05:40
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A casino owner accused of buying votes in Alabama for pro-gambling legislation is cited in a judicial complaint against a former state judge, who's accused of letting a gambling lobbyist bankroll her re-election campaign while she was handling a custody dispute involving the casino owner's grandchildren.
An attorney for VictoryLand casino owner Milton McGregor said Tuesday that he did nothing wrong and the complaint filed against former District Judge Patricia Warner of Montgomery is based on errors.
"It's reckless and somebody is going to have to answer for that," defense attorney Joe Espy said Tuesday outside the federal courthouse.
The 72-year-old McGregor is in the third week of a trial where he and eight others are accused of buying and selling legislators' votes for pro-gambling legislation with campaign contributions. The legislation was designed to keep McGregor's now-closed VictoryLand casino in Shorter operating.
Late Monday afternoon, the state's Judicial Inquiry Commission filed a complaint against Warner, a Democrat who resigned unexpectedly last week less than six months into her second term. The 74-count complaint accuses Warner of judicial misconduct in several cases, including the one involving an effort by McGregor's former son-in-law to regain visitation rights with McGregor's grandchildren.
The complaint will be heard by the Alabama Court of Judiciary, which can sanction her if it finds her guilty of misconduct and impose financial penalties. A spokesman for the state pension system said Warner qualifies for state retirement benefits. The amount was not immediately available. |
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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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