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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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Court denies appeal over inmate's long sentence
Court Center |
2011/04/19 16:02
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The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a convicted insurance swindler who is protesting his 835-year prison term.
The court did not comment Monday in turning away a plea from Sholam Weiss for his release from prison and return to Austria, where he was arrested after he fled the United States during his criminal trial in Orlando, Fla. Weiss is in prison for his role in the collapse of a life insurance company in the 1990s that cost thousands of people their life savings.
He still may be able to appeal his conviction and sentence, even though an appeals court had earlier ruled that he forfeited his appeal rights when he became a fugitive.
A judge cut 10 years from Weiss' sentence when Austria returned him to the U.S.
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Utah court rejects appeal from polygamous sect
Court Center |
2010/08/30 10:01
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Utah's Supreme Court has rejected a petition from members of a southern Utah-based polygamous sect seeking a reversal of changes made to its communal land trust. In a ruling issued Friday, justices say members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints waited too long to challenge the state's intervention in the United Effort Plan Trust. Valued at $110 million, the trust holds the property in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., the twin border towns where most church members live. Utah seized the trust in 2005 after allegations of mismanagement by church leaders. A court-appointed accountant has since converted the trust into a secular entity. FLDS members consider state control of the UEP a violation of their religious rights.
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NY man gets 19 years to life in wife's poisoning
Court Center |
2010/07/20 15:51
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| A New York man who admitted killing his wife by lacing her coffee with cyanide has been sentenced to 19 years to life in prison. David Steeves of Center Moriches pleaded guilty in June to second-degree murder in the death of 41-year-old Maureen Steeves. An autopsy found the woman was killed by potassium cyanide poisoning. Prosecutors say her husband had laced her coffee with the lethal substance. Defense attorney Craig McElwee said the 45-year-old Steeves bought the cyanide to kill himself but "chickened out" and gave it to his wife instead. Steeves pleaded guilty after prosecutors assured him that his sons would not be in court for the sentencing. The boys, ages 17 and 15, wrote letters to the judge, saying their father deserved no mercy. |
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