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Court rules NY town's prayer violated Constitution
Attorney News |
2012/05/17 21:57
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An upstate New York town violated the constitutional ban against favoring one religion over another by opening nearly every meeting over an 11-year span with prayers that stressed Christianity, a federal court of appeals ruled Thursday.
In what it said was its first case testing the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled the town of Greece, a suburb of Rochester, should have made a greater effort to invite people from other faiths to open monthly meetings. The town's lawyer says it will appeal.
From 1999 through 2007, and again from January 2009 through June 2010, every meeting was opened with a Christian-oriented invocation. In 2008, after residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained, four of 12 meetings were opened by non-Christians, including a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha'i congregation.
Galloway and Stephens sued and, in 2010, a lower court ruled there was no evidence the town had intentionally excluded other faiths.
A town employee each month selected clerics or lay people by using a local published guide of churches. The guide did not include non-Christian denominations, however. The court found that religious institutions in the town of just under 100,000 people are primarily Christian, and even Galloway and Stephens testified they knew of no non-Christian places of worship there.
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German sues Macedonia in EU human rights court
Attorney News |
2012/05/16 21:58
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A German who claims the CIA illegally whisked him to a secret prison in Afghanistan appeared before Europe's human rights court Wednesday in what could be the final chapter of a case that has shed light on U.S. practices in the war on terror.
Khaled El-Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, says he was brutally interrogated at a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for more than four months after being kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, apparently mistaken for a terror suspect. He says he went on a hunger strike for 27 days and was eventually flown back to Europe and abandoned in a mountainous area in Albania.
Having failed with previous legal efforts in Germany, Macedonia and the United States, el-Masri has turned to the European Court of Human Rights as a last resort in the hope that it will declare that Macedonia breached his basic rights, said his lawyer.
"Mr. El-Masri has spent the last eight years seeking legal redress for the crimes that were committed against him," James Goldston told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "There is abundant evidence including data on CIA flights to and from (Macedonia's capital) Skopje."
Authorities in Macedonia have denied any involvement in el-Masri's alleged kidnapping and sought Wednesday to have the Strasbourg, France-based court dismiss the case. A lawyer representing the small southeast European nation argued that el-Masri was too slow in filing his initial criminal complaint in Macedonia.
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Court to decide if deportation ruling retroactive
Legal Business |
2012/05/01 10:08
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The Supreme Court will decide whether to apply retroactively its 2010 decision that immigrants have a right to be told that a guilty plea could lead to their deportation.
The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Roselva Chaidez, who was in the process of being deported when the court made that March 2010 decision.
Chaidez pleaded guilty to fraud in 2004 after falsely claiming to be a passenger in a car wreck. Authorities started deportation procedures while she was applying for U.S. citizenship in 2007.
Her lawyer never told her that her fraud conviction may lead to her deportation. Chaidez says she should be able to take advantage of the Supreme Court decision that cemented that principle. |
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Ferrero sets aside $3 million for Nutella U.S. class action
Headline Legal News |
2012/04/30 09:16
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Italian confectionery group Ferrero has agreed to set aside $3 million to settle a class-action lawsuit championed by a Californian mother after she discovered the group's Nutella chocolate spread packed more calories than jam or syrup.
Notices of class action settlements said that Ferrero USA Inc., the group's U.S. division, would pay up to $4 for every jar of Nutella bought in California since August 2009, or bought anywhere else in the United States since January 2008.
The notices posted on nutellaclassactionsettlement.com said the settlement was for $3,050,000 in total.
Ferrero USA also agreed to "modify certain marketing statements about Nutella" and to give more prominence to nutrition labels on Nutella jars, the notices said.
"Ferrero USA continues to stand by its product," a spokeswoman for Ferrero said on Sunday. "We believe that it is in the best interest of the company to resolve these matters, and have reached an agreement with the parties involved." |
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High court weighs overtime pay for drug sales reps
Court Watch |
2012/04/17 09:49
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A seemingly divided Supreme Court on Monday weighed a potentially costly challenge to the pharmaceutical industry's practice of not paying overtime to its sales representatives.
The justices questioned whether the federal law governing overtime pay should apply to the roughly 90,000 people who try to persuade doctors to prescribe certain drugs to their patients.
Many sales jobs are exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. But unlike typical salespeople who often work on commission, pharmaceutical sales representatives cannot seal a deal with doctors. Federal law, in fact, forbids any binding agreement by a doctor to prescribe a specific drug.
Two salesmen who once worked for drug maker GlaxoSmithKline filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that they were not paid for the 10 to 20 hours they worked each week on average outside the normal business day. Their jobs required them to meet with doctors in their offices, but also to attend conventions, dinners, even golf outings.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among several justices who wondered about limits on overtime opportunities if the court were to rule for the sales reps. A court filing by the industry said drug companies could be on the hook for billions of dollars in past overtime.
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