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NY court: Judge can't block $18B Chevron judgment
Topics in Legal News |
2012/01/27 09:10
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A judge overstepped his authority when he tried to ban enforcement around the world of an $18 billion judgment against Chevron Inc. for environmental damage in Ecuador, a federal appeals court said Thursday.
The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals explained why it lifted the ban last year and blocked a judge from staging a trial to decide if the judgment was obtained fairly.
It said the judge has authority to block collection if Ecuadorean plaintiffs move against Chevron in New York, but law does not give him authority "to dictate to the entire world which judgments are entitled to respect and which countries' courts are to be treated as international pariahs."
The judgment came last February after nearly two decades of litigation that stemmed from the poisoning of land in the Ecuadorean rainforest while the oil company Texaco was operating an oil consortium from 1972 to 1990 in the Amazon. Texaco became a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron in 2001.
Chevron obtained an order from U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in March blocking Ecuadorean plaintiffs from trying to collect the $18 billion until he could stage a trial to determine whether the judgment was fraudulently obtained.
The Ecuadorean plaintiffs appealed Kaplan's ruling to the 2nd Circuit. The appeals court heard oral arguments and then issued an order in September lifting Kaplan's block on collection efforts. On Thursday, it went a step further, tossing out the portion of Chevron's challenge to the judgment that sought to block its enforcement anywhere in the world. |
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'Barefoot Bandit' to be sentenced in federal court
Headline Legal News |
2012/01/27 09:10
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"Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in a Seattle federal courtroom for his two-year international crime spree of break-ins and boat and plane thefts.
The 20-year-old pleaded guilty last month to his state crimes and was sentenced to seven years.
Federal prosecutors have asked for six-and-a-half years to be served while he serves the state time. Harris-Moore's attorneys want less than six years.
Authorities say he flew a plane stolen in Washington to the San Juan Islands; stole a pistol in British Columbia and took a plane from Idaho to Washington; stole a boat in southwestern Washington to go to Oregon; and took a plane in Indiana and flew to the Bahamas, where was arrested in 2010.
He committed several of the crimes without wearing shoes. |
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Hustler targeted for printing photos of dead woman
Legal Business |
2012/01/26 12:42
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Hustler Magazine argued Wednesday in a federal appeals court that its decision to publish nude photos of a model months after she was killed by her wrestler husband was protected by the First Amendment because she was a newsworthy figure.
The family of Nancy Toffolini Benoit has waged a legal battle against the pornographic magazine since it published the photos after she and her son were killed in 2007 by wrestler Chris Benoit. Her family said she never gave the magazine permission to print the photos.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June 2009 that a notorious death doesn't give publishers a blank check to publish any images they wish. The case went to trial, and a jury in June 2011 voted to slap Hustler Magazine with $19.6 million in punitive damages for running the photos. A federal judge soon reduced that award to $250,000 to abide by a Georgia law capping damages.
The debate before the court on Wednesday was not only whether to reinstate the jury's eye-popping verdict, but also whether the case should have even gone to trial.
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In Vt., an attorney general's losses raise doubts
Attorney News |
2012/01/25 09:47
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The first was Vermont's campaign finance law setting the lowest contribution limits in the country — shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The same fate befell the state's attempt to restrict drug company efforts to collect data on doctors' prescribing habits. On a 6-3 vote, the justices said Vermont's law was an unconstitutional infringement on free speech by drug and data collecting companies.
Now, in yet another case that has garnered national attention, the office of Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell has suffered a stinging defeat, this time in a federal trial over the state's bid to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Some observers are starting to see a pattern — one in which Sorrell and his team have gone to the legal big leagues three times and fallen flat on each attempt.
"The state now has sort of a reputation in the 2nd Circuit and the Supreme Court of not having their act together," said Patrick Parenteau, a former state commissioner of environmental conservation who is now a professor at Vermont Law School. |
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US Supreme Court blocks Calif. slaughterhouse law
Topics in Legal News |
2012/01/24 09:19
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The Supreme Court on Monday overturned a California law that would require euthanizing downed livestock at federally inspected slaughterhouses to keep the meat out of the nation's food system.
California strengthened regulations against slaughtering so-called "downer" animals after the 2008 release of an undercover Humane Society of the United States video showed workers abusing cows at a slaughterhouse.
In a widely expected decision, the high court ruled that the state's 2009 law was blocked from going into effect by federal law administered by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Federal law "precludes California's effort ... to impose new rules, beyond any the FSIS has chosen to adopt, on what a slaughterhouse must do with a pig that becomes non-ambulatory during the production process," said Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the court's unanimous opinion.
Under California law, the ban on buying, selling and slaughtering of downer cattle also extended to pigs, sheep and goats.
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