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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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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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Details emerge about hatchet, razor attacks in Missouri
Topics in Legal News |
2012/01/09 10:09
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Court documents reveal grisly details about the hatchet killing of one woman and the razor attack of another in northwest Missouri, crimes that have been connected to a Platte City man.
Quintin P. O'Dell, a 22-year-old Eagle Scout, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree assault and armed criminal action. Prosecutor Eric Zahnd said the death penalty would be considered in the Platte County Circuit Court case.
O'Dell is jailed in Platte County on a $750,000 cash-only bond. There is no record of him having an attorney, according to the prosecutor's office.
The investigation into the hatchet attack began this spring after the body of Alissa Faye Shippert, 22, was discovered. She had been attacked while fishing in the Platte Falls Conservation Area.
But O'Dell, who had worked with Shippert at a convenience store, wasn't charged in the crime until after he was questioned in the December razor attack. The victim in that incident, a 21-year-old woman, awoke in her Ferrelview apartment the morning after Christmas with her belly slashed open.
Authorities said she was unconscious and on a ventilator for several days after the attack. According to the probable cause statement, she gradually began sharing details with investigators, including that she had spent Christmas night drinking with O'Dell.
According to court documents, O'Dell was interviewed by investigators this past week and told them he called the woman Christmas night and asked if he could "hang out." She agreed and he arrived after 11 p.m. with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of tequila, a detective said in the probable cause statement. |
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Ill. lawyer wins appeal in NY trial of $2.4B fraud
Topics in Legal News |
2012/01/09 10:08
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A Chicago lawyer sentenced to seven years in prison in a $2.4 billion fraud at Refco Inc. is entitled to a new trial because of errors the judge made in dealing with the jury, a federal appeals court said Monday.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Joseph P. Collins, saying U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson erred when he failed to disclose the contents of a jury note and didn't include lawyers when he spoke with a juror accused of trying to barter his vote.
"This sequence of events deprived Collins of his right to be present at every stage of the trial. Because the deprivation was not harmless, we vacate and remand for a new trial," the appeals court wrote.
The lawyer from Winnetka, Ill., was convicted in July 2009 of conspiracy and other charges. Federal sentencing guidelines had called for 85 years in prison.
Refco was once one of the nation's largest independent commodities brokers.
The company in the mid-1990s sustained hundreds of millions of dollars of losses through losing trades and engaged in an elaborate campaign to cover them up, attracting the attention of federal authorities. Refco filed for bankruptcy in 2005, just weeks after going public and soon after revealing that a $430 million debt owed to the company by a firm controlled by former Refco CEO Phillip Bennett had been concealed. |
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Court upholds charges in 'co-sleeping' baby death
Topics in Legal News |
2012/01/08 10:09
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The Utah Court of Appeals has refused to dismiss charges against a couple accused of killing their baby in 2006 by sleeping with him — their second child to die in bed with them.
The appeals judges sided with a lower court in a pair of opinions released Friday concerning the death of 3-month-old Kayson Merrill. The infant died while in bed between his father, Trevor Merrill, and mother, Echo Nielsen, both 28, of South Jordan.
The judges said that while a state medical examiner listed the official cause of death as "undetermined," there was enough evidence that "co-sleeping" caused the baby to suffocate to put the parents on trial.
The parents, whose first child also died while sleeping with them in 2003, have been charged with child-abuse homicide and reckless endangerment. They have pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys argued there wasn't enough certainty to go to trial after the medical examiner also cited illness and low birth weight in his report.
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