Headline Legal News 2008/07/21 08:02 
Pacific Lumber Co. must revise its long-term logging plan for Humboldt County to provide adequate protection for endangered species, the California Supreme Court ruled.
In the controversial $480 million Headwaters Forest deal, state and federal governments bought 10,000 acres of old-growth redwoods and other trees from Pacific Lumber, which owns property in Humboldt County, and regulated how the company would log the remaining 220,000 acres.
The Environmental Protection and Information Center objected to the deal, as did the United Steelworkers of America and other labor and environmental groups.
Justice Moreno ruled that Pacific Lumber did not submit an identifiable Sustained Yield Plan, or a master plan for logging a large area. If the company submits a new plan, it would have to analyze the impact of logging on individual watersheds, Moreno ruled.
Also, Moreno found that the previous logging agreement improperly limited the company's obligation to mitigate the impact of old-growth logging on endangered and threatened species.
Court News 2008/07/18 07:40
A biology professor says San Jose Community College illegally fired her because a student claimed to be "offended" by her response to a question in a Human Heredity class. June Sheldon, who has a master's degree in biology, says she responded to a question about homosexuality by citing scientific research that indicates it may be related to maternal stress.
Sheldon says the student complained that Sheldon had spoken in class "about something that had no mention in the textbook," and that the student "found many parts of her lecture highly offensive and unscientific," leaving the student "horribly offended."
Be that as it may, Sheldon says, citing scientific literature in response to a question about human heredity in a human heredity class is not grounds for firing, under the college's own rules.
Sheldon says the student who filed the complaint objected to a comment she made in her class of June 21, 2007. She says that student dropped her class at 9:06 a.m. that day. The class met from 9 to 11 a.m.
Sheldon sued the seven trustees of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District, and its chancellor and vice chancellor. She is represented in Federal Court by David Hacker of Folsom.
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Law Firm News/Florida 2008/07/17 14:44
McDonald Clark was the marketing genius behind Alamo-Rent-a-Car’s glory days. When Alamo was taken over by Republic Industries in 1996, Republic entered into a new employment contract with Clark which provided for certain payments to Clark for 10 years if his contract was not renewed. Republic later changed its name to AutoNation and spun off Alamo into a separate company. When Alamo went bankrupt, AutoNation refused to make the payments.
Clark hired the attorneys at Kelley / Uustal to fight to enforce the agreement. After six years of litigation, the jury found that Clark was entitled to $1,098,800. The jury deliberated for only a few minutes after the four-day trial, which included testimony from a host of former Republic executives, including Steve Berrard and Michael Karsner.
“McDonald had a contract which was negotiated by Republic, written by Republic on Republic letterhead, and signed by Republic’s CEO, Steve Berrard,” explained John Uustal, who tried the case with his partner, Todd Falzone. “Republic tried to use Alamo’s bankruptcy as an excuse to avoid responsibility. But the jury didn’t buy it. A deal’s a deal.”
Clark’s five-year contract with Alamo included a 10-year, $100,000-a-year salary continuation benefit that would begin at the end of the contract. One year into the contract, Alamo was sold and Republic, now AutoNation, renegotiated the contract. In 2000, the contract was not renewed, and Clark began receiving his salary continuation payments. By November of 2001, however, Alamo filed bankruptcy and the payments stopped.
“AutoNation’s CEO gave Mr. Clark his word that this contract would be fully honored. But when it came time for them to make good on that promise, AutoNation turned its back,” said Falzone. “Thanks to the Judge and Jury, we had a fair trial and a just verdict.”
Mr. Clark’s claim for attorney’s fees is still pending.
Headline Legal News 2008/07/17 07:21
The Department of Justice wants to revoke the citizenship of an 86-year-old Seattle-area man, claiming he participated in a Nazi SS mobile death squad unit operating in Serbia during World War II. Prosecutors say Peter Egner was a guard in an Einsatzgruppe unit responsible for the deaths of more than 6,000 Jewish women and children at Semlin concentration camp near Belgrade.
Egner admitted serving as a guard at the camp during an interview with federal authorities in 2007. On his application for naturalization, filed in 1965, Egner claimed he was an infantry sergeant in the German army; he omitted his SS service, prosecutors say. They seek the immediate deportation of Egner, who is living in a retirement home in Bellevue
Court News 2008/07/16 07:30
The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey on Tuesday struck down two municipal ordinances that prohibited convicted sex offenders from living near schools, parks, playgrounds and day care centers. The Appellate Division ruled that New Jersey's statewide sex offender registry program, known as Megan's Law, preempted the local ordinances and provided the state and all municipalities with a uniform rehabilitation and public safety plan. The court explained:
The far-reaching scope of Megan's Law and its multilayered enforcement and monitoring mechanisms constitute a comprehensive system chosen by the Legislature to protect society from the risk of reoffense by CSOs and to provide for their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. The system is all-encompassing regarding the activities of CSOs living in the community. We conclude that the ordinances conflict with the expressed and implied intent of the Legislature to exclusively regulate this field, as a result of which the ordinances are preempted.
The court added that the ordinances, which prohibited CSOs from living within 2500 feet of a variety of locations frequented by children, had the effect of barring CSOs from upwards of two-thirds of the towns which had enacted the ordinances, and violated provisions of Megan's Law that expressly prohibited disclosing CSO information for the purposes of denying individuals housing and accommodations. AP has more.
Courts in other states have also overturned or restricted laws seeking to limit housing options for registered sex offenders. In May, the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned [opinion, a 2006 state law that prohibited sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, public park, or youth center. Last November, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously overturned a state law that prohibited registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds and other areas where children gather. Civil rights groups had criticized the law as overly strict, saying that the state's roughly 11,000 registered sex offenders would have been barred from living in almost any residential area. In February 2007 a federal judge ruled that California's Proposition 83, which prohibited California sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any place where children regularly gather, could not be applied retroactively to more than 90,000 paroled sex offenders because there was nothing in the measure to indicate that intent.
Headline Legal News 2008/07/15 07:15
The Dallas Independent School District discriminates against black children and poor children in school spending, parents and students claim in Federal Court. They say one predominantly black school is so underfunded it has bathrooms with no doors inside classrooms.
Plaintiffs, including The Coalition to Maximize Education, cite a litany of alleged racist abuses involving a $1.3 billion bond approved in 2002 and a $1.35 billion bond in 2008.
They claim DISD bond manager John Williams was fired after complaining that the DISD was re-allocation bond money from black neighborhoods to other schools.
They claim a 2002 DISD facilities study found $2.3 billion worth of work was needed, primarily in black schools, but the DISD ignored that list in its 2008 study, though those needs had not been addressed.
Maynard Jackson Junior High School has restrooms "inside many of the classrooms," the complaint states. "Many of them have no stall doors, creating an untenable privacy situation for the coeducational students."
The complaint states: "DISD's neglect of Maynard Jackson, for example, resulted in the exposure to poisonous gases in the facility. Numerous reports were given to the administration about the situation. For years there have been sewer problems at this school and in some instances raw sewage was on the front lawn of the campus. The stench was so strong that students and personnel complained."
Plaintiffs claim the DISD is continuing its racist spending policies with the $1.35 billion bond that voters approved in May, by "diverting resources away from communities that are in the most need".
It cites Roosevelt High School, South Oak Cliff High School, D.A. Hulsey Middle School and James Madison as more exampled of underfunded, dilapidated campuses.
Conditions in black school are so wretched that parents have their children bused to other schools, and the DISD uses the declining enrollment to justify cutting funding even more, parents say.
