NY court limits disclosure in old communist probe

Court Watch 2012/06/07 00:00   Bookmark and Share
New York's top court on Tuesday ordered the release of more names and records to a writer whose parents were targeted by anti-communist investigators in the New York City school system 57 years ago.

The Court of Appeals, however, is still excluding informants who were promised confidentiality. The seven judges unanimously said history may at some point overtake those promises and more completely peel back the veil of secrecy from that chapter in America's Red Scare.

"The story of the Anti-Communist Investigations, like any other that is a significant part of our past, should be told as fully and as accurately as possible, and historians are better equipped to do so when they can work from uncensored records," Judge Robert Smith wrote. "Perhaps there will be a time when the promise made ... is so ancient that its enforcement would be pointless, but that time is not yet."

Lisa Harbatkin's parents were among more than 1,100 teachers investigated from the 1930s to the 1960s. She has seen interview transcripts with names and personal information blacked out and is seeking complete documents under New York's Freedom of Information Law.

City officials opposed complete disclosure for privacy reasons, offering redacted documents unless those in question or their legal heirs agreed to disclosure. As an alternative, they offered Harbatkin complete accounts if she agreed not to publish the names, a condition she rejected.


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Report: LAPD seeks Manson family member recordings

Court Watch 2012/05/26 15:10   Bookmark and Share
Police want to review audio recordings of conversations between a Manson family member and his attorney as detectives search for information about unsolved killings.

Los Angeles detectives seeking the material are merely practicing due diligence after receiving a tip that the recordings and other items in the estate of now-deceased lawyer Bill Boyd, who once represented Charles "Tex" Watson, were becoming available, LAPD spokesman Andrew Smith said.

"This whole thing has gotten totally blown out of proportion," Smith said, commenting on a report that first appeared on KNBC-TV.

Homicide detective Dan Jenks and Lt. Yana Horvatich, who made the request, have no specific information on what might be in the recordings, but they want to examine them, Smith said.

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Court orders woman to stay away from Jeff Goldblum

Court Watch 2012/05/25 15:10   Bookmark and Share
A judge on Friday granted Jeff Goldblum a temporary restraining order against a woman who has been repeatedly ordered to stay away from the actor in recent years.

Goldblum's attorneys obtained the order against Linda Ransom, 49, after she repeatedly went to the actor's home three times this month. A previous stay-away order against Ransom from 2007 has expired and police claim she has told them that she will not stop trying to meet Goldblum unless a restraining order is in place.

The filings state Ransom has been arrested three times for violating previous restraining orders. Goldblum first alerted authorities to her in 2001 after she attended one of his acting classes and then started waiting outside his home.

"Over the past decade, I have experienced substantial emotional distress due to Ms. Ransom's continuous stalking, harassing, and threatening behavior," Goldblum wrote in a sworn court declaration.

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Court rules NY town's prayer violated Constitution

Court Watch 2012/05/18 21:47   Bookmark and Share
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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Ferrero sets aside $3 million for Nutella U.S. class action

Court Watch 2012/04/30 09:15   Bookmark and Share
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 turns down Louisiana bid on Census

Court Watch 2012/03/19 09:55   Bookmark and Share
The Supreme Court has turned down Louisiana's bid to recover the congressional seat taken from the state as a result of the 2010 Census.

The court is not commenting on its order Monday preventing the state from pursuing a lawsuit that claims the Census unfairly included undocumented immigrants in each state's population count.

Louisiana said California, Florida, Texas and other states with large populations of undocumented immigrants gained seats in the House of Representatives at the expense of Louisiana and a handful of other states. Louisiana went from 7 to 6 seats in the House based on the Census.

The lawsuit asked the court to order the federal government to re-calculate House seats based only on legal residents.
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