Sotheby's refuses to return, or has lost, a painting by the Renaissance painter known as Parmigianino, the family that owns it claims in Federal Court. The family's representative claims Sotheby's took the painting "Rest on the Flight Into Egypt," from a New York studio in 2005 "for evaluation and/or authentication," and has refused to account for it or return it, despite repeated demands.

Plaintiff Giancorrado Ulrich, of Milan, says he is sole representative of the family that owns the painting.

Parmigianino - Francesco Mazzola, 1503-1540 - was an Italian Mannerist painter.

Ulrich says Sotheby's Senior Vice President and Director of Old Master Paintings Christopher Apostle arranged to have the painting taken from Marco Grassi's New York studio in 2005.

Ulrich says Grassi inquired about the painting in 2007 and this year, and Apostle "assured Mr. Grassi that the painting had already been returned to him."

Ulrich says it's not so - that neither Grassi nor he has the painting, that Sotheby's has it or lost it. He says that the "release slips" that Sotheby's claims prove they returned to painting are not signed by Grassi or Ulrich, and appear to refer to another painting, called "The Holy Family."

Ulrich is represented by Gena Zaiderman with Sanders Ortoli.

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.

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

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.
 

Pfizer's smoking-cessation drug Chantix induced manic, violent psychosis requiring hospitalization, a man claims in Federal Court. He claims Pfizer failed to warn about the side effects, which have "caused serious injury and death."

Chantix is supposed to work by inhibiting nicotine receptors in the brain. Those receptors are controlled by dopamine, a neurotransmitter, the complaint states: "Essentially, Chantix regulates/restricts dopamine and blocks pleasure sensors to depress the normal flux of emotions experiences by humans in daily life."

Brian Kline claims Pfizer concealed and misrepresented the risks of Chantix (varenicline), knew that it was unsafe and had "caused serious injury and death," but failed to warn of it. He claims he took the drug, "which caused the plaintiff to sustain injuries and damages including but not limited to manic behavior, aggressive and violent behavior and diagnosis of psychotic disorder for which the plaintiff was hospitalized in August 2007.

Kline claims Pfizer intentionally excluded from its clinical trials people with histories of depression or psychological disorders. He claims that Chantix is derived from cytosine, and that Pfizer knew or should have known that cytosine was linked as early as 1972 to suicides and attempted suicides.

Kline demands punitive damages. He is represented by Scott Levensten

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday ordered a federal court to hold an evidentiary hearing to consider whether a man sentenced to death for murder might be mentally retarded. After Michael Wayne Hall was convicted of the 1998 killing of a 19-year-old woman, he claimed at state habeas proceedings that he was mentally retarded. While Hall's state habeas claim was pending in Texas, the Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, holding that the execution of mentally retarded individuals is unconstitutional and outlining heightened standards for determining a defendant's developmental status. The Fifth Circuit held Wednesday that Hall is entitled to an evidentiary hearing to prove his contentions because:

[T]he facts before us are a core manifestation of a case where the state fails to provide a full and fair hearing and where such a hearing would bring out facts which, if proven true, support habeas relief...[T]he state court's erroneous factfinding and its refusal to accept more than paper submissions despite the development of a new constitutional standard and a lack of guidance from the state on that standard deprived Hall of a full and fair hearing at the state level...Given the material errors in credibility determinations and factfinding at the state level, we are persuaded that the determination of Hall's claim, caught in the immediate uncertainty following Atkins, was so freighted with a risk of error in factfinding that the failure of the district court below to conduct a meaningful hearing was an abuse of discretion in these unusual and unique circumstances.
Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Patrick Higginbotham asserted that the district court should enter an order that unless the state provides Hall with a constitutionally adequate evidentiary hearing within 120 days, Hall will no longer be eligible to receive a death sentence

In August 2007, the European Union urged Texas officials to halt all executions in the state and to consider introducing a moratorium on death sentences. EU officials specifically praised the ruling in Atkins and asked the state to expand it to those with severe mental illness. Texas has since maintained its death-penalty policy, and other states have followed suit. In 29 states, the defendant carries the burden of proving mental retardation in death-penalty cases to receive a lesser sentence.