Court hearing delayed for Loughlin, husband in college scam

Lawyer Blog Post 2019/03/24 12:05   Bookmark and Share
Actress Lori Loughlin (LAWK'-lin) and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are scheduled to appear in federal court in Boston next month in a college admissions bribery case.

A judge on Thursday agreed to move their initial appearance to April 3 on charges that they paid $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into the University of Southern California.

Their attorney had asked the judge to delay the hearing until April 15, saying the legal team had scheduling conflicts when the pair were initially scheduled to be in court on March 29.

Loughlin and Giannulli were among dozens of people arrested last week for allegedly participating in a nationwide college admissions cheating scheme .

Fellow actress Felicity Huffman is also slated to appear in court in Boston on April 3. Neither Loughlin nor Huffman have commented on the allegations.

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Migrants encounter snafus with new US asylum policy

Lawyer Blog Post 2019/03/23 12:07   Bookmark and Share
Scheduling glitches led an immigration judge to deny the Trump administration's request to order four Central American migrants deported because they failed to show for initial hearings Wednesday in the U.S. while being forced to wait in Mexico.

The judge's refusal was a setback for the administration's highly touted initiative to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration courts.

One migrant came to court with a notice to appear on Saturday, March 30 and said he later learned that he was supposed to show up Wednesday. He reported in the morning to U.S. authorities at the main crossing between San Diego and Tijuana.

"I almost didn't make it because I had two dates," he said.

Similar snafus marred the first hearings last week when migrants who were initially told to show up Tuesday had their dates bumped up several days.

Judge Scott Simpson told administration lawyers to file a brief by April 10 that explains how it can assure migrants are properly notified of appointments. The judge postponed initial appearances for the four no-shows to April 22, which raised more questions about how they would learn about the new date.
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Dominion to ask Supreme Court to hear pipeline appeal

Lawyer Blog Post 2019/02/26 09:09   Bookmark and Share
Dominion Energy said Tuesday it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal after a lower court refused to reconsider a ruling tossing out a permit that would have allowed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross two national forests, including parts of the Appalachian Trail.

Lead pipeline developer Dominion said it expects the filing of an appeal in the next 90 days. On Monday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request for a full-court rehearing from Dominion and the U.S. Forest Service.

A three-judge panel ruled in December that the Forest Service lacks the authority to authorize the trail crossing and had "abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources" when it approved the pipeline crossing the George Washington and Monongahela National Forests, as well as a right-of-way across the Appalachian Trial.

The 605-mile (974-kilometer) natural gas pipeline would originate in West Virginia and run through North Carolina and Virginia.

The appellate ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the Sierra Club, Virginia Wilderness Committee and other environmental groups. The denial "sends the Atlantic Coast Pipeline back to the drawing board," the law center and Sierra Club said in a joint statement on Monday.
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Appeals court agrees to hear case involving Trump DC hotel

Lawyer Blog Post 2018/12/23 12:32   Bookmark and Share
A federal appeals court agreed Thursday to take up a case accusing Donald Trump of profiting off the presidency in violation of the U.S. Constitution, giving the president's legal team its first major victory in the case.

The order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, hits the pause button on the ongoing federal court case in Maryland before deadlines to respond to subpoenas issued earlier this month seeking tax returns, receipts and other records from 13 Trump businesses and other entities.

It came just three days after Justice Department lawyers filed papers seeking a writ of mandamus appeal, criticizing U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte and arguing that that the "intrusive" discovery that has already begun would distract the president from his performance of his constitutional duties and could cause separation of powers concerns.

For Justice to succeed at the appeals level, they must meet a demanding standard that would partly rest on showing Messitte's decisions to be clearly wrong.

The lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia alleges that because Trump has not divested himself of his business holdings, foreign and domestic government spending at Trump's Washington hotel amounts to gifts to the president in violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause.

Oral arguments before the three-judge appeals court are scheduled for March, delaying what had been a brisk discovery schedule set in the district court by several months. The order also notes that lawyers should be prepared to also address substantive issues such as whether the plaintiffs in the case can even sue and, if victorious, compel the president to stop violating the Constitution.

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Uber loses UK case on worker rights, expected to appeal

Lawyer Blog Post 2018/12/19 10:58   Bookmark and Share
Lawyers say the taxi hailing app Uber has lost its appeal against a ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers in a case with broad implications for the gig economy.

Law firm Leigh Day says Britain's Court of Appeal upheld an earlier ruling that found the company's drivers are workers, not independent contractors and therefore should receive the minimum wage and paid holidays. Uber is expected to appeal.

Though the company argued that the case applies to only two drivers, Uber has tens of thousands of drivers in the U.K. who could argue they deserve the same status as the former drivers covered by decision. The court says some 40,000 drivers use the platform in the U.K., though the company said the number had grown since the submission to 50,000.

San Francisco-based Uber has expanded rapidly around the world by offering an alternative to traditional taxis through a smartphone app that links people in need of rides with drivers of private cars. That has drawn protests from taxi drivers who say Uber and similar services are able to undercut them.
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European court orders Turkey to free ex-Kurdish party leader

Lawyer Blog Post 2018/11/21 15:28   Bookmark and Share
The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday called on Turkey to release the former head of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition from detention. Turkey's president responded by claiming his country was not bound by the court's rulings.

In its ruling on Tuesday, the Strasbourg, France-based court said Turkey had violated Selahattin Demirtas' right to be promptly brought before a judge, his right to a speedy review of his case as well as his right to be elected and to sit in Parliament.

Demirtas, the 45-year-old former co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, was arrested in November 2016 on terrorism charges. He ran in Turkey's presidential election in June from his high-security prison in Edirne, northwest Turkey. He also campaigned for a constitutional referendum in 2017 from behind bars.

In September Demirtas was sentenced to four years in prison for supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and engaging in terrorist propaganda in one of several trials against him. He is appealing his conviction.

Asked to comment on the European court's ruling, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "We are not bound by the (European court's) decisions."

He added: "We'll make our counter-move and finish it off." He did not elaborate.
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