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Kansas lawyer gets nearly 4 years for Texas fraud
Court Feed News |
2011/08/10 09:50
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A lawyer from Kansas has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison over a $2.3 million Ponzi scheme in Texas.
A federal judge in Beaumont on Tuesday sentenced 62-year-old Clifford R. Roth of Leawood, Kan. Roth pleaded guilty March 14 to interstate transportation of money taken by fraud. Roth also must repay more than 20 investors.
Investigators say Roth in 2007 began offering an investment opportunity to purchase a bank in Oklahoma and open a branch in Beaumont. Roth instead used the funds to pay his personal expenses and early investors. |
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Bank of America starts overdraft rebate outreach
Headline News |
2011/08/09 16:09
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If you had a Bank of America account with a debit card between January 2001 and May of this year, you may be due some cash.
The nation's largest bank has started contacting customers who may be entitled to a refund. It recently reached a class-action settlement over the way it charged overdraft fees. Most of the other suits are continuing to work their way through federal court in Florida.
Bank of America agreed to set up a $410 million fund to settle the lawsuit. The money will be used to pay back customers who were charged overdraft fees as a result of the company's policy of processing debit card transactions based on the size of the transaction, rather than when the purchases occurred.
The bank is one of about three dozen named in a series of class-action lawsuits over the practice of "reordering." A policy that became widespread in the 2000s, reordering involves deducting purchases from an account starting with the largest dollar amount first. That means a customer may end up paying additional overdraft fees.
For instance, someone with an account balance of $95 and who made three purchases in one day, the first for $5, the next for $25 and the last for $75, would be charged two overdraft fees, rather than one.
The suits claim that reordering was done to intentionally increase the number of overdraft fees collected. Banks took in about $39 billion in overdraft fees annually before the Federal Reserve put new rules in place last year. Now banks are required to obtain a customer's written permission before providing overdraft protection.
To inform customers that they may be eligible for a refund of some overdraft fees, Bank of America is sending postcards to customers with a brief explanation of the settlement and the address of a website where more information is available. |
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Court rules firing of NJ casino dealer unlawful
Court Feed News |
2011/08/09 16:05
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A federal appeals court has sided with an Atlantic City casino dealer who says he was targeted because he was involved in union organizing.
Bally's Park Place fired Jose Justiniano in 2007. The casino claimed he misused family medical leave time by attending a pro-union rally on a day he took time off to care for his daughter.
Justiniano had been active in casino unionizing efforts.
A judge upheld the firing, but the National Labor Relations Board disagreed and said it was unlawful.
Friday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., agreed with the NLRB. It noted that Justiniano attended the rally for 20 minutes. It also said Bally's policy on family leave didn't justify the firing.
A message was left seeking comment from an attorney representing Bally's. |
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Once-exonerated Conn. man ordered back to prison
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/09 12:05
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A month after the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated murder convictions against two men who had been exonerated, a judge on Monday ordered one of them back to prison but allowed the other to remain free while fighting cancer.
George Gould was sent back to prison while Ronald Taylor, whose lawyer says he has terminal colon cancer, was allowed to remain out on bail. Both men await a new appeal trial connected to their murder convictions in the 1993 fatal shooting of New Haven grocery shop owner Eugenio Deleon Vega.
Gould and Taylor were both sentenced to 80 years in prison for the killing. They filed habeas corpus appeals, challenges to imprisonment that typically come after other appeals fail.
They were freed in April 2010 after 16 years behind bars when Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger ruled they were victims of "manifest injustice" and declared them "actually innocent." Fuger's ruling came after a key prosecution witness recanted her trial testimony. He ordered both men released.
Prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous decision last month saying that Fuger was wrong to overturn the convictions because Gould and Taylor hadn't proven their innocence. The high court ordered a new habeas corpus trial for the two men. |
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No class-action for suits over Calif. fish kill
Class Action News |
2011/08/09 10:06
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An appeals court has rejected class-action status for a lawsuit prompted by efforts to kill off an invasive fish in Northern California.
The Sacramento Bee says the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled last week that people suing the state had too little in common to comprise a single class and must sue individually.
In 2007, the state Fish and Game Department dumped thousands of gallons of poison into Lake Davis in Plumas County to kill the voracious northern pike. The lake was closed for several months.
The city of Portola and a number of businesses and property owners sued in 2009, arguing that the action caused a decline in tourism that hurt their income, property values and tax receipts. |
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Nevada federal judge to hear Reno billboard law challenge
Headline News |
2011/08/08 15:32
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A Nevada federal judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the city of Reno's billboard law.
The Reno Gazette Journal reports the lawsuit contends the ordinance is unconstitutional because it caps the number of billboards at about 275. A voter-approved initiative set the cap in 2000.
Jeffrey Herson sued the city in June after he was denied a billboard permit. Herson wanted the billboard so he could promote a recall of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Judge Larry R. Hicks set a hearing for Wednesday in Reno's U.S. District Court.
In court papers Herson's attorneys contend the law favors commercial speech because it allows new signs for businesses, but bars new signs along city freeways — known as off-premise signs — for non-commercial purposes.
"It is unconstitutional for Reno to require only some non-commercial speakers to obtain permits, while others have carte blanche to post signs as they please," Reno attorney Frank Gilmore, who represents Herson, wrote in court papers. "This fundamental flaw in Reno's permitting process dooms the entire sign ordinance."
City attorneys say the rules only regulate the physical nature of the signs, not the message. They contend Herson could ask a business owner to post a non-commercial message and that there is no special treatment for commercial speech over another. |
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