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Vulcan sues Martin Marietta over takeover bid
Business Law Info |
2011/12/22 15:16
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Vulcan Materials has sued Martin Marietta in federal court, accusing the smaller gravel, sand and stone supplier of launching an illegal takeover attempt of Vulcan.
Vulcan, based in Birmingham, Ala., also on Wednesday strongly recommended that its shareholders not tender their stock to Martin Marietta, which announced a hostile bid for the company earlier this month.
Martin Marietta, based in Raleigh, N.C., has said it plans to take a stock offer directly to Vulcan shareholders after Vulcan cut off negotiations that started more than a year and a half ago.
Under the offer, valued at about $4.74 billion, Vulcan Materials Co. shareholders would get half a share of Martin Marietta Materials Inc. stock for each of their Vulcan shares. That offer valued Vulcan at $36.69 per share, a 9.4 percent premium, based on the stock's closing price Dec. 9, the last trading day before Martin Marietta's announcement.
Martin Marietta also said when it announced its bid that it had filed lawsuits in both Delaware Chancery Court and New Jersey state court to ensure Vulcan shareholders get a chance to consider its offer. |
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Environmental groups sue US over flood management
Headline News |
2011/12/22 13:15
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The National Wildlife Federation filed a motion in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, asking a judge to stop the U.S. government from issuing any more flood insurance policies for new development in flood-prone areas around the Puget Sound until it changes its flood plain plans to consider the impact on endangered species like salmon and orcas.
The motion for a preliminary injunction is the latest move in a decades-long fight to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay more attention to endangered species, said Jan Hasselman, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that filed a motion in Seattle, on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation.
The environmental group won a lawsuit in 2004 that found FEMA did not create its flood plain management standards with the Endangered Species Act in mind. Hasselman said the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2008 issued a plan for changing the flood standards, setting various deadlines, the last of which recently passed. |
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Mentally disabled detainees granted class status
Legal Career News |
2011/12/21 14:42
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A federal judge has granted class-action status to a case brought on behalf of mentally disabled detainees who lack legal representation in immigration court.
The order issued under seal in November by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee was made public Monday. The case involves detainees in California, Washington and Arizona who have been deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocates want the federal government to appoint lawyers to represent mentally disabled detainees. Advocates brought the case last year on behalf of two men who had been detained for years.
A message left seeking comment at the Department of Justice was not immediately returned.
Immigrants are not required to use attorneys in deportation proceedings and attorneys are not provided free-of-charge in immigration court. |
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Alleged Ponzi schemer due in court
Court Feed News |
2011/12/21 13:43
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Former Albuquerque real estate executive Doug Vaughan is due in court Wednesday to plead guilty to charges stemming from allegations he ran Ponzi scheme that swindled some 600 investors out of $74 million.
Vaughan's attorney, Amy Sirignano, last week told The Associated Press Vaughan would be changing his plea to guilty in the case, but that details of the agreement were still being worked out.
Vaughan is scheduled to appear in court in Santa Fe Wednesday afternoon.
The change of plea hearing was scheduled just a few weeks after court documents were unsealed showing Vaughan's long-time assistant planned to testify against him.
Victims have been identified in New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Texas and Colorado. |
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Gingrich assails judges as he courts conservatives
U.S. Legal News |
2011/12/20 18:18
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As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state's caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.
There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich's ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it's taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.
"I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job," Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.
Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed "radical" rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he'd consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.
In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts "grotesquely dictatorial." He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.
The targets of Gingrich's strongest derision: the West Coast's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a perennial punching bag for the right, and a federal judge in Texas who banned prayer in a public school. |
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NY top court allows private securities claims
Court Feed News |
2011/12/20 18:17
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Enforcement by the state attorney general against securities fraud doesn't pre-empt private common-law claims of negligence against investment companies, New York's top court ruled Tuesday.
The Court of Appeals rejected J.P. Morgan Investment Management's argument that New York's Martin Act gives the attorney general exclusive authority over fraudulent securities and investment practices. The court said Assured Guaranty (UK) Ltd. can sue J.P. Morgan.
"We agree with the attorney general that the purpose of the Martin Act is not impaired by private common-law actions that have a legal basis independent of the statute because proceedings by the attorney general and private action have the same goal — combating fraud and deception in securities transactions," Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote.
Assured claimed breach of fiduciary duty and gross negligence, alleging J.P. Morgan invested heavily in risky mortgage-backed securities while committing to a conservative investment policy for reinsurance company Orkney RE II PLC, whose obligations Assured guaranteed. After the market crashed, Assured had to cover Orkney losses.
"Here, the plain text of the Martin Act, while granting the attorney general investigatory and enforcement powers and prescribing various penalties, does not expressly mention or otherwise contemplate the elimination of common-law claims," Graffeo wrote. The unanimous ruling upheld a midlevel court, which had reversed a judge. |
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