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Rulings on Judge Complaints to Be Public
Lawyer Blog News | 2008/03/12 15:48
Federal judges agreed Tuesday to grant the public more access to cases in which judges are disciplined by their colleagues.

Final orders on complaints about judges will be posted on appeals court Web sites and, in most cases, judges will be named if they have been sanctioned.

The changes were adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United States, a 27-judge body led by Chief Justice John Roberts that met Tuesday at the Supreme Court. The new rules take effect in 30 days.

Only a handful of the complaints that are filed annually against federal judges advance beyond a preliminary review. Five of the 841 complaints filed in the government spending year that ended Sept. 30 resulted in the formation of special investigative committees of judges to look into allegations against a colleague.

In one recent case, judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said there was evidence to support impeachment of U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. for misconduct, including lying in bankruptcy court and accepting gifts from lawyers with cases before him.

The Judicial Conference will decide by September whether to recommend that the House consider impeaching Porteous, said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of U.S. District Court in Washington, the chairman of the conference's executive committee.

The increased attention to allegations of improprieties by judges grew out of a report released in 2006 by a committee headed by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The report found problems in the way judges have handled high-profile complaints against their colleagues.

On a separate matter, Hogan said judges oppose legislation that would tie a pay raise to a ban on most paid seminars for judges. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., attached the travel restrictions to the pay raise bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in January.

"The way it's written is far too broad," said Hogan, noting that one commentator has remarked that under the proposal, "the Supreme Court could travel to Europe but not come back."



Another SocGen Trader Taken Into Custody
Legal World News | 2008/03/12 15:29
Another trader at Societe Generale was taken in for questioning Wednesday after investigators searched the French bank's offices in connection with a multibillion dollar trading scandal, judicial officials and the bank said.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Jerome Kerviel -- the trader blamed by SocGen for unauthorized trades that cost it nearly $7 billion -- had accomplices, judicial officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Societe Generale spokeswoman Laura Schalk confirmed that investigators searched its offices on Wednesday, taking some records and detaining the employee, whose name she declined to provide. She called the search part of "normal proceedings" in the probe.

Christophe Reille, a spokesman for Kerviel, declined to comment.

A French court is scheduled to rule Friday on whether Kerviel should be freed from a Paris prison during the investigation. Investigators have said they want to prevent him from speaking with any possible accomplices.

Kerviel says he acted alone, but that his bosses must have been aware of his massive risk-taking, and turned a blind eye as long as he was making money for the bank. Investigators are searching for others who could have known about, or participated in, what the bank says was Kerviel's unauthorized activity.

A preliminary internal probe by Societe Generale found no evidence that anyone helped Kerviel hide his positions. The report did say bank officials failed to follow up on 74 warnings about questionable trades, uncovering Kerviel's positions only on the 75th.

Kerviel's lawyer Guillaume Selnet told The Associated Press last week he will be asking why the alerts "didn't provoke any reaction."

Societe Generale says Kerviel forged documents and e-mails to suggest he had hedged his positions.

The bank reported a trading loss of nearly 4.9 billion euros ($7.58 billion) on Jan. 24 from liquidating 50 billion euros ($73 billion) in unauthorized futures positions Kerviel had taken.



Judge Says Fairplay Must Amend Lawsuit
Court Feed News | 2008/03/12 14:49
Reality TV figure Jonny Fairplay will have to provide a court with more details about his tooth-busting dust-up with Danny Bonaduce before his lawsuit against producers of an awards show can go forward. "I think more facts should be set forth," Superior Court Judge Michael C. Solner ruled Tuesday.

Solner gave Fairplay, whose real name is Jon Dalton, 20 days to amend his complaint to explain why the producers of Fox Reality Channel's "Really Awards" were negligent and involved in the alleged battery.

The lawsuit stems from an October 2007 altercation in which Fairplay, a competitor on "Survivor: Pearl Islands," jumped into Bonaduce's arms on stage during the awards show to give him a hug.

Bonaduce, 48, responded by tossing Fairplay over his shoulders. Fairplay landed face first, losing one tooth, breaking another and loosening two more.

Fairplay, 34, sued Bonaduce, Fox Reality Channel and the show producers for battery, negligence and emotional distress. He claims the producers encouraged Bonaduce to go on stage uninvited, did not provide security and failed to provide prompt medical care afterward.

Vicki Greco, a lawyer for Fox and the producers Natural 9 Entertainment, said Bonaduce's actions were unplanned and the companies were not responsible for the incident.

Fairplay's lawyer, Daniel C. Lapidus, claimed Bonaduce told the producers "what he wanted to do and they told him to do it."

Bonaduce, a child actor on "The Partridge Family," starred in the 2005 reality show "Breaking Bonaduce." The next hearing in the case is scheduled for May 12.



Man Pleads Guilty to Sex With Girls
Court Feed News | 2008/03/12 12:51
A man who filmed himself sexually assaulting young Asian girls pleaded guilty Tuesday to child pornography charges.

William Constable, 54, a self-employed contractor, was arrested in October when he tried to retrieve a camera he left in a Cape Cod hotel room. A hotel employee who found the camera called police after seeing images of a man having sex with young girls.

Prosecutors said the camera and dozens of cassettes and compact discs later seized from Constable's Nantucket home showed him sexually assaulting girls as young as 5, sometimes two at a time.

During a hearing in U.S. District Court, Constable pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography. According to a plea agreement filed with the court, the recommended sentence will be 25 years in prison and a $50,000 fine, with restitution to be determined when Constable is sentenced on June 10. He also faces lifetime supervision after his release.



Investor sues SC armored vehicle maker
Class Action News | 2008/03/12 11:52
An investor in an armored vehicle maker has filed a lawsuit claiming several former top executives made millions selling stock while failing to warn shareholders about accounting problems.

The suit against South Carolina-based Force Protection on behalf of shareholder Allan Candelore seeks class-action status. The Post and Courier of Charleston reports the lawsuit claims top company officials did not warn investors about delays in delivering bomb-resistant vehicles to the U.S. military.

Force Protection shares plummeted earlier this month after the company announced it was reshuffling management and told shareholders it had major accounting problems.



Court Blocks Fines Against Reporter
Court Feed News | 2008/03/12 11:43
A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked fines up to $5,000 that a former USA Today reporter was ordered to pay each day she refuses to reveal her confidential sources for stories about the criminal investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The appeals court granted the request of Toni Locy, who had been ordered by a federal judge to pay the fines out of her own pocket while she appeals an order finding her in contempt of court.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is demanding that Locy provide the names of all dozen or so Justice Department and FBI sources who provided her information for stories on the probe into the anthrax attacks.

The order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia means Locy will not have to pay the fines or face further sanctions including possibly being sent to jail while her lawyers fight Walton's contempt ruling.

Locy says she cannot recall which of her FBI and Justice Department sources provided her information for two stories about scientist Steven Hatfill. Hatfill has been under scrutiny in the probe and is suing the government for dragging his name into the investigation.

Starting at midnight Tuesday, Locy was to have paid out of her own funds $500 a day for seven days, $1,000 a day for seven days and $5,000 a day thereafter until she was to have appeared in court April 3. At that time, the judge could have ordered further fines or directed that she be sent to jail if she continued to defy him.

Locy says that enforcing the contempt order could have a chilling effect by calling into question the enforceability of reporters' secrecy agreements with public officials.

"I am relieved and thankful that the court of appeals has found that my legal arguments are worthy of consideration," said Locy, a former reporter with The Associated Press who wrote the anthrax stories while at USA Today. She now teaches journalism at West Virginia University.

Appeals court judges Douglas Ginsburg, Judith Rogers and Brett Kavanaugh granted the reporter's request. Ginsburg was appointed by President Reagan, Rogers by President Clinton and Kavanaugh by the current President Bush.

Hatfill's lawyers had asked the appeals court to allow the penalties against the reporter to start immediately.

"There was no whistle-blowing here, no use of an anonymity agreement by a reporter to allow a courageous federal official to expose wrongdoing without fear of retaliation," Hatfill's lawyers wrote.

"The 'leaks' at issue here are disclosures from investigative files about one innocent and uncharged man, designed to convey through cooperative members of the media the false story that the government had made progress in the anthrax investigation," the court filing by Hatfill's lawyers added.

Five people were killed and 17 sickened when anthrax was mailed to Capitol Hill lawmakers and members of the media just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Subsequently, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill "a person of interest" in the investigation and stories by various reporters including Locy followed. Hatfill had worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory from 1997 to 1999. The anthrax attacks remain unsolved.



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