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Tenn. Lawmaker Pleads Guilty to Bribery
Legal Career News |
2007/07/13 15:01
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A veteran state senator pleaded guilty to bribery Thursday, admitting he took $3,000 in FBI money during a statewide corruption investigation. Sen. Ward Crutchfield, 78, was one of five current and former state lawmakers charged in the FBI sting code-named Tennessee Waltz, and the only one to remain in office. His trial was scheduled to begin Monday. In return for the Chattanooga Democrat's guilty plea, a more serious charge of extortion was dropped by federal prosecutors. "I have read the (plea) agreement, and I accept responsibility," Crutchfield told U.S. Judge J. Daniel Breen. Defense attorney William Farmer characterized the money that Crutchfield admitted taking as a "gratuity" rather than a bribe. "They gave him a gratuity _ thanks for all your help _ long after he had already agreed to support this bill," Farmer said outside court. Crutchfield and former Sen. Kathryn Bowers, D-Memphis, were the last of the Tennessee Waltz lawmakers still facing trial. The others have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. Bowers' attorney, William Massey, said she would plead guilty on Monday. "She brings this one blemish to the courtroom but a lifetime of good work and a positive history in the community," Massey said. "We hope to convince the judge it's not necessary to punish her severely." If prison time is ordered, he said, "that's what she'll do. She's strong." Tennessee Waltz indictments were returned in May 2005, charging the five with taking payoffs from a company called E-Cycle Management, which turned out to be a creation of the FBI. Farmer said that Crutchfield, who has served in the General Assembly for 31 years, plans to resign "in due time," before the Legislature returns to session in January. Crutchfield still will be eligible for a $42,000 annual pension because his membership in the state's retirement system predated changes in a law designed to strip benefits from convicted lawmakers. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, though federal guidelines for a first-time offender would call for a much lighter sentence. Sentencing was set for Nov. 28. The indictment against Crutchfield accused him of splitting $12,000 in bribes with a so-called "bagman" and former lobbyist, Charles Love. Love pleaded guilty and was to testify against Crutchfield at trial. Prosecutors say the Tennessee Waltz investigation is ongoing. Pushing through a crowd of reporters and photographers outside the Memphis courthouse, Crutchfield refused to talk about Tennessee Waltz. "I'm ready to go home to Chattanooga right now," he said. Crutchfield was first elected to the state House in 1956 and served 14 terms in the Senate. He was Senate Democratic leader for six years until losing a caucus vote about five months before the Tennessee Waltz investigation became public. "It is our hope that this does not obscure what was a record of noteworthy public service. Senator Crutchfield represented the people of his district with distinction for a very long time," Democratic caucus chairman Joe Haynes said in a statement. In all, 11 people have been indicted on Tennessee Waltz charges, including several officials in Memphis and Chattanooga. Nine of those charged, including Crutchfield, now stand convicted. |
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Wis. Court Won't Reopen Harley Lawsuit
Legal Career News |
2007/07/12 16:06
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused on Thursday to reopen a class-action lawsuit that accuses Harley-Davidson Inc. of failing to disclose a defect in two engine types sold in 1999 and 2000. In a 4-3 vote, the court upheld a circuit court decision refusing to reopen and amend a 2001 case brought by Steven Tietsworth, of California. Tietsworth claimed the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker knew or should have known the engine design for some motorcycles made in 1999 and early 2000 was inherently defective. The flaw, he claimed, diminished the value of his motorcycle. A court of appeals had overruled the circuit court in December 2005, saying Tietsworth's case could be amended to include warranty and contract claims. The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the circuit court has no authority to reopen the amended case. Harley-Davidson (nyse: HOG - news - people ) spokesman Bob Klein said the company would not comment until it had reviewed the decision. Tietsworth's lawyer, Ted Warshafsky, also declined to comment before reading the decision. Harley-Davidson sent letters in January 2001 to Tietsworth and 140,000 other owners of 1999 and early 2000 models built with the Twin Cam 88 and Twin Cam 88B engines. The company told owners the rear cam bearing in some bikes had failed but would probably not cause engine failure. Harley extended its warranty for the part and made cam repair kits available for $495. Tietsworth's complaint, which later involved four other owners, said the problem increased riders' safety risks and decreased the value of their Harleys. A circuit court judge threw out the original case, saying Tietsworth and others failed to show actual damages or economic loss, and its decision was eventually upheld by the state Supreme Court. In 2004, Tietsworth asked a court to amend his original complaint to include contract and warranty claims. Thursday's Supreme Court decision ended that effort. |
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Pace of US class-action filings well below average
Legal Career News |
2007/07/10 18:08
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The number of new U.S. securities class-action filings remains well below average, as stock prices rise and the government takes a harder line on corporate wrongdoing, a study released on Tuesday shows. The study comes as business groups are waging a campaign to rein in shareholder lawsuits, saying the claims are often frivolous and are harming the competitiveness of U.S. markets by discouraging international companies from listing their securities here out of fear of litigation. The Supreme Court also has issued recent rulings that could make it tougher for investors to bring class-action claims against corporations. In one case, the court said that plaintiffs must show convincing evidence that fraud occurred or else a lawsuit can be dismissed at the pre-trial stage. Fifty-nine federal securities cases requesting class-action status were filed in the first six months of this year, down 42 percent from an average mid-year filing rate of 101 from the 1996-to-2005 period, according to the study by legal research firm Cornerstone Research and Stanford University Law School. Courts must certify lawsuits as class-actions. Many cases end up getting tossed out by judges before they reach that stage. If class-actions do get certified, the vast majority end up getting settled rather than going to trial. The number of filings this year was up slightly from 53 cases in the same period in 2006, but it still marks the fourth consecutive six-month period with below average filings, the report found. "We've now had two years worth of extremely low filing activity," said Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford University law professor. "This is starting to look like a permanent shift, not a transitory phenomenon." |
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Lawsuit challenges green card delay
Legal Career News |
2007/07/07 13:22
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A woman is seeking class-action status for a lawsuit that claims the federal government violated her constitutional rights when it announced that no new employer-sponsored green card applications would be accepted until the fall.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court by Gabriela Ptasinska, a Polish immigrant who has a temporary work visa sponsored through her job at an engineering consulting firm. It is among the first challenging the U.S. State Department's decision. In June, the State Department announced that employment visa numbers were available for all people seeking employer-sponsored green cards, except unskilled workers. The announcement meant that as early as this past Monday, Citizenship and Immigration Services would begin accepting applications, which require a lengthy process including certified documents and medical exams. But an update posted Monday on the State Department Web site said 60,000 such numbers were no longer available because of "the sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services offices during the past month," meaning no further applications would be authorized, effective immediately. The department called the backlog reduction efforts an "unexpected action" and said employment visa numbers would be available Oct. 1. Ptasinska—who flew from Chicago to Lincoln, Neb., on Monday in hopes of being among the first to submit a green card application—is seeking a ruling that would keep the application from being rejected, according to her attorney Ira Azulay.
The lawsuit names several government officials and agencies, including the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. State Department spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said that the agency does not comment on litigation. Calls to Citizenship and Immigration Services went unanswered. Immigration groups like the American Immigration Lawyers Foundation claim thousands of people across the country have spent time and money on attorneys and the application. Spokesman Tim Vettel said the foundation is in the process of preparing a similar lawsuit. |
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The 2008 Election and the Supreme Court
Legal Career News |
2007/07/04 18:29
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President Bush's promise to change the makeup of the Supreme Court was one of his most reliable applause lines, as candidate and as president. It energized conservative activists like few other issues, kept them going in the face of other disappointments, kept them loyal and focused on the long view. As the 2008 campaign heats up, the question naturally arises: Can the left mobilize as effectively when it comes to the court and judicial appointments in general? There is no doubt about the unhappiness of liberals with the current court, which now bears Mr. Bush's unmistakable imprint. They were reeling last week as the court finished up its first full term with Mr. Bush's appointees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. It was a session marked by a sharp turn to the right in a series of 5-to-4 decisions, from upholding a federal ban on a type of abortion to limiting school districts' ability to use racially conscious criteria to achieve or maintain integration. Democrats on Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail were furious, especially, some said, because of Mr. Roberts' promises of humility and respect for precedent, delivered repeatedly when he sought confirmation from the Senate. "Given what he said to us," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, "my Democratic colleagues and I would never have envisioned the string of decisions that he issued recently." "He kept stressing modesty, stare decisis, not over-reaching, giving a large amount of weight to precedent, and now he sort of just flicks it off with the back of his hand," said Mr. Schumer, who voted against Mr. Roberts. "People are just shocked." Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and who voted for Mr. Roberts' confirmation, was equally unhappy. "I am extraordinarily disappointed when I find that, in almost a cavalier way, they've thrown aside Brown vs. the Board the Education," Mr. Leahy said on NBC's "Meet the Press." (That is a characterization that Mr. Roberts, and others, would no doubt dispute.) But venting only goes so far. People for the American Way, the liberal advocacy group, launched a fund-raising drive this week with an e-mail message sent to 400,000 core activists. "Only you and I stand between the new Supreme Court and the continued chiseling away at the rights and freedoms we Americans hold dear," wrote Norman Lear, one of the founders of the group. Promising to match every dollar contributed, and to organize around next year's Senate and Presidential campaigns, Mr. Lear concluded, "Together we can take back the court." Liberals have been warning of the dangers of a Bush court since his 2000 campaign against Al Gore, but it was never an easy issue to drive home, even among people who support much of the progressive agenda, analysts say. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has studied public attitudes toward the court for Planned Parenthood and other groups, said it takes a long time to penetrate the public's consciousness about the importance of the nine justices. "They don't know much about the court, they don't understand lifetime appointments, they think each president can have an impact," she added. Mark Mellman, another Democratic pollster, said that in the past, "people had some confidence that the court was not going to change the way the country did business in dramatic ways." In other words, liberals were often warning about potential dangers to their agenda from a changing Supreme Court. The issue was not a hypothetical for conservatives, who felt devastated, over the years, by decisions from previous courts, most notably Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case declaring a constitutional right to abortion. Now, some Democrats and their allies say they are hearing hypothetical worries turn to outrage, and not just in the Democratic cloakroom of the Senate. "The right has always been energized on this issue," said Mr. Schumer. "The recent decisions have now energized the left." Democratic presidential campaigns quickly weighed in, and the issue is expected to be raised in several Senate races. A prime example is Maine, which has a centrist Republican up for re-election next year, Senator Susan Collins, who voted for both Mr. Alito and Mr. Roberts. Carol Andrews, communications director for the Maine Democratic Party, foreshadowed the fight to come, saying Ms. Collins' support for Mr. Alito, in particular, "places her squarely in lockstep with ultraconservatives, and far to the right of the center she claims to inhabit." Steve Abbott, Ms. Collins's chief of staff, countered that the senator takes her responsibilities to advise and consent very seriously, but has no litmus test for judicial confirmations. Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said he believes that public attitudes toward the court are "at a tipping point." He said that the cumulative impact of the court's decisions will make it easier to make the case that "you have a court radically to the right of the American people." Ms. Lake said she could envision an argument aimed at women in the presidential campaign — "that there's a pattern of decisions out here that are out of touch with women's lives, from pay equity to personal decision-making on abortions," she said. "It could be very powerful." In the meantime, the activist and fund-raising networks are beginning to hum.
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New US state laws take effect with fiscal year
Legal Career News |
2007/07/02 15:24
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As a tornado bore down on southwestern Indiana in 2005, the National Weather Service issued a radio warning urging people in its path to seek shelter. But many residents did not hear the alert because they did not have radios equipped to receive it. That will change on Sunday, when Indiana enacts a law requiring mobile homes to have weather radios. “My family would be here had I known that weather radios existed,” said Kathryn Martin, who pushed heavily for the law after the tornado shattered the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park and killed dozens of people, including three of her relatives. The Indiana regulation is one of hundreds of new laws taking effect on July 1, when most states begin their fiscal years. Among them are efforts to encourage alternative energy in Nevada and Minnesota, tougher rules against illegal immigrants in Georgia and Idaho, and higher minimum wages in Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Indiana tornado hit before dawn on Nov. 6, 2005, with winds estimated at 200 miles an hour. Twenty of the 25 victims of the storm were in mobile homes on the outskirts of Evansville, where emergency officials said few had radios or access to shelters. The Indiana General Assembly responded last year, passing the weather-radio proposal with overwhelming support. A similar effort is under way on the federal level to make the radios a requirement nationwide. The radios, which cost about $30, operate on frequencies dedicated to the weather service. Officials say they often broadcast warnings before regular radio and television stations. More than 20 million Americans live in mobile homes, according to Census estimates. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that the fatality rate for residents of mobile homes is 10 times greater than those in homes with fixed foundations. These are among other laws taking effect on July 1: - Virginia will require convicted sex offenders to register e-mail addresses with the state. - Nevada will force certain sex offenders to live at least 1,000 feet from schools and other places where children gather. - Tennessee will require everyone buying beer at a store to show ID. - California will ban sales of soda in schools during school hours and put new limits on sugar and fat content in school food. - Colorado will ban abstinence-only sex education in all schools, except for one district, requiring schools to teach sex education based on scientific research and to include information on contraception. In Indiana, people riding in back seats and in S.U.V.’s and pickups will have to wear seat belts. The mandatory belt law had a loophole for vehicles with truck plates. |
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