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Fresno DA charges woman after deadly bus crash
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/20 16:39
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A woman accused of providing alcohol to a teenage driver who caused a deadly Greyhound bus crash has been charged with a misdemeanor, officials said Tuesday.
Michelle Kay Cole, 22, was charged with purchasing an alcoholic beverage for a person under 21 resulting in death, Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan said at a news conference.
Cole was cited Monday but not arrested, Egan said. She could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.
A California Highway Patrol report placed sole blame for the crash on 18-year-old Sylvia Garay. Investigators said she was drunk when her SUV hit a concrete barrier and overturned on Highway 99 on July 22, 2010.
The oncoming bus, carrying 31 passengers on a route from Los Angeles to Sacramento, struck the SUV, skidded into a concrete center divider, then tumbled down a 15-foot embankment and plowed into a eucalyptus tree shortly after 2 a.m. a few miles from downtown Fresno.
Garay, her two passengers and three people on the bus were killed. Authorities say Garay had a blood alcohol level of .11 when she died. The legal limit is .08.
The CHP report said the bus driver had no way to avoid the SUV, which was left without lights when it overturned. |
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Challenge to visa lottery dismissed by judge
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/16 04:32
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In a blow to thousands of hopeful would-be immigrants who had been told they'd won a chance to apply for a green card, a federal judge ruled that the State Department can toss out the results of its May visa lottery, which were deemed invalid because of a computer error.
The State Department said the results of a fresh drawing would be available Friday.
Members of the group had been seeking class action status in their bid to stop the government from nullifying their selection in the visa lottery.
In early May, about 22,000 people were notified they had won a chance to apply for a visa as part of the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which is aimed at increasing the number of immigrants from the developing world and countries with historically low rates of emigration to the U.S.
One of them, 42-year-old French native Armande Gil, who lives in Florida, called Thursday's decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson another disappointment. |
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Arizona court vacates $75 million cash-only bond
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/11 07:51
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An Arizona appeals court has vacated what was perhaps one of the highest bail amounts on record in U.S. history that had been set for a father accused of sexually abusing his children.
The brief order issued last week sends the case back to Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Tina Ainley to reset the $75 million cash-only bond for the longtime Sedona resident. She has scheduled a Monday status conference.
The defendant's attorney, Bruce Griffen, sought relief from the appellate court after he tried unsuccessfully to have the case assigned to another trial court judge.
Griffen accused Ainley of abusing her discretion, and exhibiting bias and prejudice.
Prosecutors say those accusations were not proven. They contend the defendant has significant family ties in Brazil and is a flight risk.
The appellate court said Ainley cannot set a bail amount greater than what is necessary to ensure the defendant appears at trial, and can set other release conditions. The court is expected to elaborate on its decision but had not done so as of Friday. |
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Justice Ginsburg's future plans closely watched
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/05 16:25
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Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court's future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.
The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg's successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.
But Ginsburg could retire now and allow Obama to name a like-minded successor whose confirmation would be in the hands of a Democratic-controlled Senate. "She has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. "On the other hand, there's the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?"
For now, Ginsburg's answer is, you don't.
There are few more indelicate questions to put to a Supreme Court justice, but Ginsburg has said gracefully, and with apparent good humor, that the president should not expect a retirement letter before 2015.
She will turn 82 that year, the same age Justice Louis Brandeis was when he left the court in 1939. Ginsburg, who is Jewish, has said she wants to emulate the court's first Jewish justice.
While declining an interview on the topic, Ginsburg pointed in a note to The Associated Press to another marker she has laid down, that she is awaiting the end of a traveling art exhibition that includes a painting that usually hangs in her office by the German emigre Josef Albers. |
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BofA Near $8.5B Deal to Settle Big Investors' Claims
Headline Legal News |
2011/06/29 05:18
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Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.
The Charlotte, North Carolina, bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.
The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.
Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands. |
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Citigroup ex-VP arrested in NYC on fraud charges
Headline Legal News |
2011/06/27 20:34
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A former Citigroup vice president embezzled $19.2 million from the bank in a one-man "inside job" involving a series of secret money transfers, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Gary Foster, 35, of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., surrendered Sunday at John F. Kennedy International Airport after arriving on a flight from Bangkok. He was released Tuesday on $800,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Brooklyn to face bank fraud charges carrying a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
Foster had been traveling in Southeast Asia when he received word of the case, defense attorney Isabelle Kirshner said after the court appearance.
"As soon as he became aware they were looking for him, he voluntarily contacted the FBI and arranged to return," Kirshner said.
Officials at Citigroup Inc. — where Foster was vice president of the treasury finance department until quitting in January — said in a statement that they were "outraged by the actions of this former employee" and hoped to see him "prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
Foster "used his knowledge of bank operations to commit the ultimate inside job," U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement.
According to a criminal complaint, Foster's department financed loans and processed wire transfers within Citigroup. From May 2009 through the end of last year, Foster siphoned funds from various Citigroup accounts, placed them in the bank's cash account and then wired the money into his private account at another bank in New York, the complaint alleged.
In one November 2010 transaction, Foster wired $3.9 million from a Citigroup fund in Baltimore to his New York account, the complaint says. That fraudulent transfer and seven others went undetected until a recent internal audit, it said. |
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Wis. Gov: Supreme Court needs to resolve discord
Headline Legal News |
2011/06/27 20:33
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Gov. Scott Walker took the state Supreme Court justices to task Monday, saying their infighting has to end for the sake of public confidence in the court. His comments came after a liberal member of the court accused a conservative justice of putting her in a chokehold — a charge he has denied.
Speaking on WTMJ radio, Walker said that regardless of a person's political beliefs, "there's got to be confidence that the people on the court can rationally discuss and debate" issues.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Justice David Prosser tried to choke her during an argument in her office on June 13, the day before the court handed down a decision upholding a new law eliminating most public employees' collective bargaining rights. Walker had pushed the polarizing proposal, saying state and local officials needed more flexibility to deal with the state's deficit and coming budget cuts.
Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney said in a statement Monday that his office has opened an investigation into the incident at the request of Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs, who had jurisdiction because the argument took place in the state Capitol.
Tubbs said in a statement he asked the sheriff to handle the matter after consulting with "members of the Supreme Court." He did not elaborate, and a spokeswoman for the agency that oversees the Capitol Police didn't immediately respond to a message. |
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