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Split Supreme Court Orders Review Of Death Row Inmate's Claims That Witnesses Recanted Testimony
Legal Topics |
2009/08/18 16:15
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According to the Fulton County Daily Report, the case of Troy Anthony Davis took another extraordinary turn on Monday as the US Supreme Court ordered a federal district judge to hear testimony on the death row inmate's claims that he did not murder a Savannah, Ga., police officer.
Justice Antonin Scalia said in a dissent that the high court hadn't made a similar move in nearly 50 years.
The decision was welcomed by supporters of Davis, who for years have claimed that prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony from the 1991 trial in which a jury condemned Davis to die for the 1989 killing of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
Georgia Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, whose office has fought Davis' efforts to gain relief, issued a measured response to the ruling, saying simply that he hoped the hearing would resolve doubts about the case. |
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Redbox Says Fox Is Trying to Kill It
Legal Topics |
2009/08/14 16:11
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Courthouse News reports that Redbox, the DVD kiosk rental giant, says Twentieth Century Fox is trying to kill its business by cutting off the supply of DVDs because Redbox refused to agree to a 30-day "blackout period," during which it will withhold new releases. In its antitrust complaint in Delaware Federal Court, Redbox claims Fox is conducting an illegal boycott in restraint of trade.
Redbox says Fox ordered its distributors, Ingram Entertainment and Video Product Distribution, to cut Redbox off.
In remarkably self-serving language written in high dudgeon, Redbox cites "tough economic times," during which "people simply need some form of release from their financial pressures, even if just for a couple of hours." Redbox says it provides this through its cheap movies, but Fox demands a "business-killing blackout period ... during which consumers would be allowed to procure these DVDs only through more expensive channels ... despite the fact that consumers are being battered by one of the toughest economic recessions in history." |
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Class Claims Insurers Cancel Just As Hurricane Season Begins
Legal Topics |
2009/08/11 16:27
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According to Courthouse News, a class action claims Texas insurance companies collect premiums for storm coverage from November through May - when there's no risk of hurricanes - then cancel policies by the thousand just before hurricane season begins. Unitrin, an insurance holding company, allegedly canceled 40 percent of one of its subsidiaries' policies before this year's hurricane season began.
Plaintiffs claim the scheme allows Unitrin and its creatures to fix prices and charge for insurance without providing it. Unitrin has been doing this since 2006, according to the complaint in Jefferson County Court.
When the 2007 hurricane season was predicted to be a big one, the defendants canceled many "hurricane" policies, the class claims. After Hurricane Ike in 2008, Unitrin and its Capitol County subsidiary collected hurricane premiums from policyholders as long as possible, then canceled more than 40 percent of residential policies before the 2009 hurricane season started, according to the complaint.
Such cancellations require the defendants to return unearned premiums, but Unitrin is ducking that by calling its cancellations "non-renewals," the class claims. |
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Watchdogs Sue Kellogg's Over Cereal Ads
Legal Topics |
2009/08/10 20:53
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According to Courthouse News, Kellogg falsely advertises that its Frosted Mini-Wheat cereal "improved children's attentiveness by 20 percent," the National Consumers League claims in Superior Court. The nonprofit Consumers League claims Kellogg's "study" compared kids who ate its sugared cereal with children who did not eat breakfast at all - and even then, juggled the numbers.
The Consumers League claims the breakfast cereal giant's "clinical study" actually found that only one out of nine children who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast was more attentive by 20 percent.
"In fact, kids in the clinical study who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats had an average of 10.6 percent better attentiveness three hours later than kids who had skipped breakfast," the complaint states. "Indeed, relatively few kids - only approximately one in nine -experienced 20 percent improved attentiveness in the study, and only one in seven kids who ate the cereal improved their attentiveness by 18 percent."
The National Consumers League seeks damages of $1,500 per violation of the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, plus costs. |
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Judge Tosses Budweiser Buyout Class Action
Legal Topics |
2009/08/07 15:51
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Courthouse News reports that a federal judge dismissed an antitrust class action challenging InBev's buyout of Anheuser-Busch. The class claimed the Belgian brewer's buyout of the corporate parent of St. Louis' iconic Budweiser beer would reduce competition.
But US District Judge Jean Hamilton found no evidence that InBev was entering the US market from scratch. "Here, InBev has no existing breweries or distributorships to produce, promote and distribute its product and enter the US beer market de novo," Hamilton wrote. "InBev would have to build factories and develop a nationwide distribution system. Instead, InBev entered into a distributorship agreement for its imports, which would hinder its entry into the US market. Also, as discussed above, there is insufficient objective evidence that InBev had a subjective intent to enter the US market de novo. Accordingly, the Court finds that InBev was not an actual potential competitor in the US beer market and grants Defendants' Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings." |
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Battle Lines Set, Senate Debates Sotomayor
Legal Topics |
2009/08/05 16:15
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The Associated Press is reporting that the Senate held a history-making debate Tuesday on confirming Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice, with Republican opponents asserting she would bring bias to the bench and Democratic supporters saying she was a mainstream moderate.
There was little doubt that President Barack Obama's first high court nominee would be confirmed with bipartisan support as early as Thursday, but senators lined up to weigh in on her fitness for the bench anyway, with an eye toward the history books, the nation's burgeoning Hispanic electorate and perhaps the next Supreme Court battle.
"Judge Sotomayor's journey to this nomination is truly an American story ... (and) a reminder to all of the continuing vitality of the American dream," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman. His opening remarks framed Sotomayor's confirmation as a step on the nation's still-evolving "path of inclusion."
"She's a restrained, experienced and thoughtful judge who has shown no bias in her rulings," Leahy said.
Sotomayor, 55, is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before going on to success in the legal profession and then the federal bench. |
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Google Rebounds In AdWords Lawsuits
Legal Topics |
2009/08/04 16:43
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According to The Record, a favorable ruling for Rescuecom Corp. in April in a long-running case against Google Inc. has fueled more suits, including would-be class actions, against the search giant for selling trademarked keywords that trigger ads alongside its search results. But in the last two weeks, two AdWords lawsuits -- from Daniel Jurinand Ascentive LLC -- have folded. It highlights the difficulties of the suits, experts say: It's a hard case to make and it's expensive to litigate against Google. "We're starting to see some of these lawsuits crack," said Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University School of Law professor who follows the AdWords litigation closely on his Technology & Marketing blog. "My current hypothesis is that they never made sense in the first place -- the plaintiffs got all excited to go take down Google, but suing Google is a loser's bet because Google's going to fight to the death." In these suits, advertisers accuse Google of selling trademarked keywords to anyone, including competitors. They claim that constitutes infringement because Google users could be confused by links to competitors' ads that appear alongside Google search results for the company's trademarked name. |
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