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Feds head to court to seek dismissal of Twin Metals lawsuit
Areas of Focus |
2017/11/14 03:08
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Government lawyers go to federal court Tuesday to seek dismissal of a lawsuit by developers of the proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel mine who are seeking to regain their mineral rights leases.
The Obama administration last year declined to renew the longstanding leases that Twin Metals needs for the underground mine near Ely in northeastern Minnesota. The government cited the potential harm to the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Twin Metals sued last fall to get those leases back, saying it has already invested $400 million, while its congressional supporters are trying to persuade the Trump administration to reverse that decision.
The government argues that the U.S. District Court for Minnesota should dismiss the lawsuit because it's a contract dispute that must be brought in the Court of Federal Claims. |
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Kenya court set to hear petitions challenging repeat vote
Attorney News |
2017/11/13 03:09
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Kenya's Supreme Court is poised to hear petitions challenging President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election in a repeat presidential poll.
The court made history when it nullified Kenyatta's re-election in August. It cited irregularities and illegalities in the vote count and the electoral commission's failure to allow scrutiny of its servers to dispel opposition leader Raila Odinga's claim of fraud. It then ordered a new vote.
There are concerns about intimidation after the court failed to find a quorum to consider a petition seeking to postpone the repeat presidential election on Oct. 26, a day after a bodyguard of one of the judges was shot.
Politician Harun Mwau and activists Njonjo Mue and Khelef Khalifa seek to nullify the Oct. 26 election, which Odinga boycotted citing lack of electoral reforms.
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Samsung worker killed by brain tumor wins compensation case
Legal Interview |
2017/11/11 03:09
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Overturning an appeal court's decision, South Korea's Supreme Court said Tuesday the family of a Samsung worker who died of a brain tumor should be eligible for state compensation for an occupational disease.
The ruling on Lee Yoon-jung, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 30 and died two years later, reflects a shift in the handling of such cases in South Korea.
Workers used to have the onus of proving the cause of a disease caused by their work. But after years of campaigning by labor advocates to raise awareness about the obstacles workers face in getting information about chemicals used in manufacturing, courts have begun to sometimes rule in favor of workers.
Lee worked at a Samsung chip factory for six years from 1997 to 2003 but there was no record available of the levels of chemicals she was exposed to while working there.
An appeals court denied the claim filed by Lee, based on government investigations into the factory conducted after she left the company. The investigations reported that the workers' exposure to some toxins, such as benzene, formaldehyde and lead, were lower than maximum permissible limits. They did not measure exposure levels to other chemicals or investigate their health risks.
The Supreme Court said such limitations in government investigations should not be held against a worker with a rare disease whose cause is unknown.
The case filed by Lee's family is the second time this year South Korea's highest court has ruled in favor of a worker. In August, the Supreme Court struck down a lower court's ruling that denied compensation to a former Samsung LCD factory worker with multiple sclerosis.
The government-run Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service, the defendant in the case, did not respond to requests for comment.
Lim Ja-woon, the lawyer representing Lee, said brain tumors are the second-most common disease, after leukemia, among former Samsung workers who sought compensation or financial aid from the government or from Samsung for a possible occupational disease. He said 27 Samsung Electronics workers have been diagnosed with brain tumors, including eight people who worked at the same factory as Lee. |
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Trump choosing white men as judges, highest rate in decades
Attorney News |
2017/11/11 03:09
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President Donald Trump is nominating white men to America's federal courts at a rate not seen in nearly 30 years, threatening to reverse a slow transformation toward a judiciary that reflects the nation's diversity.
So far, 91 percent of Trump's nominees are white, and 81 percent are male, an Associated Press analysis has found. Three of every four are white men, with few African-Americans and Hispanics in the mix. The last president to nominate a similarly homogenous group was George H.W. Bush.
The shift could prove to be one of Trump's most enduring legacies. These are lifetime appointments, and Trump has inherited both an unusually high number of vacancies and an aging population of judges.
That puts him in position to significantly reshape the courts that decide thousands of civil rights, environmental, criminal justice and other disputes across the country. The White House has been upfront about its plans to quickly fill the seats with conservatives, and has made clear that judicial philosophy tops any concerns about shrinking racial or gender diversity.
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Florida man back at Supreme Court with 1st Amendment case
Legal Interview |
2017/11/10 17:10
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a First Amendment case brought by a Florida man who previously won a landmark ruling from the justices on whether his floating home was a house, not a boat subject to easier government seizure under laws that govern ships and boats.
This time, the justices agreed to hear a case in which Fane Lozman sued after being charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at a public meeting.
Lozman, 56, was never brought to trial on the charges — prosecutors dropped them after concluding there was no possibility of a conviction. Lozman then sued Riviera Beach, claiming his arrest at a 2006 city council meeting violated the First Amendment's free speech guarantee because it was in retaliation for opposing a marina redevelopment plan and accusing council members of corruption.
A jury sided with the city after a trial and an appeals court upheld that verdict. Lozman, however, took the case to the Supreme Court, arguing in part that U.S. appeals courts across the country are split on the issue of retaliatory arrest versus free speech. |
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High court to hear appeal in Newtown school shooting case
Court News |
2017/11/10 03:09
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Lawyers are set to ask the Connecticut Supreme Court to reinstate a wrongful death lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used in the 2012 Newtown school massacre.
Justices are scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in an appeal by a survivor and relatives of nine people killed in the shooting.
They're trying to sue Remington Arms, the North Carolina company that made the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Gunman Adam Lanza's mother legally purchased the rifle.
A lower court judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying federal law shields gun makers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products.
The company denies the lawsuit's allegations that it violated state law by selling such a dangerous weapon to the public. |
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Top German court strengthens intersex identity rights
Headline Legal News |
2017/11/09 03:10
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Germany’s highest court has decided that people must be allowed to be entered in official records as neither male nor female, saying in a ruling published Wednesday that authorities should create a third identity or scrap gender entries altogether.
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled on a case in which a plaintiff, identified by advocacy group Dritte Option only as Vanja, born in 1989, sought to have their entry in the birth register changed from “female” to “inter/diverse” or “diverse.”
Officials rejected the application on the grounds that the law only allows for children to be registered as male or female, or for the gender to be left blank.
The plaintiff argued that that was a violation of their personal rights. In a three-year legal battle, Vanja provided courts with a genetic analysis showing the plaintiff has one X chromosome but no second sex chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y chromosome.
The supreme court found that the law protects sexual identity, which has a “key position” in how individuals perceive themselves and are perceived by others. It said that “the sexual identity of those people who can be assigned neither to the male nor the female sex is also protected,” and said the constitution also protects them against discrimination because of their gender. The government has until the end of 2018 to draw up new rules.
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Headline Legal News for You to Reach America's Best Legal Professionals. The latest legal news and information - Law Firm, Lawyer and Legal Professional news in the Media. |
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