|
|
|
Judge tosses New Mexico rancher’s claim after he kills wolf
Attorney News |
2021/03/25 09:17
|
A federal judge has tossed a rancher’s claim that he should still have the right to use federal land in New Mexico after it was revoked for killing a wolf.
Craig Thiessen killed an endangered Mexican wolf in Gila National Forest six years ago and has since argued that he should still be allowed to graze his cattle on the 48,000 acres (about 194 square kilometers) of public land, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported on Friday.
That argument was rejected this week by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Fouratt.
Thiessen pleaded guilty in 2018 for killing the wolf. He faced a year of probation and a $2,300 fine. Later that year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revoked his company’s permit to graze cattle on the public land.
A court document said he had 286 cows and 143 calves on the property. Thiessen has continued legal action in an attempt to keep his cattle on the land. The federal fish and wildlife service has sued Thiessen to remove the cows.
Hayden Ballard, an attorney who has represented Thiessen, did not respond to a request for comment on Friday by the newspaper.
Representatives from four conservation groups said in a statement that Thiessen had given up his privileges to use the public land after his actions.
Greta Anderson from the Western Watersheds Project accused Thiessen on Friday of animal cruelty by killing the wolf. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that numerous accounts said the young wolf’s leg was caught in a trap and it was then struck with a shovel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dinamo Zagreb coach quits after receiving prison sentence
Attorney News |
2021/03/16 21:54
|
Zoran Mamic quit as Dinamo Zagreb coach after Croatia’s Supreme Court confirmed his nearly five-year prison sentence for tax evasion and fraud, just days before the Croatian champions play a Europa League match against Tottenham.
“Although I do not feel guilty, as I announced earlier, if the verdict is final, I accept it as such and resign from the position of head coach and sports director of GNK Dinamo,” Mamic said in a statement late Monday. “I wish the club a lot of luck and sporting success in its future work.”
Mamic has no further avenue for appeal, and will have to go to prison upon receiving the formal notification of the court ruling.
Mamic and his brother Zdravko, a former Dinamo Zagreb executive director, were charged with embezzling the equivalent of $18 million from the sale of Dinamo Zagreb players to foreign clubs, and for tax evasion worth $2 million.
The Mamic brothers were suspected of embezzlement through fictitious deals made during transfers of several former Dinamo players to foreign clubs, including Luka Modric to Tottenham in 2008.
The Real Madrid midfielder, a former FIFA player of the year, was a key witness during the trial, testifying about his financial deals with the Mamics.
Zoran Mamic was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison. Zdravko Mamic, who was sentenced to six years and six months, fled to Bosnia shortly after a lower court passed the original sentences in 2018.
The Supreme Court also confirmed a three-year prison sentence for former Dinamo director Damir Vrbanovic.
The club said Mamic would be replaced as coach by Damir Krznar.
Dinamo is scheduled to host Tottenham on Thursday in the return leg of their Europa League playoff. Tottenham won the first leg 2-0 last week.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kuwait court expels harsh government critic from parliament
Attorney News |
2021/03/12 10:53
|
Kuwait’s constitutional court ordered the country’s most outspoken opposition lawmaker expelled from parliament on Sunday, inflaming tensions between the government and legislature and revealing the limits of political freedom in the Gulf state.
The court nullified Bader al-Dahoum’s membership in the currently suspended parliament, citing an old conviction for insulting the late emir. The decision sparked instant fury among his fellow lawmakers, given that the country’s highest appeals court had since acquitted al-Dahoum on the defamation charges, clearing the way for him to run in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Al-Dahoum has become notorious in Kuwait for his vociferous protests against the government. In recent weeks, the discord between the country’s elected parliament and emir-appointed Cabinet has reached a fever pitch. While Kuwait’s parliament is more democratic than other Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, its powers remain limited. Lawmakers can introduce legislation and interrogate ministers, though the emir retains ultimate authority and ruling family members hold senior posts.
Following lawmakers’ uproar over new ministerial appointments earlier this year, the government resigned and the emir later suspended parliament for a month starting Feb. 18 to defuse tensions. The deadlock has pushed oil-rich Kuwait toward its worst financial crisis in decades and impeded all efforts toward political and social reform.
As lawmakers convened to discuss next steps Sunday, distrust was running high. Lawmakers suspected political motives in the court decision, with 28 deputies demanding urgent legal changes to reduce the court’s influence over the elected parliament.
The move comes as opposition figures in Kuwait are feeling increasingly hemmed in amid the suspension of parliament and a nationwide coronavirus curfew that forbids residents from gathering and leaving their homes after 5pm.
The ruling “is seen as an attempt by the government to eliminate a harsh critic from the political scene,” said Kuwaiti political analyst Mohammed al-Yousef. “It’s a bad sign for how the government will deal with dissent.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anchorage companies, man fined for clean air violations
Attorney News |
2021/03/01 06:20
|
A man and two companies in Alaska have been sentenced to three years probation and a $35,000 fine for violating the Clean Air Act involving asbestos work at a shopping center more than five years ago, a judge said.
The work was performed at the Northern Lights Center in Anchorage, the former location of an REI store. Reports of potential asbestos exposure at the time closed the store for a day back in 2015, authorities said.
U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred sentenced Tae Ryung Yoon, 64, on Friday to probation, fined him $35,000 and said he owes $30,000 in restitution for medical monitoring of the four workers who claimed they were exposed to asbestos, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
The owners of Yoo Jin Management Company Ltd. and Mush Inn Corp. were also sentenced after agreeing to plead guilty to a charge of violating the Clean Air Act’s Asbestos Work Practice Standards. Both companies are owned by Chun Yoo, who is in his 80s and has “serious medical conditions,” and his wife, attorney Kevin Fitzgerald said. The couple still owns the center.
The case centers on workers who said they were exposed to asbestos during improperly conducted renovations involving an old boiler room. The work was stopped when two of the workers raised concerns.
High levels of asbestos exposure can cause lung disease or cancer.
Prosecutors said in a statement that the building owners and manager relied on a contractor who was not a certified asbestos abatement contractor and “failed to inform the contractor of the possibility of asbestos in the old boiler room.”
Fitzgerald argued that an assessment indicated no evidence of asbestos when his clients bought the center in 2006. Yoon was the building’s property manager at the time.
Documents show the boilers were replaced by another company in 2012 and the old ones were removed in 2014 to make more room. Some of the workers took photos of what they thought was asbestos and emailed them to the property management company that employed Yoon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Judge says lawyer who killed her son also tracked Sotomayor
Attorney News |
2021/02/20 01:45
|
The lawyer who killed a federal judge’s son and seriously wounded her husband at their New Jersey home last summer also had been tracking Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the judge said in a television interview.
U.S. District Judge Esther Salas said FBI agents discovered the information in a locker belonging to the lawyer, Roy Den Hollander. “They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” Salas said in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” The segment is scheduled for broadcast Sunday, but a portion of the interview aired Friday on “CBS This Morning.”
Both the Supreme Court and the FBI declined to comment Friday. “We do not discuss security as a matter of Court policy,” court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in an email.
Authorities have said Den Hollander, a men’s rights lawyer with a history of anti-feminist writings, posed as a FedEx delivery person and fatally shot 20-year-old Daniel Anderl and wounded his father, Mark Anderl, in July. Salas was in another part of the home at the time and was not injured.
Den Hollander, 72, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the day after the ambush. Authorities believe he also shot and killed a fellow attorney in California in the days before the attack at Salas’ home.
The AP has previously reported that when Den Hollander was found dead he had a document with him with information about a dozen female judges from across the country, half of whom are Latina, including Salas.
Salas has been calling for more privacy and protections for judges, including scrubbing personal information from the internet, to deal with mounting cyberthreats. The U.S. Marshals Service, which protects about 2,700 federal judges, said there were 4,449 threats and inappropriate communications in 2019, up from 926 such incidents in 2015.
Legislation named for Salas’ son that would make it easier to shield judges’ personal information from the public failed to pass the Senate in December, but could be reintroduced this year. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
European court rejects case vs Germany over Afghan airstrike
Attorney News |
2021/02/16 17:57
|
The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday rejected a complaint against Germany’s refusal to prosecute an officer who ordered the deadly bombing in 2009 of two fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan.
Scores of people died when U.S. Air Force jets bombed the tankers hijacked by the Taliban near Kunduz. The strike was ordered by the commander of the German base in Kunduz, Col. Georg Klein, who feared insurgents could use the trucks to carry out attacks.
Contrary to the intelligence Klein based his decision on, most of those swarming the trucks were local civilians invited by the Taliban to siphon fuel from the vehicles after they had become stuck in a riverbed.
An Afghan man who lost two sons aged 8 and 12 in the airstrike, Abdul Hanan, took the case to the European Court of Human Rights after German authorities declined to prosecute Klein. He alleged that Germany failed to conduct an effective investigation and that no “effective domestic remedy” to that had been available in Germany.
The Strasbourg, France-based court rejected the complaints. It found that German federal prosecutors were “able to rely on a considerable amount of material concerning the circumstances and the impact of the airstrike.”
It also noted that courts including Germany’s highest, the Federal Constitutional Court, rejected cases by Hanan. And it added that a parliamentary commission of inquiry “had ensured a high level of public scrutiny of the case.”
Wolfgang Kaleck, the head of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights who provided legal support to Hanan, said the verdict was a disappointment for the plaintiff and his fellow villagers, but noted that judges had made clear that governments have a duty to at least investigate such cases.
“The bombardment and the dozens of civilian deaths didn’t result in a rebuke, there’s no resumption of the criminal case,” he told reporters after the court announced its decision. “On the other hand it will be very important internationally, also in future, that the European Convention on Human Rights applies,” Kaleck said. “That’s to say, those who conduct such military operations have to legally answer for them afterward, hopefully to a greater extent than in the Kunduz case.”
A separate legal effort to force Germany to pay more compensation than the $5,000 it has so far given families for each victim was rejected last year by the Federal Constitutional Court. This civil case can still be appealed in Strasbourg.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Man who broke ankle at farm obstacle course wins appeal
Attorney News |
2021/02/14 01:58
|
A man who broke an ankle on an obstacle course at a pumpkin patch will get his foot inside a courthouse again.
A judge wrongly dismissed Tarek Hamade’s lawsuit against DeBuck’s Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch, the Michigan Court of Appeals said Thursday.
Hamade fractured an ankle while running across tires that were part of an obstacle course known as “Tough Farmer.” He said he was injured while stepping on a tire that was very soft at the fall attraction near Belleville.
DeBuck’s argued that the spongy tire was an open and obvious risk, a key legal standard under Michigan liability law.
“It’s an obstacle course. It’s meant to be difficult to traverse,” attorney Drew Broaddus said at a Feb. 3 hearing.
But the appeals court said the tire’s condition was not obvious.
“If they’d called it the ‘spongy tire challenge’ we might have a different case. But that’s not what it was presented as,” Judge Michael Gadola said.
Hamade’s lawsuit now returns to Wayne County Circuit Court.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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. |
|
|
