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High court considers Ga. suit over false testimony
Law Firm News |
2011/11/03 08:48
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The Supreme Court wrestled Tuesday with whether government officials are protected from civil lawsuits, even if they tell lies that lead a grand jury to vote for an indictment.
The justices heard arguments in an appeal from Charles Rehberg, an accountant who was indicted three times involving charges that he harassed doctors affiliated with a south Georgia hospital system.
After the third indictment was dismissed even before a trial, Rehberg sued local prosecutors and their investigator, James Paulk. Rehberg argues that he was placed under investigation because of the hospital's political connections and that Paulk's false grand jury testimony led to the indictments.
At issue in the high court is whether grand jury testimony could make a person liable in a civil lawsuit. A key question is whether the justices consider such testimony to be more like an affidavit or a trial. Witnesses are protected from civil lawsuits over what they say in trial testimony.
Paulk argues that the grand jury is part of the judicial process, and testimony there should be afforded the same protection it gets at trial. |
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Court unlikely to allow private prison to be sued
Law Firm News |
2011/11/02 08:48
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The Supreme Court seemed unlikely on Tuesday to allow employees at a privately run federal prison to be sued by an inmate in federal court, despite his complaint that their neglect left him with two permanently damaged arms.
Justices heard appeals from lawyers representing employees of the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp, who work at the privately run Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, Calif. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled inmate Richard Lee Pollard could sue GEO officials for his treatment after he fell and fractured both of his elbows.
Pollard said GEO officials put him in a metal restraint that caused him pain, and refused to provide him with a splint, making his injuries worse and causing permanent impairment. He sued in federal court for money, claiming GEO officials had violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The federal appeals court allowed his lawsuit against the GEO officials to move forward. Courts normally don't allow government employees to be sued in those types of lawsuits, but the high court has authorized some if constitutionally protected rights have been violated by the federal employee and there is no state court remedy. |
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Scandal-plagued former Bell official sues city
Headline News |
2011/11/01 10:07
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Public outrage — and changed locks — forced Robert Rizzo out of a job last year, but the former city manager says he's still owed his $1.5 million salary and benefits.
In a lawsuit against the city of Bell filed Monday, Rizzo claims he's owed his wages — with interest — because he hasn't been convicted of a felony and hasn't resigned his post.
According to prosecutors, Rizzo orchestrated a scheme to bilk the Los Angeles suburb out of more than $6 million by paying himself and other Bell city officials' exorbitant salaries. They face charges of fraud and misappropriation of public funds.
Rizzo has pleaded not guilty.
In the lawsuit he filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Rizzo said he hasn't been paid since a public meeting in July 2010, when the small, blue-collar community of Bell learned of his outsized salary and benefits.
Protesters were outraged by compensation of $100,000 to City Council members that met once a month, but it was Rizzo's $787,637 salary, along with numerous perks that amounted to nearly $1.5 million a year, that made him the poster-child for corruption in government for furious Bell residents. |
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SF court to hear appeal by Tucson rampage suspect
Headline News |
2011/11/01 10:07
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A federal appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday on requests from attorneys for the Tucson, Ariz., shooting rampage suspect to halt their mentally ill client's forced medication with psychotropic drugs and rescind his stay at a Missouri prison facility.
Jared Lee Loughner's lawyers have asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to end their client's commitment at the prison in Springfield, Mo., where mental health experts are trying to make him psychologically fit to stand trial.
Loughner has been treated for his mental illness in Missouri after U.S. District Judge Larry Burns in May declared him mentally unfit to stand trial.
However, Burns ruled in late September that it's probable the 23-year-old can be made fit for trial, and ordered that Loughner's four-month stay in Missouri be extended by another four months.
Loughner has pleaded not guilty to 49 charges stemming from the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson that killed six people and injured U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 12 others.
Prosecutors asked the appeals court to reject the requests by Loughner's lawyers, saying Burns made the correct decision in extending Loughner's stay in Missouri.
Defense attorneys argued Loughner's forced medication to treat bipolar disorder has violated his rights and that there's no evidence he can be made mentally fit for trial in the next four months. They said even if Loughner can be made fit, his right to a fair trial could be violated because of the possible sedative effect of the drugs he's being forced to take. |
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High court avoids dispute over highway crosses
Headline News |
2011/10/31 08:48
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a ruling that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers violate the Constitution.
The justices voted 8-1 Monday to reject an appeal from Utah and a state troopers' group that wanted the court to throw out the ruling and take a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land.
Since 1998, the private Utah Highway Patrol Association has paid for and erected more than a dozen memorial crosses, most of them on state land. Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state in 2005.
The federal appeals court in Denver said the crosses were an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity by the Utah state government.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 19-page opinion dissenting from Monday's order. Thomas said the case offered the court the opportunity to clear up confusion over its approach to disputes over the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion. |
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Alabama immigration fight recalls civil rights era
Headline News |
2011/10/31 08:48
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The epicenter of the fight over the patchwork of immigration laws in the United States is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.
No, the case that's likely to be the first sorted out by the U.S. Supreme Court comes from the Deep South state of Alabama, where the nation's strictest immigration law has resurrected ugly images from the state's days as the nation's battleground for civil rights a half-century ago.
And Alabama's jump to the forefront says as much about the country's evolving demographics as it does the nation's collective memory of the state's sometimes violent path to desegregation.
With the failure of Congress in recent years to pass comprehensive federal immigration legislation, Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and Indiana have passed their own. But supporters and opponents alike agree none contained provisions as strict as those passed in Alabama, among them one that required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants. |
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