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Discrimination claim appears to divide high court
Headline News |
2009/04/23 09:32
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A divided Supreme Court took up its first examination of race in the Obama era Wednesday, wrestling with claims of job discrimination by white firefighters in a case that could force changes in employment practices nationwide.
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The case from New Haven, Conn., pits white firefighters, who showed up at the court Wednesday in their dress uniforms, against the city over its decision to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results./ppAs is often the case with closely fought social issues at the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to hold the key to the outcome. He seemed concerned that New Haven scuttled the test without determining that there were flaws that might have led to the racially disproportionate results./ppSo shouldn't there be some standard that there has to be a significant, a strong showing after the test has been taken that it's deficient? Before it can be set aside? he said./ppKennedy often frowns on racial classifications, yet he is not as opposed to drawing distinctions on the basis of race as his more conservative colleagues./ppBut where Kennedy saw shades of gray, the rest of the court seemed to view the case clearly in terms of black and white./p |
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Supreme Court limits warrantless vehicle searches
Law Firm News |
2009/04/22 09:33
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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police need a warrant to search the vehicle of someone they have arrested if the person is locked up in a patrol cruiser and poses no safety threat to officers.
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The court's 5-4 decision puts new limits on the ability of police to search a vehicle immediately after the arrest of a suspect./ppJustice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion that warrantless searches still may be conducted if a car's passenger compartment is within reach of a suspect who has been removed from the vehicle or there is reason to believe evidence of a crime will be found./ppWhen these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee's vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant, Stevens said./ppJustice Samuel Alito, in dissent, complained that the decision upsets police practice that has developed since the court first authorized warrantless searches immediately following an arrest./ppThere are cases in which it is unclear whether an arrestee could retrieve a weapon or evidence, Alito said./p |
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US Supreme Court to rule on animal cruelty law
Topics |
2009/04/21 09:32
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The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether a federal law that makes it a crime to sell videos of animals being tortured or killed violates constitutional free-speech rights.
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The high court agreed to hear a U.S. Justice Department appeal defending the 1999 animal cruelty law after it was struck down for infringing free-speech protections./pspan id=midArticle_4/spanpA U.S. appeals court declared the law unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of a Virginia man, Robert Stevens, who sold three videos of pit bulls fighting each other and attacking hogs and wild boars./pspan id=midArticle_5/spanpHis conviction in 2005 was the first in the country under the law. Stevens had been sentenced to 37 months in prison./pspan id=midArticle_6/spanpBy a 10-3 vote, the appeals court rejected the government's argument that, for the first time in more than 25 years, there was a new category of speech not covered by constitutional free-speech protections. Usually, videos and other depictions are protected as free speech, even if they show abhorrent conduct./p |
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Court to weigh state's duty to English learners
Law Center |
2009/04/20 09:31
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The Supreme Court on Monday takes up an Arizona case that could limit a federal court's power to tell states to spend more money to educate students who aren't proficient in English.
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Arizona state legislators and the state superintendent of public instruction want to be freed from federal court oversight of the state's programs for English learners. They've been ordered by a lower court judge to spend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with rulings in a 17-year-old case./ppParents of students attending southern Arizona's Nogales Unified School District sued the state in 1992, contending programs for English-language learners in Nogales were deficient and received inadequate funding from the state./ppIn 2000, a federal judge found that the state had violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act's requirements for appropriate instruction for English-language learners. He ordered state legislators to create a plan to provide sufficient funds and placed the state's programs for non-English speaking students under court oversight./ppSince then, the two sides have fought over what constitutes compliance with the order. Arizona has more than doubled the amount that schools receive per non-English speaking student and taken several other steps prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act, a broader education accountability law passed by Congress in 2002./ppPlaintiffs say that's not enough to comply with federal law and a judge agreed. But the state appealed, and now the high court will answer the question./p |
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Davis Wright Tremaine Being Sued
Firm News/Oregon |
2009/04/14 13:39
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Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, one of the Northwest’s largest law firms, is being sued for violating Oregon securities law by investors in Sunwest Management Inc., the disgraced senior living operator.
The Portland office of Davis Wright Tremaine referred calls to the public relations department in its Seattle office, which could not be reached to comment.
The lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court names a series of Oregon limited liability corporations as plaintiffs and seeks to represent approximately 1,200 Oregon investors as a class action matter.
The named plaintiffs all invested in senior housing communities controlled by Jon Harder and Sunwest Management.
The suit accuses Davis Wright Tremaine and Timothy Dozois, a partner in the firm, of misleading investors into thinking they were buying into specific properties and that they would receive rent payments from Sunwest, which managed the series of allegedly independent properties. The suit seeks compensation for damages from the loss of value of Sunwest Management, once a $2 billion-plus company.
Damages could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Attorneys involved in the case said they do not know the limits of Davis Wright Tremaine’s professional liability insurance. Oregon is the only state that mandates malpractice insurance for attorneys, but the amount is limited to about $300,000 per related case, according to the Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund. Large firms often carry excess insurance.
The suit seeks to hold Sunwest’s lawyers accountable to investors for misleading them about the nature of their investments.
“The defendants omitted material facts in connection with their own statements to investors. Defendants and other attorneys in Portland, Oregon also participated and materially assisted in the unlawful sale of these securities through their relationship with (Sunwest founder and controlling owner) Jon M. Harder and his enterprise of closely related Oregon companies,” plaintiffs claim.
Harder, who has filed for personal bankruptcy, is not a defendant in the case.
Justine Fischer, a Portland attorney working for the plaintiff’s team, said the next step is to have the suit designated as a “complex” case and assigned to a judge already hearing other legal matters pertaining to Harder and the Sunwest matter.
The investor suit mirrors a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for Oregon by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Like the investor suit, the SEC suit characterizes Sunwest as a “Ponzi” scheme and said the company improperly managed its empire, which once included about 250 senior living centers, as a single operation instead of the unrelated businesses it described to investors.
Investors purchased shares of the real estate as tenants in common and were supposed to be paid rent by Sunwest Management.
Instead, Sunwest diverted funds from profitable properties to pay costs of unprofitable ones. When the economy collapsed and Sunwest could not secure credit, the company stopped making mortgage payments on some properties, triggering dozens of foreclosures and other legal actions.
The suit accuses Davis Wright Tremaine of facilitating the scheme by misrepresenting the “unitary” nature of the operation.
The suit says Davis Wright Tremaine and Dozois prepared numerous documents that misled investors into thinking they were buying into particular properties, including memoranda, disclosure materials, tenancy in common agreements, triple net lease documents, warranty deeds, operating agreements, real property purchase agreements and escrow instructions.
“The defendants and the Harder Enterprise did not tell investors that revenue generated in connection with the property they were investing in could be commingled and used to help fund less profitable properties owned and operated by the Harder Enterprise or would be loaned to less profitable properties. Investors also were not told that the Harder Enterprise had engaged extensively in such commingling of funds in the past and intended to continue do to so in the future,” the suit claims.
In addition to Fischer, the plaintiffs are being represented by two Washington, D.C., law firms, Cohen Milstein Sellers amp; Toll PLLC and the Law Office of Herbert Adelman. |
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Davis Polk Recruits Ex-SEC Aide
Law Center |
2009/04/13 09:30
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pLaw firm Davis Polk amp; Wardwell recruited the Securities and Exchange Commission's former enforcement chief and another former high-level government lawyer to join its white-collar defense group, part of an effort to expand its Washington practice.
Linda Chatman Thomsen, who left the SEC earlier this year, and Raul Yanes, former staff secretary to President George W. Bush, are joining the law firm as partners./ppBoth had worked at Davis Polk in New York before joining the government./ppThe duo will be the first litigators in the 11-person Washington office in years./ppFormer SEC Commissioner Annette Nazareth and Robert Colby, a former deputy director of the SEC's trading and markets division, also recently joined the firm's Washington office to focus on financial regulatory issues./ppDavis Polk clients, including large financial institutions, are closely entangled with the government as it has pumped billions of dollars into financial rescue plans. Congress is studying new regulation of financial markets./p |
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