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Trump closes in on Supreme Court pick; 3 judges top list
Legal Court Feed |
2018/07/05 15:43
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leading the competition to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Trump's top contenders for the vacancy at this time are federal appeals judges Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Raymond Kethledge, said a person familiar with Trump's thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Working closely with a White House team and consulting with lawmakers and outside advisers, Trump has spent the week deliberating on the choice. He conducted interviews on Monday and Tuesday and has spoken to seven possible candidates. He has not yet publicly indicated that he has narrowed the list and could still consider others in the mix.
With customary fanfare, Trump plans to announce his selection Monday night, kicking off a contentious nomination process as Republicans seek to shift the court to the right and Democrats strive to block the effort.
Vice President Mike Pence has also met with some of the contenders for the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement, The Associated Press has learned.
The meetings took place in recent days, according to a person familiar with the search process. The person did not specify which candidates Pence met with and spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday to describe the private search process.
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Lawyers: 2014 arrest at Vegas hotel precursor to killings
Legal Court Feed |
2018/07/05 15:42
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Attorneys in a negligence lawsuit stemming from the Las Vegas Strip shooting say the massacre could have been avoided if hotel management tightened security after a man was found with multiple weapons at the Mandalay Bay resort in 2014.
Lawyer Robert Eglet said Friday the arrest of Kye Aaron Dunbar in a 24th-floor Mandalay Bay room with guns including an assault-style rifle, a tripod and a telescopic sight bears similarities to the Oct. 1 shooting.
Last year, gunman Stephen Paddock killed 58 people shooting modified assault-style weapons from a 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay into a concert crowd below.
Dunbar is 32 and serving federal prison time after pleading guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.
Hotel officials aren't commenting about a court filing Thursday that brought the Dunbar case to light.
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California high court: Yelp can't be ordered to remove posts
Legal Court Feed |
2018/07/02 16:58
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Online review site Yelp.com cannot be ordered to remove posts against a San Francisco law firm that a judge determined were defamatory, a divided California Supreme Court ruled Monday in a closely watched case that internet companies warned could be used to silence online speech.
In a 4-3 opinion, justices agreed, saying removal orders such as the one attorney Dawn Hassell obtained against Yelp "could interfere with and undermine the viability of an online platform."
The decision overturned a lower court ruling that Yelp had said could lead to the removal of negative reviews from the popular website.
Hassell said Yelp was exaggerating the stakes of her legal effort. Her attorney, Monique Olivier, said in a statement that the ruling "stands as an invitation to spread falsehoods on the internet without consequence."
She said her client was considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hassell's 2013 lawsuit accused a client she briefly represented in a personal injury case of defaming her on Yelp by falsely claiming that her firm failed to communicate with the client, among other things.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Donald Sullivan found the online statements defamatory and ordered the client and Yelp to remove them. Hassell said the client failed to answer her lawsuit or remove the posts, so she had to seek a court order demanding that Yelp do it.
A second judge and a state appeals court upheld Sullivan's order.
"Ms. Hassell did exactly what she should have done," Olivier said Monday. "After both the defamer and Yelp refused to remove untrue and damaging statements, she obtained a judgment against the defamer, and sought to enforce that judgment by requiring Yelp to remove the defamation."
Yelp said the lower court ruling would give businesses unhappy about negative reviews a new legal pathway for getting them removed.
Yelp said the removal order violated a 1996 federal law that courts have widely interpreted as protecting internet companies from liability for posts by third-party users and prohibiting the companies from being treated as the speaker or publisher of users' posts.
Three of the California Supreme Court justices agreed.
"In substance, Yelp is being held to account for nothing more than its ongoing decision to publish the challenged reviews," Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in an opinion joined by associate justices Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan.
Associate Justice Leondra Kruger said in a separate opinion that she agreed that the removal order against Yelp was invalid, but for a different reason. Hassell did not name Yelp as a defendant, so the company did not get its "own day in court," Kruger said. |
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Court: S.Korea must allow alternative for military objectors
Legal Court Feed |
2018/06/26 17:01
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South Korea's Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the country must allow alternative social service for people who conscientiously object to military service, which is currently mandatory for able-bodied males.
The ruling requires the government to introduce alternative service by the end of 2019. It was hailed by activists as a breakthrough that advances individual rights and freedom of thought.
It is also likely to trigger a heated debate in a country which maintains a huge military to counter North Korea threats, and where many have accused conscientious objectors of attempting to evade the draft.
Hundreds of conscientious objectors are imprisoned in South Korea each year, serving terms of 18 months or longer. Most are Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse to serve in the military on religious grounds.
"Too many people have been forced to choose between prison and the military, and when they choose prison, a term of 1 1/2 years has been almost automatic," said Lim Jae-sung, a human rights lawyer who has represented contentious objectors. "This is great news for those who are currently on trial or will conscientiously object to military service in the future as we probably won't be marching them straight to jail."
The court said the current law, which does not permit alternative service, is unconstitutional because it infringes excessively on individual rights.
The court acknowledged that conscientious objectors experience "enormous disadvantages" in addition to their prison terms, including restrictions in public sector employment, maintaining business licenses and social stigma. |
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Wolf held fundraiser at law firm his administration is suing
Legal Court Feed |
2018/06/18 10:26
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Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's campaign held a $1,000-a-head fundraiser at the offices of a law firm that his administration and the city of Harrisburg are suing over its role in a municipal trash incinerator that helped drive the city into state receivership.
Pennlive.com reported Monday that Wolf's campaign held the June 12 fundraiser at Buchanan Ingersoll and Rooney's offices in Harrisburg.
Last month's lawsuit named four law firms, two financial entities and an engineering company in what it called it "the worst municipal financial disaster" in Pennsylvania history.
Wolf's campaign spokeswoman says the fundraiser "changes nothing" in Wolf's efforts to hold parties involved in the incinerator accountable.
A spokesman for Wolf's Republican challenger, Scott Wagner, says Wolf should refuse the law firm's contributions if he thinks it was so negligent.
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