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PG&E starts pipeline shutdown under court order
Updated Court News |
2013/10/07 10:44
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Pacific Gas & Electric Co. says it will comply with a judge's order and shut down a natural gas pipeline after safety issues were raised.
The utility said Sunday it believes the pipeline is safe despite an engineer's email questioning the safety of the 83-year-old line's welds. PG&E said it could take until Tuesday to safely shut down the line and seamlessly switch its customers to another line.
A judge ordered the line shut down after San Carlos city officials discovered the email and declared a "state of emergency."
The email said PG&E's records incorrectly show the line containing a newer, more reliable weld than it actually has.
PG&E said state-of-the-art tests show the line is safe and that it was shutting the line only because of the court order.
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Spanish court convicts 53 in corruption trial
Updated Court News |
2013/10/04 13:59
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A Spanish court convicted 53 people Friday in the country's biggest-ever corruption trial, which lasted two years and centered on widespread real estate fraud and bribery in the southern jet-set resort town of Marbella.
The defendants in the trial, which ended last year, included former town hall officials, lawyers and business representatives. The judge took several months to decide on the sentences — 40 other people were acquitted and two accused died while the case was being prepared.
Under a highly complex scheme in the mid-1990s, city funds were widely misappropriated, and public officials and business representatives divvied up under-the table kickbacks for planning permissions and construction of hotels, residential complexes and urban infrastructure. Much of the money was then laundered with the help of lawyers.
Marbella, located on Spain's southern coast, was a magnet for jet set and society figures from across the world during the 1970s and 1980s.
The man who prosecutors said was the mastermind of the fraud, former Marbella urban planning adviser Juan Antonio Roca, got the biggest sentence — 11 years — for money laundering, bribery and fraud. He also was fined 240 million euros ($326 million).
Roca has been in jail since 2006 when he was first arrested as the case broke. Back then, he was considered one of the richest people in Spain with his assets including ranches, fighting bulls, thoroughbred horses, art, expensive cars and boats.
The scheme began when late Atletico Madrid soccer club owner Jesus Gil y Gil was mayor of Marbella between 1991 and 2002. Roca began working for Marbella town hall under Gil and claimed during the trial that he was just following the mayor's orders. |
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Once notable NJ lawyer given life sentence
Updated Court News |
2013/09/25 12:01
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A defense attorney who once had a roster of celebrity clients and boasted of having tried hundreds of cases in federal court was sentenced there on Monday to life in prison without parole after his conviction on nearly two dozen counts including murder conspiracy and racketeering.
Paul Bergrin, in custody since his 2009 arrest, wore khaki prison scrubs and showed little reaction as a judge read what amounted to several life sentences Monday afternoon in a federal courtroom in Newark.
The 57-year-old former federal prosecutor once represented an Army reservist charged in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and celebrities such as Queen Latifah, the rapper Lil' Kim and the group Naughty By Nature. He also represented reputed gang members and alleged drug kingpins from his offices in Newark.
Bergrin, formerly of Nutley, and several associates were arrested and charged in May 2009 with running his law business as a criminal enterprise. The U.S. attorney's office charged Bergrin with more than 30 counts including racketeering, setting up the murder of a witness, money laundering and drug offenses. His first trial, in which Bergrin represented himself, ended in a hung jury two years ago.
A second trial resulted in his conviction in March on 23 counts related to operating what prosecutors said was a racketeering enterprise that engaged in drug trafficking, prostitution, bribery, plotting to murder witnesses and money laundering. |
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Court: Texas can use existing voting maps in 2014
Updated Court News |
2013/09/09 13:02
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A federal court said Friday it will not delay Texas' primary elections and ordered the state to use political maps drawn by the Legislature — but only temporarily, while the judges sort out a complex and possibly precedent-setting lawsuit.
The three-judge panel in San Antonio gave both sides in the lawsuit over Texas' voting maps reason to claim victory. The court will not draw its own map for the 2014 elections, as civil rights groups wanted, but it also did not throw out the lawsuit completely, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott requested.
The court order, signed by all three judges, also allows the civil rights and minority groups to argue that all changes to Texas election law should be reviewed by federal authorities before they can be implemented. The Justice Department has sought to intervene in the case after a recent Supreme Court decision requiring Congress to make changes to the Voting Rights Act.
The fundamental issue of the lawsuit, filed in 2011, is whether the Legislature illegally drew political maps that intentionally diminish the voting power of minorities in Texas. Abbott's office has argued in court papers that Republicans who control the Legislature drew maps to boost the chances of their party — which is legal — and that if minorities who vote predominantly Democratic are hurt as a result, that does not constitute a civil rights violation. |
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Ind. high court to hear eminent domain lawsuit
Updated Court News |
2013/08/27 15:04
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The Indiana Supreme Court has agreed to hear an eminent domain case involving land in southern Indiana that a local board claimed for a planned airport runway expansion.
The state's high court recently vacated the Indiana Court of Appeals' ruling in the case involving the action by the now-defunct Clark County Board of Aviation Commissioners. That board used eminent domain in 2009 to acquire property owned by resident Margaret Dreyer for a runway expansion at the Clark County Regional Airport.
Dreyer sued the board, alleging its appraisals of the property acquired through eminent domain were wrong. She won and was awarded a judgment of $865,000.
The News and Tribune reported Clark County became party to the case last year when Dreyer's motion was granted to have the "civil government of Clark County" pay the judgment. The Court of Appeals later upheld the verdict.
South Central Regional Airport Authority Attorney Greg Fifer said last week in an email that the Indiana Supreme Court could either reach the same verdict as the appellate court, or affirm the county's position that the judgment was void.
Authority President Tom Galligan said the panel, which replaced the now-defunct Board of Aviation Commissioners, is pleased with the court's decision to hear the case. He said the airport authority thought the original ruling "was not a very good ruling." |
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