|
|
|
Fla. high court: Immigrant can't get law license
Court News |
2014/03/07 15:06
|
The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that immigrants in the country illegally can't be given a license to practice law.
The question was raised when a man who moved here from Mexico when he was 9 years old sought a license in Florida. The court said Thursday that federal law prohibits people who are unlawfully in the country from obtaining professional licenses. The justices said state law can override the federal ban, but Florida has taken no action to do so.
Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court granted a law license to Sergio Garcia, who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager with his father. But that ruling was only after the state approved a law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain the license. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
California court: Drivers can read cellphone maps
Court News |
2014/03/05 13:43
|
Drivers in California can legally read a map on their hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.
The 5th District Court of Appeal reversed the case of a Fresno man who was ticketed in January 2012 for looking at a map on his iPhone 4 while stuck in traffic. The driver, Steven Spriggs, challenged the $165 fine.
But Spriggs said he's no champion of those who think they can get away with cruising down the road while staring at their phone or engaging in other such dangerous behavior. Spriggs would like the law that ensnared him to be rewritten so officers can do their job unencumbered.
"We're distracted all the time," he said. "If our distractions cause us to drive erratically, we should be arrested for driving erratically."
It's personal for Spriggs, whose son suffered a broken leg from a driver who was chatting on a cellphone. Spriggs said he uses a hands-free device to talk and drive.
The incident that ensnared Spriggs happened when he was stopped by roadwork. He had grabbed his cellphone to find an alternate route when a California Highway Patrol officer on a motorcycle spotted him and wrote the ticket.
Spriggs first challenged the case in traffic court, where he lost, and then appealed it himself to a three-judge panel in Fresno County Superior Court, where he lost a second time. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
High court climate case looks at EPA's power
Court News |
2014/02/28 14:54
|
Industry groups and Republican-led states are heading an attack at the Supreme Court against the Obama administration's sole means of trying to limit power-plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
As President Barack Obama pledges to act on environmental and other matters when Congress doesn't, or won't, opponents of regulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cast the rule as a power grab of historic proportions.
The court is hearing arguments Monday about a small but important piece of the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to cut the emissions — a requirement that companies expanding industrial facilities or building new ones that would increase overall pollution must also evaluate ways to reduce the carbon they release.
Environmental groups and even some of their opponents say that whatever the court decides, EPA still will be able to move forward with broader plans to set emission standards for greenhouse gases for new and existing power plants. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ky. high court to hear death penalty appeal
Court News |
2014/02/13 14:54
|
The Kentucky Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case of a death row inmate who has twice won a new trial.
The justices on Thursday will take up the case of 57-year-old Michael Dale St. Clair, who was convicted in the 1991 slaying of distillery worker Frank Brady in Bullitt County.
St. Clair has won three trials in the case, which has lingered for years in appeals.
St. Clair and another inmate escaped from an Oklahoma prison before going on a multistate spree that ended in Kentucky with Brady's death. St. Clair also faces a murder charge in New Mexico for the 1991 kidnapping and slaying of paramedic Timothy Keeling.
St. Clair also received a second death sentence for capital kidnapping from the Hardin County Circuit Court. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Viacom, Fox want to run anti-smoking ads too
Court News |
2014/01/30 14:33
|
More TV networks want to gain from tobacco companies' mandate to run anti-smoking ads that will cost tens of millions of dollars.
Fox Broadcasting and the company behind MTV, Comedy Central and BET argue that a court-ordered plan to air anti-tobacco ads on ABC, CBS and NBC won't do a good job reaching young adult and black viewers. Those populations were aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry and are areas of concern for the public health community.
Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., and Viacom Inc. are asking the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to include its channels in the anti-smoking ad purchase.
The required ads stem from a 2006 ruling that the nation's largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. A judge ordered the tobacco companies to pay for corrective statements related to issues such as the adverse health effects of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine and the negative health effects of secondhand smoke. The companies involved in the case include Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., owner of the biggest U.S. tobacco company, Philip Morris USA; No. 2 cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., owned by Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American Inc.; and No. 3 cigarette maker Lorillard Inc., based in Greensboro, N.C.
Along with the TV ads, the tobacco companies are also meant to publish statements in newspapers, websites and on cigarette packs.
The tobacco companies and the federal government last month agreed on how to publish the statements. The court must still approve the deal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Court: Disgraced ex-journalist can't practice law
Court News |
2014/01/30 14:25
|
The California Supreme Court on Monday denied a law license to a disgraced former journalist who was caught fabricating dozens of stories for major national magazines.
The unanimous seven-judge court ruled that Stephen Glass had insufficiently rehabilitated himself in the years since his misdeeds, saying he "failed to carry his heavy burden of establishing his rehabilitation and current fitness."
Glass' misdeeds stunned the profession when they were uncovered in 1998. His widely publicized fall from grace earned the rising star a prominent place in the pantheon of journalistic cheats and scoundrels such as Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair — two prominent reporters caught fabricating quotes, sources and entire stories.
Glass' ethical missteps were turned into the Hollywood movie "Shattered Glass" and recounted in his novel "The Fabulist," for which he earned $190,000. |
|
|
|
|
|
Lawyer News RSS Feed
