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Affirmative action foe wins California court fight
Court News |
2013/12/20 10:46
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In a bitter fight over the effects of affirmative action, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that law school data on race, attendance and grades should be available to the public.
The unanimous decision represents a legal victory for a law professor seeking to test his notion that minority students are actually harmed by preferential admissions policies.
University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Sander created a firestorm when he published his "mismatch theory" in the Stanford Law Review in 2004.
Critics swiftly attacked his conclusions, saying Sander understated the positive effects of affirmative action and based his thinking on inadequate statistics.
To further his research, Sander sought data on ethnicity and scholastic performance compiled by the State Bar of California with a public records request in 2008. The state bar denied the request, prompting the lawsuit.
Information compiled by the bar, a branch of the state judiciary responsible with licensing and disciplining lawyers, is "unparalleled," Sander said after the ruling Thursday. |
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Court won't hear appeal over news release
Court News |
2013/12/16 10:49
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a CEO convicted because a news release misstated the results of a drug's effectiveness.
The high court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Dr. W. Scott Harkonen, the chief executive of the biotechnology company InterMune Inc. from 1998 until 2003. He was convicted wire fraud in the marketing of the drug Actimmune, which was supposed to fight the fatal lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
The conviction centered on an August 2002 news release that misstated the results of a clinical trial using Actimmune. The release falsely said the test showed Actimmune helped IPF patients live longer.
Harkonen's lawyers say the results of the trial were accurate, and he is being punished for offering a scientific opinion about the results. |
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Haiti protest derides Dominican court ruling
Court News |
2013/12/09 13:32
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Hundreds of protesters gathered Friday to criticize a recent court decision in the Dominican Republic that could strip the citizenship of generations of people of Haitian descent living in the neighboring country.
The crowd peaked at about 2,000 people but thinned out during the march uphill to the Dominican Embassy to protest the decision passed two months ago by that country's court. The demonstrators urged people to boycott travel to the Dominican Republic.
Riot police set up metal barricades on a major thoroughfare that block protesters from reaching the district where the diplomatic mission is located.
The ruling has been met with sharp objection, from Caribbean leaders to the United Nations. On Friday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights became the latest international entity to oppose the court decision, calling on the Dominican government to take urgent measures to guarantee the rights of those people affected.
Advocacy groups estimate 200,000 people, many of them of Haitian descent, could lose their Dominican citizenship because of the court ruling. Dominican officials say only about 24,000 would be affected. |
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LA airport shooting suspect appears in court
Court News |
2013/12/05 13:39
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The man charged with killing a Transportation Security Administration officer and wounding two other agents and a civilian during a shooting rampage at Los Angeles International Airport made his first court appearance Wednesday, still showing signs of the gunshot wounds suffered when he was arrested.
Paul Ciancia hadn't been seen in public since the Nov. 1 attack that created chaos at one of the nation's busiest airports and affected air travel around the country.
The 23-year-old spoke in whispers and showed no emotion during the 10-minute hearing in the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, about 45 miles east of Los Angeles. He's being housed at the facility in federal custody.
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Bristow asked the diminutive, slender Ciancia if he understood the charges against him.
"Yes," responded Ciancia, who was shackled at his hands and feet and had a bandage on his neck and bruises on the left side of his face.
His lawyers didn't comment on his injuries.
Airport police responding to the rampage shot Ciancia four times, including once in the mouth. He was hospitalized for more than two weeks before being placed in federal custody. |
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Appeals court sides with Starbucks over tips
Court News |
2013/11/25 14:37
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A federal appeals court in New York has agreed that Starbucks baristas must share their tips with shift supervisors.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its finding Thursday.
The decision stemmed from a lower-court ruling that found that the baristas who serve customers must share tips with shift supervisors. The courts say shift supervisors do much of the same work as the coffee servers.
A Starbucks spokeswoman says the company is pleased with the ruling. She says shift supervisors spend more than 90 percent of their time serving customers.
An attoney for the baristas says the ruling lets subsidize the pay of its supervisors with money that should be going to their lowest-wage workers.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
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Man pleads guilty in hole-in-one prize case
Court News |
2013/11/18 16:16
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Man pleads guilty in hole-in-one prize case
A businessman charged with failing to pay golfers for hole-in-one prizes insured by his company has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay a Montana man $10,000 of a promised $18,000 prize.
Kevin W. Kolenda of Norwalk, Conn., didn't attend Thursday's hearing before Justice of the Peace Karen Orzech in Missoula. His attorney, Brian Tipp, entered a guilty plea on Kolenda's behalf to acting as an insurer without a license. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed a felony insurance fraud charge. Kolenda was given a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Kolenda is the former president and CEO of hole-in-won.com, a company that collects premiums and agrees to pay cash prizes to winners of hole-in-one contests. He has been charged with failing to pay prizes in several states. Last month, he pleaded guilty in Seattle to two felony counts of selling insurance without a license and one count of first-degree theft. He has not been sentenced.
Complaints of Kolenda's company failing to pay prizes have been filed in several other states, and he has been sanctioned by regulators in Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina and Washington. Connecticut officials fined Kolenda $5.9 million in 2009 for illegally offering insurance without a license.
Kolenda was charged in Montana after Troy Peissig was denied an $18,000 prize after hitting a hole-in-one during a 2010 golf tournament in Missoula. |
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