Verdicts & Settlements

Arab Bank is held liable in first civil trial victory under anti-terrorism law

Federal jurors in Brooklyn on Monday ruled in favor of about 300 terrorism victims and their relatives in a civil suit that accused Arab Bank of supporting terrorism by handling payments for Hamas. The verdict was believed to be the first against a bank for violating civil provisions in the…

Sep 23, 2014 9:46 AM CDT

Top state court tells official to take lawyer’s name off US Senate ballot

Granting a writ of mandamus filed by an attorney who withdrew as a candidate for the U.S. Senate after winning the Democratic primary, the Kansas Supreme Court on Thursday told the secretary of state to remove Chad Taylor’s name from the November ballot. Although Taylor did not expressly state in…

Sep 22, 2014 10:20 AM CDT

Federal judge says she thinks convicted drug dealer killed police officer, gives defendant 35 years

State prosecutors in Cook County, Illinois, couldn’t prove a murder case against Jason “J-Rock” Austin in the 2008 slayings of an off-duty Chicago police detective and his companion. But federal prosecutors in a subsequent drug case argued at sentencing that Austin had indeed killed Chicago police detective Robert Soto and…

Sep 18, 2014 4:35 PM CDT

Lawyer fights judge’s order calling her ineffective and removing her from murder case defense

Calling a Georgia lawyer ineffective, a trial court has removed her from a murder case and brought in the public defender’s office this week to represent her client. Attorney Veronica Brinson is fighting the order by Bibb County Judge Howard Simms, contending that her client, Frank Reeves, 74, has the…

Sep 18, 2014 2:35 PM CDT

SEC spent $8.6M collecting $3.7M from former corporate raider in $62M case

Once a high-profile corporate raider, Paul Bilzerian was convicted of fraud in 1989 and served 13 months. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission won a $62 million judgment in a subsequent civil suit. Now, more than 20 years later, the SEC is winding up its efforts to collect. The final…

Sep 18, 2014 1:25 PM CDT

NYC police to revise decoy purse operation to settle lawsuit

New York City’s police department has agreed to settle a lawsuit that claimed a decoy purse operation was leading to arrests of good Samaritans who hoped to return the items to their rightful owners. Police have agreed to revise the guidelines for the sting, dubbed “Operation Lucky Bag,” the New…

Sep 18, 2014 12:58 PM CDT

Judge plans to take plea in case over $3M investment-fraud scheme, his lawyer says

Suspended from the bench with pay in 2012 after he and five other defendants were federally indicted in a claimed $3 million investment fraud scheme, a Nevada family court judge is now on the verge of taking a plea. The docket shows Judge Steven Jones, 56, is scheduled to plead…

Sep 15, 2014 3:30 PM CDT

Judge suspended 30 days without pay for coming to courthouse intoxicated

An Iowa judge has been suspended without pay for 30 days because she showed up intoxicated at the courthouse at which she worked one day during May 2012. Although District Associate Judge Emily Dean did not go on the bench, because a court employee convinced her she wasn’t fit to…

Sep 15, 2014 10:50 AM CDT

US threatened $250K daily fine to get Yahoo to turn over users’ email information

When the U.S. government sought user information from Yahoo in 2007 about email in its customers’ accounts, the company resisted what it viewed as an unconstitutionally broad demand. But Yahoo’s challenges to the controversial National Security Agency PRISM program in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Court…

Sep 12, 2014 9:55 AM CDT

Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of culpable homicide

A judge in South Africa has found track star Oscar Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa announced her verdict on Friday and set the sentencing hearing to begin on Oct. 13, report the New York Times, CNN and…

Sep 12, 2014 7:03 AM CDT

Judge banned from bench due to online comments, disclosing confidential info on celebrity’s adoption

An Arkansas judge has been permanently removed from the bench over online comments he made under a “geauxjudge” pseudonym, including discussion of a confidential adoption of a child by actress Charlize Theron. Now-former Faulkner County Circuit Judge Mike Maggio did not personally oversee the 2012 adoption case, but it was…

Sep 11, 2014 2:20 PM CDT

Lawyer is convicted for helping frame school volunteer

A California lawyer has been convicted of false imprisonment by deceit for trying to frame a school volunteer on drug charges. Jurors convicted Irvine lawyer Kent Wycliffe Easter, 40, on Wednesday in his second trial on the charges, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Associated Press and…

Sep 11, 2014 9:33 AM CDT

Bernard Goetz, so-called ‘subway vigilante’ of 1980s, wins dismissal of minor marijuana case

An electrical engineer who became a household name in the mid-1980s after shooting at four teenagers he claimed had threatened him on a New York City subway has been acquitted in a minor criminal case. Bernard Goetz, now 65, won a dismissal Wednesday on speedy-trial grounds of a case in…

Sep 10, 2014 1:10 PM CDT

Detroit bankruptcy trial is halted for deal with a holdout creditor

The judge overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy has adjourned the trial until Monday to allow the parties to finalize a deal with a holdout creditor. The deal with bond insurer Syncora Guarantee could allow for a quicker resolution of Detroit’s bankruptcy, the New York Times reports. “For months, as the city reached…

Sep 10, 2014 11:56 AM CDT

Padilla gets new 21-year sentence after 11th Circuit says original 17-year term was too lenient

Told by a federal appeals court that the 17-year sentence she had given a convicted terrorism plotter was too lenient, a federal judge in Miami on Tuesday resentenced Jose Padilla to a 21-year term. The Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke had…

Sep 9, 2014 1:00 PM CDT