Empty
coal gondolas in a rail yard in Danville, W.Va. Patrick Morrisey, West
Virginia's attorney general, said President Obama's climate change
regulations would have "devastating impacts" on families in his state.Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — As many as 25 states will join some of the nation’s most influential business groups in legal action to block President Obama’s climate change regulations when they are formally published Friday, trying to stop his signature environmental policy.
In August, the president announced in a White House ceremony that the Environmental Protection Agency rules had been completed, but they had not yet been published in the government’s Federal Register.
Within hours of the rules’ official publication on Friday, a legal
battle will begin, pitting the states against the federal government. It
is widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court.
“I
predict there will be a very long line of people at the federal
courthouse tomorrow morning, eagerly waiting to file their suits on this
case,” said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a lawyer for the firm Bracewell &
Giuliani who represents several companies that are expected to file
such suits.
While
the legal brawls could drag on for years, many states and companies,
including those that are suing the administration, have also started
drafting plans to comply with the rules. That strategy reflects the
uncertainty of the ultimate legal outcome — and also means that many
states could be well on the way to implementing Mr. Obama’s climate plan
by the time the case reaches the Supreme Court.
Barbara
Stone was only able to get out of jail when she agreed to stop
blogging. Patty Reid is on the lam. Cary-Andrew Crittenden may be facing
further jail time for his efforts to inform others about problems in
the Santa Clara County legal system. And Ginny Johnson is under a gag
order which nearly eventuated in a close encounter with a jail cell.
All
these individuals are experiencing, up close and personal, the limits
of free speech when that speech inconveniences someone more powerful
than they. Twenty, thirty years ago none of these individuals would have
faced the grave legal problems they now confront. But thirty years ago,
the legal system in the US was not yet in free fall.
The
devolution of the US legal system is evidenced in the existence of a
dual legal system, wherein there abides two parallel—and often
contradictory—systems of law. One system is the written code—the
Constitutional and statutory mandates. The other system is what a judge
does in his courtroom. And increasingly, judges are acting like
monarchs, unaccountable to anyone.
This
is well expressed when First Amendment (freedom of speech) issues
collide with governmental imperatives. Prior restraint, that is the
imposition of gags or inhibitions on speech not yet spoken, is illegal
in the US, according to the written code. Increasingly, however, judges
are issuing orders which amount to prior restraint when an individual’s
speech becomes politically inconvenient.
A previous article discussed the plight of Barbara Stone, whose mother is under a guardianship in Dade County, Florida.
Upon visiting her mother in the home in which the guardian had placed
Helen Stone, Barbara was shocked to find her mother emaciated and on a
feeding tube. Barbara then allegedly took her mother to lunch.
She
was subsequently arrested and charged with “custody interference,” and
up until recently was confined to house arrest, an electronic tracking
bracelet ensuring her compliance.
The
problem was that Barbara would not shut up. She filed a number of
lawsuits against guardianship court Judge Michael Genden and also
against guardian Jacqueline Hertz and her attorney, Roy Lustig, as well
as criminal court judge Victoria Brennan and Governor Rick Scott. She
also launched a blog with the purpose of exposing the parties involved
in what she termed the continuing abuse of her mother. Tiring of her
complaints, Judge Genden charged her with criminal contempt for failing
to show up at a court hearing and Barbara went into lock-up.
This
past week, Stone, who is licensed to practice law in the state of New
York, secured her release from jail at a significant price. She has
agreed to stop blogging and also, significantly, to not file further
papers in her mother’s case without a lawyer. In other words, the price
of her freedom was prior restraint.
Two
US agricultural workers have simultaneously sued Monsanto, claiming
that the company’s weed-killer herbicide caused their cancers. They have
also accused the bio-tech giant of pressuring regulators to downplay
the risks from its Roundup herbicide.
In
his lawsuit against Monsanto, 58-year-old former farm worker Enrique
Rubio said he believes that the bone cancer he was diagnosed with back
in 1995 was a result of his work with Monsanto’s weed-killer.
Working
in California, Texas and Oregon over several years, Rubio’s duties
included spraying fields of cucumbers, onions and other vegetable crops
with pesticides and Roundup, one of Monsanto’s widely used herbicides.
Another
plaintiff, 64-year-old Judi Fitzgerald, joined Rubio in his legal
battle against Monsanto. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2012, Fitzgerald had
to use Roundup in the 1990s when she worked at a horticultural products
company.
In
a precedent-setting case, a state judge ruled this month that the
mother of a New Jersey teenager with epilepsy, who is also her legal
medical caregiver, cannot go to her school to administer her daughter’s
cannabis oil.
The oil treatments, which are legal in the state,
control the young girl’s seizures and allow her to function normally in
school, according to her parents.
In its opinion, the court
reasoned that state and federal laws prohibiting drug possession on
school grounds takes precedence over the students’ right to use medical
cannabis derivatives. This ruling is in spite of the fact that New
Jersey has already legalized cannabis for medical use.
This
court setback is the third such defeat for the Barbour family, who have
vowed to continue appealing. According to legal experts, this case is
believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.
Administrative
Law Judge, John S. Kennedy ruled in January and again on appeal in
August that the Larc School and the Maple Shade school district are
stuck in a legal quandary. If allowed to administer the drug, the school
nurse would be violating state laws, which ban the use of drugs in
school zones and federal law that deems pot possession a crime.
Roger
and Lora Barbour have sued to require the nurse at their 16-year-old
daughter’s special education school in Bellmawr administer cannabis oil,
just like the nurse dispenses prescribed medication to other students.
Since April, Genny has attended only half-days of school so she can be
home for her lunchtime dose of homemade oil, diluted in a small glass of
cola.
In his 11-page ruling, the judge wrote that
the family failed to show that their daughter would suffer “irreparable
harm” if she were denied her medicine during the school day.
Published: 17:14 EST, 23 April 2014 | Updated: 19:41 EST, 23 April 2014
39shares
A
Southern California woman who was held at a Phoenix airport four years
ago after refusing to have her breast milk X-rayed said Wednesday she
has reached a tentative settlement with the Transportation Security
Administration. Stacey
Armato, who filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, said TSA
officials have tentatively offered her $75,000, along with promises to
retrain agents and clarify its guidelines on screening breast milk. The reassurances about revised training and rules were more important than the monetary compensation, she said.
Refused:
Stacey Armato of Hermosa Beach, California, was held at a Phoenix
airport in 2010 after refusing to have her breast milk for son Lorenzo,
pictured, x-rayed
'We
had been waiting for them to really kind of confirm that they would be
retraining everybody and making these policy updates," Armato said.
"When we finally got confirmation of that, that was really reassuring.' TSA
spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to comment on a "pending matter." He
confirmed that current TSA regulations classify breast milk as liquid
medication. As a result, parents are permitted to bring an amount larger
than the 3 ounces normally allotted for liquids. According
to the agency's website, officers now use a bottled liquid scanner
system in most airports to screen medically necessary liquids for
explosives or other threats. The system uses lasers, infrared or
electromagnetic resonance, rather than X-rays. That
was not an option at the time for Armato, who said she was accustomed
to having a visual inspection for breast milk when traveling. Armato,
of Hermosa Beach, said she asked for an alternate screening of her
breast milk at a security checkpoint at Phoenix Sky Harbor International
Airport on Feb. 1, 2010. She cited concerns about exposing the milk to
radiation. According to a 2013 complaint from Armato, agents denied her request and then detained her in a glass enclosure for 40 minutes.
Jury selection these days is done with a wink and a nod. (REUTERS/Art Lien)
Imagine
you are a defendant awaiting trial on criminal charges that could send
you to prison for the rest of your life. You are sitting at the counsel
table during voir dire, the process by which a jury is selected before a trial.
The
prosecutor asks a potential juror: "You haven’t heard any evidence. How
would you vote?" The potential juror responds: "I would have to vote
guilty."
Your trial judge pipes up. He's supposed to ensure that
you receive a fair trial and that the jurors who will sit in judgment
upon you are neutral, objective, and willing to see and hear the
evidence with an open mind. The judge asks the prospective juror: "Could
you return a verdict of not guilty if the government doesn't prove its
case beyond a reasonable doubt?" The would-be juror responds: "I don't
think I would be able to."
The prosecutor — who wants this juror
on the panel because he wants to convict you — presses on. He asks the
juror: "Let's say the victim takes the stand [and] you flat-out don't
believe her. In fact, you think she's lying. You look at her [and
conclude], 'I don't believe a word coming out of her mouth.' Are you
going to convict this man anyway?"
The potential juror responds: "That depends. I still feel he was at fault."
How
would you feel if this juror were allowed to join the panel that
determined your fate? Would you feel as though you had received a fair
trial by an impartial panel, as the Sixth Amendment commands? Or would
you feel that the trial judge had failed to protect your presumption of
innocence?
My guess is you would feel cheated. I know I would. But
yet this precise scenario unfolded in California in 2009. This juror
was allowed to serve on this trial. And to date, no judge has declared
it a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights.
Now, in
this particular case, the defendant, Jose Felipe Velasco, was accused of
an extremely heinous crime. He was an alleged serial child rapist who
had gotten a 14-year-old girl pregnant after having some form of sex
with her 21 times. But that should not change our minds about whether
this man should be presumed innocent and be entitled to a fair trial.
Indeed, this is precisely why we have constitutional rights in criminal
cases — so that fairness and due process come even to the despised.
R. Scott Moxley, a veteran reporter and columnist for OC Weekly, brought this story to national prominence this week
— and it's a remarkably ugly picture in every way. Not only were the
charges awful, not only is this defendant as unsympathetic a figure as
the criminal justice system churns out, but the way the case was handled
was ignoble, too. Thousands of years' worth of the presumption of
innocence shouldn't go out the window just because a defendant is
accused of heinous crimes.
After
an Orange County prosecutor gave an opening statement, Juror 112
notified [Judge David] Hoffer that based on her own experiences she believes criminals should forgo trials in such sexual assault cases and go straight to prison to spare victims additional turmoil.
The prosecutor then asked the juror: “You haven’t heard any evidence. How would you vote?”
Juror 112 responded, “I would have to vote guilty.”
Statements by lawyers are not evidence, and Hoffer followed up with the juror, according to court transcripts reviewed by the Weekly.
The
judge asked if she could return a verdict of not guilty if the
government couldn’t prove it’s case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I don’t think I would be able to,” the juror replied.
By Bob Van Voris and Patricia HurtadoFeb 6, 2014 11:00 PM CT
Photographer: Louis Lanzano/Bloomberg
Mathew Martoma, a former SAC Capital Advisors LP fund manager, center, exits federal...
Former SAC Capital Advisors LP fund manager Mathew Martoma was found
guilty in the most lucrative insider-trading scheme ever as federal
prosecutors racked up a seventh conviction in their six-year probe of
the hedge fund and its billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen.
Jurors in Manhattan
federal court yesterday found Martoma, 39, used secret tips on clinical
trials of an Alzheimer’s disease drug to trade Wyeth and Elan Corp.
shares. In doing so, he reaped a $275 million benefit for the fund.
Martoma chose to risk a trial after rejecting U.S. offers of a deal for
cooperation. He faces as long as 20 years in prison on the most serious
counts.
Martoma showed no reaction when the verdict was
announced. As the jury forewoman read the verdict tears welled in the
eyes of Martoma’s wife, Rosemary, who sat in the front row of the
spectator benches behind her husband. The couple, flanked by defense
lawyers, walked out of the courtroom arm-in-arm, with Rosemary Martoma
crying visibly.
Martoma’s conviction “is a major win for the government,” said Anthony Sabino, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York, in an interview. “It may embolden them to go after Cohen.”
The
jury reached the guilty verdict after less than three days of
deliberations. The conviction follows a similar verdict against SAC
Capital fund manager Michael Steinberg, who was convicted in December of
a separate insider-trading scheme involving technology stocks from 2008
to 2009. He hasn’t been sentenced and may yet seek to strike a deal
with the U.S.
Harvard Expulsion
Martoma’s conviction
raises the possibility that he also may seek to cooperate against Cohen
in exchange for leniency, said Sabino. The disclosure, at the start of
the trial, of Martoma’s expulsion from Harvard Law School for creating a
phony transcript may lead prosecutors to reject such a deal, given the
possible damage to his credibility as a witness.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe didn’t set a sentencing date and allowed Martoma to remain free on $5 million bond.
“We
are very disappointed,” Martoma’s lawyer, Richard Strassberg, said
through his spokesman Lou Colasuonno, who added “we are planning our
appeal.”
Longest Sentence
Martoma was convicted of two
counts of securities fraud, a charge that carries a maximum 20 years in
prison. He was also convicted of conspiracy, which has a maximum
penalty of as long as five years in prison. The longest insider-trading
sentence of 12 years was given to attorney Matthew Kluger in 2012 for a
$37 million scheme. The second-longest of 11 years was imposed upon
Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam for a $72 million scheme.
In
the Martoma case, prosecutors claimed SAC Capital reversed a bullish
stance on Wyeth and Elan in July 2008, selling a $700 million position
days after Martoma learned the disappointing trial results for the drug,
bapineuzumab, and shared a 20-minute phone call with Cohen.
Cohen,
57, who denies wrongdoing, hasn’t been charged with a crime. He faces
an administrative proceeding before the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission claiming he failed to properly supervise trading at his firm.
In November, SAC Capital agreed to plead guilty to securities
fraud in a landmark prosecution of the financial company. The hedge fund
agreed to end its investment advisory business and pay $1.8 billion.
The plea deal must be approved by a judge before it can take effect.
Rename Fund
Cohen
plans to rename SAC Capital and add a layer of management to oversee
traders as the hedge fund becomes a family office, a person familiar
with the firm said.
The Stamford,
Connecticut-based company, which will manage about $9 billion for Cohen
in addition to employee money, will have three trading units after the
restructuring, said the person, who asked not to be identified because
the firm is private. The changes are expected to take place by
mid-March.
The office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara
has filed insider-trading charges against 83 people and four entities --
all of them units of SAC Capital -- in its investigation of fund
managers, company insiders and expert-networking firms.
‘Market Cheaters’
In
announcing his case against SAC Capital last year, Bharara called it a
“veritable magnet for market cheaters,” citing the series of cases his
office made against the hedge fund’s portfolio managers and analysts.
Seven
former SAC fund managers and analysts -- Noah Freeman, Donald
Longueuil, Jon Horvath, Wesley Wang, Richard Lee, Steinberg and Martoma
-- were convicted of insider-trading schemes.
An eighth man,
Richard Choo-Beng Lee, an SAC Capital analyst from 1999 to 2004, pleaded
guilty in 2009 to insider trading while at Spherix Capital LLC, the
hedge fund he co-founded.
Prosecutors said in the indictment of
SAC Capital that Lee, while he was at SAC Capital, obtained inside
information about technology companies that he passed to the fund’s
portfolio managers and others.
Ex- SAC Capital manager found guilty in largest US insider trading case
Published time: February 07, 2014 13:14
Edited time: February 07, 2014 13:46
Mathew Martoma, a former SAC Capital hedge fund
manager, has been found guilty of insider trading by a federal jury. He
bought early information about drugs tests which helped his firm avoid
$275 million in losses, and netted Martoma a $9 million bonus.
According to prosecutors, Martoma got secret information from a
former Professor of Neurology at University of Michigan Sidney
Gilman, who was participating in testing of a new drug for
Alzheimer's disease.
Martoma obtained the trial results for the drug in July 2008, and
SAC Capital then started selling off a $700 million position in
drug firms Elan and Wyeth before the negative results were made
public, says Reuters.
“Martoma bought the answer sheet before the exam – more than
once – netting a quarter-billion dollars in profits and losses
avoided for SAC, as well as a $9m bonus for him,” Preet
Bharara, the US Attorney said. “It made him a convicted
felon, and likely will result in the forfeiture of his illegal
windfall and the loss of his liberty.”
Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors, a $14 billion hedge fund
that has long been in the cross-hairs of the FBI, profited to the
tune of $275 million by selling shares in the pharmaceutical
companies Wyeth and Elan Corp. now owned by Pfizer Inc, which
developed the drug.
At trial prosecutors presented testimony that Dr Sidney Gilman
and Dr Joel Ross both provided confidential clinical drug test
results to Martoma in exchange for thousands of dollars.
SAC’s Martoma Faces Up to 20 Years at June 10 Sentencing
By Patricia HurtadoFeb 8, 2014 11:16 AM CT
Photographer: Louis Lanzano/Bloomberg
Mathew Martoma, a former SAC Capital Advisors LP fund manager, center, exits federal... Read More
Former SAC Capital Advisors LP fund
manager Mathew Martoma, who was found guilty Feb. 6 in the most
lucrative insider-trading scheme ever, is scheduled to be
sentenced June 10 and may face as many as 20 years in prison.
Martoma, 39, was convicted of two counts of securities
fraud, which carries a maximum 20 year term, and one count of
conspiracy, which has a maximum five year term. U.S. District
Judge Paul Gardephe may make each term concurrent, and has
latitude to impose a significantly shorter sentence.
The longest insider-trading term of 12 years was given to
attorney Matthew Kluger in 2012 for a $37 million scheme. The
second-longest of 11 years was imposed upon Galleon Group LLC
co-founder Raj Rajaratnam for a $72 million scheme.
Martoma was found guilty of a $275 million scheme. His was
the seventh conviction tied to SAC Capital-related insider
trading in the six-year probe of the hedge fund and its
billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen.
Jurors in Manhattan federal court found Martoma used secret
tips on clinical trials of an Alzheimer’s disease drug to trade
Wyeth and Elan Corp. shares. In doing so, he reaped a
$275 million benefit for the fund.
Prosecutors claimed SAC Capital reversed its bullish stance
on Wyeth and Elan in July 2008, selling a $700 million position
days after Martoma learned the disappointing trial results for
the drug, bapineuzumab, and shared a 20-minute phone call with
Cohen. Martoma, who earned a $9.3 million bonus connected to the
trades, chose to risk a trial after rejecting U.S. offers of a
deal for cooperation.
