Recent Updates
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Court leaves NC campaign finance law untouched
Recent Cases 11/05/2008North Carolina's system of publicly financed judicial campaigns remained intact Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge over a provision for additional funds in expensive races.The justices declined, without comment, to consid...
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Typhoon Restaurant sued by Immigrant Workers
Recent Cases 10/10/2008A worker claims managers of the Typhoon! restaurant chain abusedimmigrant workers, confiscated their passports, denied them overtimeand medical care, threatened to deport them if they complained, openedtheir mail, stole their tax returns, forced them...
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Bag Man Says FBI Told Him to Ask for $2M Hush Money
Recent Cases 09/29/2008A bag man testified on Friday that he was following FBI instructions when he asked the government of Venezuela for $2 million in hush money, after he was caught carrying $800,000 in a briefcase intended, according to prosecutors, for Cristina Fernand...
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Guilty Plea In Courthouse Bombing
Recent Cases 09/26/2008Eric R. Robinson pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to bomb the San Diego Federal Courthouse. Robinson admitted he drove a co-conspirator to the courthouse on May 4 and waited in the car while the other person set off three pipe bombs, then he dro...
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Witness Says OJ Told Him To Bring A Gun
Recent Cases 09/25/2008O.J. Simpson told two friends to bring guns to last year's hotel room heist, a former co-defendant in Simpson's kidnapping and armed robbery trial testified Wednesday. "He said, 'I just need you all to bring the guns. But you don't have to take them ...
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Justices Stay Execution with Two Hours Left
Recent Cases 09/24/2008The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution on Tuesday for a Georgia inmate convicted of killing a police officer in 1989, two hours before the scheduled execution. Troy A. Davis, 39, was convicted of murdering Mark MacPhail, a Savannah police ...
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Facebook Case Has Echoes Of MySpace Suicide Case
Recent Cases 09/23/2008A dad says someone used a Facebook account to torment his mentally disturbed teen-age daughter, and he wants the social-networking site to release that person's account information so he or she can be held liable. Fred Beuckman III says his 16-year-o...
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Potash Price-Fixing Conspiracy Alleged
Recent Cases 09/15/2008The world's leading potash suppliers conspired to fix U.S. prices on the fertilizer, Gage's Fertilizer & Grain claims in a federal antitrust class action. It claims they did this after potash prices tanked in the 1990s because "potash producers, ...
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Nevada Sex Laws Tossed
Recent Cases 09/12/2008Nevada's new sex-offender laws are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge James Mahan made permanent the temporary injunction he issued in July that stopped the state from applying the new laws retroactively. The new l...
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2nd Circuit Won't Change NY's Apportionment Method
Recent Cases 09/11/2008The 2nd Circuit denied a voter's assertion that New York's method of congressional district apportionment should be changed from overall population to voting-age population. Michael Kalson sued Gov. David Paterson and the state election board. Kalson...
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'Rear Window' Copyright Holder Sues Spielberg & Viacom
Recent Cases 09/09/2008Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks and Viacom stole the copyrighted story on which the Hitchcock film "Rear Window" was based and used it as the basis for their movie, "Disturbia," the copyright holder claims in Federal Court. Hitchcock based his movie on ...
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Inspector Suspended For Not Shutting Black-Owned Business
Recent Cases 09/08/2008A 20-year veteran building inspector says Genesee County harassed, suspended and constructively fired him because he refused to shut down a black-owned business on a pretext. Michael O'Leary says his boss told him, "Shut them down, go into that busin...