July 2009 Archives

Mr. Clucky, a Miami Beach rooster and his poultry guardian, Mark Buckley, are caught in a fowl-smelling court battle.  You see, this is no ordinary matter: it's a 'chick-evict' case.

Legal feathers are flying in this code enforcement fight brought by the City of Miami Beach.  The City wants Mr. Clucky out of Buckley's residential apartment, charging that he violates a city ordinance that prohibits poultry .  Yesterday's proceeding ended in a dispute over witness testimony -- or rather the lack of it.  Mr. Clucky didn't even get to testify in his own defense, and Buckley is crying foul.

Following his arrest on federal criminal charges by the U.S. Attorney last week in New Jersey's epic corruption scandal, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, III -- a former election and politics lawyer in private practice -- resigned from office today.

His official web page and bio are gone, replaced by a notice that Dawn Zimmer, Hoboken City Council President and former mayoral candidate, is now Acting Mayor.

In what may be his last offical act on mayoral letterhead, Cammarano wrote Hoboken's City Clerk that he was resigning from office at 12 p.m. on Friday, July 31, 2009.

Imagine you have a corporation that's hemorrhaging money. Shareholder's money, clients money, and money to pay employees and suppliers. What would you do if someone came along with some emergency moolah to save your business?

You'd be tempted to take it.

But if your business lost billions, you laid off thousands of employees, and you received roughly as much money in bailouts from the government, would you still pay employees hefty bonuses? Would you pay 'em billions and billions in bonuses?

A federal appeals court ruled that Amir Oveissi's legal claims for wrongful death and the intentional infliction of emotional distress against Iran and its Ministry of Information and Security ('MOIS,' or 'VEVAK' in Farsi) must be considered under French law, allowing him to potentially hold the country and its security apparatus liable for his grandfather Gholam Oveissi's 1984 assassination of in Paris, France.

Gholam Oveissi was a four-star general and Chief of Iran's Armed Forces under the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At Iran's direction, the Iranian-trained and funded Hezbollah terrorist group assassinated Amir Oveissi's grandfather while operating under the nom-de-guerre "Islamic Jihad."

While the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ('FSIA') grants foreign countries immunity from being sued under, the federal law also makes an exception for state-sponsored terrorism, allowing plaintiffs to seek damages.

With her passport in hand, and husband in the joint, one would think that Ruth Madoff is taking a leisurely vacation in the Carribean or French Riviera.

Wherever she is, the wife of convicted and imprisoned Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff probably already knows that Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard just sued her, on behalf of investors, "to recapture at least $44,822,355 in funds that were transferred" from Madoff's bankrupt company direclty to his wife, "or for her benefit"

A federal grand jury just indicted 89 year-old James Wenneker Von Brunn for the June 10, 2009 murder of Stephen Tyrone Johns, a guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

In addition to first-degree murder charges under D.C. law, the indictment charges Von Brunn with assault, violating federal civil rights laws, committing federal and District hate crimes, and weapons violations.

FindLaw learned that four of the North Carolina terror suspects indicted by a federal grand jury yesterday had previously been arrested by the Raleigh Police Department on charges ranging from intoxication and assaulting a member of the Wake County Sheriff's Office to assaulting a woman.

Daniel Patrick Boyd and his brother were reportedly convicted in 1991 for trying to rob a bank in Pakistan in 1991.  A Pakistani court sentenced Body to a Sharia-like punishment under Islamic law for his offense: having one of his feet and one of his hand's cut off. That sentence was subsequently overturned.

A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted seven people on terrorism charges, alleging that North Carolina resident Daniel Boyd is a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who, along with six others (including, apparently, two of Boyd's children), conspired to commit violent jihad in support of terrorism, by murdering, kidnapping, maiming and injuring people.

According to federal prosecutors, Boyd also conspired with other North Carolina residents to travel to the Gaza Strip in 2007 and introduce his son Zakariya  to people in Gaza "who also believed that violent jihad is a personal obligation on the part of every good Muslim."

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali (inset, right), an American-born high-school valedictorian was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge today for his role in conspiring with al Qaeda to assassinate former President George W. Bush,

Indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2005, and convicted after trial later that year, U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Abu Ali to life in prison for his role in contacting and becoming part of an al Qaeda conspiracy to assassinate the former American president while he was still in office.

The following post and materials were written and compiled by Joel Zand of FindLaw:

Wanna place a bet on your favorite sports team Delaware? Better head to Vegas.

Major League Baseball, the NBA, NFL, NHL, and NCAA just sued Delaware over the state's new Sports Lottery Act, charging that it violates the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act a federal law that that restricts amateur and professional sports betting, in addition to the Delaware Constitution.

You can read the new Delaware sports betting lawsuit here:

The following post and materials were written and compiled by Joel Zand of FindLaw:

Religious cult leader Bernie Lazar Hoffman a/k/a Tony Alamo, was convicted by a federal jury on charges of rape, sexual assault, and carnal abuse with girls when they were as young as 8, 11, and 12 years-old, and transporting them across state lines.

Show below are copies of a detailed criminal complaint with an FBI affidavit detailing conduct he was charged with, and an indictment filed in June 2009:

The following post and materials were written and compiled by Joel Zand of FindLaw:

Next Tuesday, accused anti-abortion murder suspect Scott Roeder (inset, right) will be in a Wichita, Kansas court for a preliminary hearing on his murder and aggravated assault charges for the shooting death of Dr. George Tiller, and assault of two parishioners during a Sunday morning church service on May 31, 2009.

This was not Roeder's first trouble with the law, according to Kansas authorities.  He was pulled over and arrested by sheriff's deputies in Topeka for having a DIY license plate, bomb-making materials in his car, driving with a suspended license, and not carrying liability insurance.

What did Roeder's homemade license plate say?

Peter Cammarano, III, the Hoboken, New Jersey Mayor (inset, left and center), and Dennis Elwell, Mayor of Secaucus, New Jersey (inset, right), face high-level political corruption charges, along with more than 40 other people who were also charged with crimes ranging from corruption, extortion, money laundering, illegal money transmitting, to conspiracy to transport human organs.

Cammarano was allegedly caught by the FBI on tape in June telling a government cooperating witness, Solomon Dwek, "I stopped being a lawyer last month, um, hopefully for good." The FBI allegedly recorded a conversation that the Hoboken Mayor had with Dwek in a Hoboken diner where Cammarano is said to have conspired to extort $5,000 from Dwek, and bragged before his election that "[r]ight now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down. Nothing can change that now. . . . I could be, uh, indicted, and I'm still gonna win 85 to 95 percent of those populations."

Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. retained Harvard Law School Professor Charles J. Ogletree (inset) to represent him after being arrested on disorderly conduct charges by Cambridge police. 

The charges were subsequently dropped against Prof. Gates, but the legal fury over being accused of breaking into his own home, handcuffed and reportedly harassed by local law enforcement in front of his neighbors, may prompt Ogletree to file a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of his new client.

Prof. Ogletree's civil rights litigation history is extensive.  Here is a sample of high-profile and high-impact lawsuits in which he has been involved with over the last decade:

Thomas Daniel (inset) the lawyer hired by Alaska's Personnel Board to investigate an ethics complaint involving Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's legal defense fund set up to help pay the cost of defending allegations of misconduct while in office, confirmed to FindLaw that a copy of his confidential report had somehow become public. Daniel said "I suspect the complainant released it, but don't know for sure."

Eagle River, Alaska resident Kim Chapman filed the ethics compalint against Gov. Palin on April 27, 2009, alleging that Palin's Alaska Fund Trust violated two Executive Branch ethics laws that 1) prohibit using an official position for personal gain, and 2) bar public officials from accepting gifts that seek to influence how official duties are performed. 

"It is a copy of my report," Daniel told FindLaw, but emphasized that "the release was not authorized," and that "there was no deadline" to make it public."  The only person capable of waiving the confidentiality provision to which he remained bound, Daniel stated in his report, is Gov. Palin. 

Companies controlled by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban were sued by Hillwood Center Partners, LP, holder of a limited partnership with a 7.5% interest in Radical Arena, a Cuban-controlled entity holding the remaining 92.5% interest in roughly one-third stake in the American Airlines Center stadium where the Mavericks play.

The lawsuit accuses Cuban-controlled companies of failing to distribute profits to the arena's owners, and instead "wrongfully divert[ing profits] to the Mavericks to make up for the substantial cash shortfalls" of the team, "personally benefiting Cuban at the expense of Radical Arena and its owners."

Michael Vick, the disgraced Atlanta Falcon's former starting quarterback, completed the terms of his federal sentence on dogfighting charges, appearing in federal court briefly with his attorney Lawrence Goodman to complete probation-related paperwork.

It remains unclear whther Vick will actually return to the N.F.L., however.

A federal judge dismissed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's civil insider trading charges against billionaire Mark Cuban today.

Chief Judge Sidney A Fitzwater of the U.S. District Court in Dallas wrote that the S.E.C. failed to plead that Cuban had "a duty to refrain from trading on information about the impending...offering" in search engine operator Mamma.com.

Since the securites law at issue did not impose a restriction upon Cuban prohibiting his "trad[ing] on or otherwise us[ing] the information for personal benefit" Judge Fitzwater concluded that Cuban "cannot be held liable under the misappropriation theory of insider trading liability."

A federal court just dismissed a gay couple's legal challenge to California's Proposition 8 ('Prop 8'), but only as it applies to the State of California, holding that the couple lacked standing (i.e., the legal ability to sue) to sue the State since they were already married.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held that Christopher Hammer and Arthur Smelt's 2008 same-sex marriage remained valid.  The couple was married in California before Prop. 8 passed, but when it was still legally permissble for their marriage to be performed.

A federal appeals court reversed the U.S. government's decision for denying a Muslim scholar's entry into the U.S., holding that Tariq Ramadan was improperly denied an entry visa by a U.S. Consular official without first being given a chance to show that he knew, or should have known, that he donated money to a European charity that gave funds to Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization.

The ruling (below) sends the case back to the U.S. District court to allow Ramadan to show "by clear and convincing evidence that he did not know, and reasonably should not have known, that the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization."

Superman's arrest by NYPD's finest last Tuesday night raises a host of curious questions.

• Why did he stage a one-man protest against Donald Trump? 
• Did Lex Luthor play a role in the superhero's tragic fall?
• Where was Lois Lane?
• Will the Man of Steel be able to put this legal chapter behind him?

Can you say P.R. nightmare?  The owners of PEZ might be doing just that after filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.

The brouhaha that Swiss-based Patrafico AG and U.S.-based PEZ Candy, Inc. created after attacking this venerable California shrine to its candy dispenser fanatics might actually be working against the company's brand-building efforts.

Here's why.

Seven suspects were apprehended for the murder of Melanie and Byrd Billings, the Pensacola, Florida couple who left a legacy of their passion for adopting special needs children. 

Law enforcement arrest reports (below) detail the execution of the brutal home invasion and robbery that ended with the Billings being murdered, all while eight (8) of their children "with varying degrees of disability [remained] in the residence" during the homicides.

The seven suspects currently in custody include:

It's a beautiful day in convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's new neighborhood.  The disgraced former investment manager is serving his 150-year prison sentence at the Butner Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina.

Here is a sampling of Bernie's new neighbors, and the answers to frequently asked questions about conjugal visits, gifts, and more.

Federal prosecutors indicted two Somali immigrants living in Minnesota on terrorism-related charges and accusing one man of lying to federal agents. One suspect allegedly told an FBI agent that:

"he did not know anyone on his flight to Somalia in December 2007 when, in fact, he traveled to Somalia together with an individual he knew so that they could fight jihad in Somlia."

A federal grand jury indicted Abdifatah Yusuf Isse a/k/a Omar, and Salah Osman Ahmed a/k/a Salman in February 2009, but the indictment (below) remained sealed until yesterday.

A federal judge in San Jose, California heard arguments today about the constitutionality of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (18 U.S.C. § 413), a law used to prosecute violent acts of anti-animal research activists.

The defendants were indicted in March 2009 on charges alleging that they conspired to threaten, harass, and intimidate bio-medical researchers at their homes near Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and at animal research facilities on the University of California at Santa Cruz campus.

You can read the federal grand jury indictment here:

A federal grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging nine people in Israel with operating a 'boiler room' telemarketing lottery scam that targeted elderly victims in the United States.  The wire and mail fraud conspiracy charges allege that unknowing senior citizens were conned into sending millions of dollars for nonexistent sweepstakes lotteries.

Like the Boiler Room movie, this reportedly four (4) year scam suggests there was a high-pressure operation targeting vulnerable victims.

California's Supreme Court just ruled that defendants charged with DUI crimes can challenge the reliability of breathalyzer tests.

The ruling is a helpful hiccup for Californians and visitors charged with driving under the influence.

Bernard Madoff's investment victims filed 15,400 claims through July 2, 2009, having been scammed in "the largest Ponzi scheme ever conducted," according to Irving Picard (inset), the trustee appointed by the U.S. bankruptcy court to manage investor claims in the Madoff bankruptcy.

Picard, a lawyer at Baker and Hostetler LLP, noted that Madoff's cohorts "were actively recruiting more than 1,000 customer accounts and infusing [his] Ponzi scheme with billions of dollars."

Can Madoff's investment victims ever hope to see their money again?

The U.K.'s Premier League Football Assocation and other owners of copyrighted works were dealt an 'offisides' ruling by a federal judge in a class-action case against YouTube and Google.

U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton handed two major 'Goooooaaaallllllls!!!!!' to the defendants. Here's why.

With convicted Ponzi-scheming hubby Bernard "Bernie" Madoff behind bars for the rest of his life, and the government in possession of all but $2.5 million of the couple's cash, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin approved the return of Ruth Madoff's passport.

Just where will she go?

Do you have a federal marriage license? You don't have to be a lawyer to know the answer.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley sued the federal government today to remind Congress that the Defense of Marriage Act ('DOMA') is an unconstitutional attempt to interefere with the state's authority to define marriage as it chooses.

After 9/11, federal buildings were supposed to become safer, right? Does that include: failing to detect bomb components, armed guards asleep on the job after taking Percocet^©, using government computers to manage a pornography website business, and not seeing a box of weapons at a federal facility's loading dock?

A new GAO report investigating security lapses by guards hired to protect federal buildings found all these security breaches, and more.

Fantasy football players can send their virtual players to summer training camp to run sprints, lift weights, and sweat gallons.

According to a federal court filing dismissing the case, Yahoo appears to have settled the lawsuit it filed against the NFL Players' Association last month over the use of publicly available player statistics in Yahoo's NFL fantasy football game.

One baseball fan snagged over $10,000 in a legal settlement with New York City after he was ousted from Yankee Stadium last summer for trying to take a potty break while 'God Bless America.' was being sung during the seventh-inning stretch.

"I don't care about God Bless America, I just need to use the bathroom," Bradford Campeau-Laurion said he told New York's finest.  Refusing his request, NYPD officers then reportedly manhandled him out of the stadium.

Bradford Campeau-Laurion filed a federal lawsuit against the New York Yankees, N.Y.P.D., and New York City, charging that police violated his civil rights at the August 26, 2008 game against the Boston Red Sox It was Boston's last visit to the old Yankee Stadium.