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Court tells UK to release Pakistani in US custody
Attorney Blog News |
2011/12/14 13:05
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An appeals court issued a landmark ruling Wednesday ordering the British government to free a Pakistani detainee who has been held in U.S. custody for nearly eight years without charge.
It was unclear whether Yunus Rahmatullah would be released as required, however, because the U.S. government is not bound by the ruling. It announced that it was reviewing the ruling.
Britain has seven days to produce Yunus Rahmatullah, who is being held by American forces in Afghanistan, according to the Appeals Court's ruling.
Although Rahmatullah, 29, is not a British national, the UK-legal charity Reprieve filed a habeas corpus petition claiming that his detention lacked sufficient cause or evidence, and that British forces violated international law when they rendered him to U.S. custody.
British forces in Iraq seized Rahmatullah in 2004, but then handed him over to the Americans who sent him to the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan — a sprawling base that includes the Parwan detention facility where some 1,900 detainees are being held.
Wednesday's ruling marks one of the first times that a habeas corpus petition has been successful for a detainee at the U.S. base. It puts the United States and Britain in an awkward position — Britain is bound by the ruling, but the United States is not because the decision was handed down by a foreign court. |
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Blocking the Courthouse Door
Attorney Blog News |
2011/12/01 10:28
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The LawBusiness Insider,nbsp; Nationally Syndicated on Bloomberg, Sirius, XM, Fox News, BBC, ESPN Radio, NBC News Radio amp; Citadel Broadcasting Presents:Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. nbsp;
LISTEN to an Exclusive interview with Stephanie Mencimer now:
http://lbishow.com/index.php?option=com_contentamp;view=articleamp;id=362:blocking-the-courthouse-dooramp;catid=51:americas-best-selling-authors-series nbsp;
Prominent Trial Attorney, Jack Girardi and LBI Producer amp; Host Steve Murphy interview award winning Author Stephanie Mencimer on her groundbreaking Book, Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. nbsp;
Stephanie works in the Mother Jones' Washington bureau, and covers legal affairs and domestic policy. She's a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.Thanks to constant political oratory against frivolous lawsuits and jackpot justice, it is widely known that there's a legal crisis in this country.
President Bush never missed an opportunity to call for laws that would bring more common sense to a legal system that, he claims, is out of control, wrecking the economy, driving doctors out of their practices, bankrupting small businesses, and costing American jobs. Journalists repeat the charges without examining them. As a result, the lawsuit issue moved to the political front burner, and in the past seven years, state after state has responded by limiting citizens' rights to sue. Republicans and Corporate Americanbsp; has influenced legislationnbsp; restricting class action lawsuits and limits on medical malpractice lawsuits. But is there really a crisis? National data show that the number of civil suits is falling, not rising, and that the average damage award is also going down. Despite intense media hype to the contrary, the number of personal injury lawsuits filed every year has been tumbling for the past decade. Upon closer examination, the stories of ridiculous lawsuits usually turn out to be false or badly misleading. The crisis, in short, appears to be a phantom. So how do we explain the scary headlines? Who's behind the tort reform movement, and what are the real goals?
Blocking the Courthouse Door will show that the movement against so-called greedy trial lawyers and irresponsible plaintiffs is the result of a concerted and successful campaign by large corporations to get this issue on the table and thus limit their own vulnerability in the civil justice system. They have spent decades, and many millions of dollars, on focus groups and Madison Avenue public relations research. They have funded institutes, sponsored academic research, bankrolled politicians, set up phony Astroturf grassroots organizations (with chamber of commerce return addresses), and fed copy to all-too-gullible journalists.
For corporations, the self-interest involved is fairly plain. Tobacco companies, no longer able to dodge the bullet of liability for knowingly selling poisons, are making an end run around the civil justice system. If they can't win a class action suit, they'll make suing itself illegal. Insurance companies, drowning in red ink from mismanagement and bad investments in the bond market, hike insurance rates by huge sums and blame malpractice suits. The doctors in turn blame greedy lawyers -- and their own injured patients. And for Republicans, the campaign provides an extra bonus: defunding the Democratic Party. Limits on lawsuits cut into the income of some of the Democratic Party's most generous donors, the trial lawyers, who are often the only source of campaign cash for Democrats in many states. By exposing some of the dubious characters, corporate chicanery, skewed research, fudged numbers, and bogus journalism that have buttressed the calls for lawsuit reform, Stephanie Mencimer shows who's behind the movement to close the courthouse doors, and how they've successfully persuaded millions of Americans to give up their critical legal rights without fully understanding what they're losing -- often until it's too late. |
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Thomas, Kagan asked to sit out health care case
Attorney Blog News |
2011/11/28 09:44
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Conservative interest groups and Republican lawmakers want Justice Elena Kagan off the health care case. Liberals and Democrats in Congress say it's Justice Clarence Thomas who should sit it out.
Neither justice is budging — the right decision, according to many ethicists and legal experts.
None of the parties in the case has asked the justices to excuse themselves. But underlying the calls on both sides is their belief that the conservative Thomas is a sure vote to strike down President Barack Obama's health care law and that the liberal Kagan is certain to uphold the main domestic achievement of the man who appointed her.
The stakes are high in the court's election-year review of a law aimed at extending coverage to more than 30 million people. Both sides have engaged in broad legal and political maneuvering for the most favorable conditions surrounding the court's consideration of the case.
Taking away just one vote potentially could tip the outcome on the nine-justice court.
Republican lawmakers recently have stepped up their effort against Kagan, complaining that the Justice Department has not fully revealed Kagan's involvement in planning the response to challenges to the law. Kagan was Obama's solicitor general, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, until he nominated her to the high court last year. |
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Exclusive Interview with Author Jeff Madrick The Age of Greed
Attorney Blog News |
2011/11/28 09:44
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LISTEN to an Exclusive interview: http://lbishow.com/index.php?option=com_contentamp;view=articleamp;id=361:the-age-of-greedamp;catid=51:americas-best-selling-authors-series nbsp;
Prominent Trial Attorney, Jack Girardi, Ptr Girardi Keese, and Producer Steve Murphy interview award winning Author Jeff Madrick on his new book, Age of Greed, The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970-Present .
Jeff has appeared on Charlie Rose, the Lehrer News Hour, Now with Bill Moyers, Frontline, C-Span, Book Notes, CNN, CNBC, CBS, BBC, and NPR.nbsp; He has also served as a policy consultant and speech writer for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and other U.S. legislatorsJeff is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School.nbsp; His last book, The Case for Big Government (Princeton), was named one of two 2009 PEN Galbraith Non-Fiction Award Finalists.nbsp; nbsp;
He is also the author of Taking America (Bantam, 1987), and The End of Affluence (Random House, 1995), both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America was chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books of the year. His book,nbsp; Why Economies Grow (Basic Books/Century Foundation, 2002), emphasized the need for active public investment and a broader understanding of the causes of growth than was popular in academia at the time.nbsp; He has written for many other publications over the years,nbsp; including The Post, The Times, Institutional Investor, The Nation, American Prospect, The Globe, Newsday, and the business, op-ed, and the Sunday magazine sections of The New York Times.nbsp; He is a regular blogger for The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast.
The Age of Greed is a fascinating and deeply disturbing tale of hypocrisy, corruption, and insatiable greed. But more than that, it's a much-needed reminder of just how we got into the mess we're in-a reminder that is greatly needed when we are still being told that greed is good.nbsp; As Jeff Madrick makes clear in a narrative at once sweeping, fast-paced, and incisive, the single-minded pursuit of huge personal wealth has been on the rise in the United States since the 1970s, led by a few individuals who have argued that self-interest guides society more effectively than community concerns. These stewards of American capitalism have insisted on the central and essential place of accumulated wealth through the booms, busts, and recessions of the last half century, giving rise to our current woes. Intense economic inequity and instability is the story of our age, and Jeff Madrick tells it with style, clarity, and an unerring command of his subject.
You can contact Jeff Madrick @ http://www.jeffmadrick.com |
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NYC sues roll-your-own cigarette shops over taxes
Attorney Blog News |
2011/11/21 09:32
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There is no place in the U.S. more expensive to smoke than New York City, where the taxes alone will set you back $5.85 per pack. Yet, addicts who visit Island Smokes, a roll-your-own cigarette shop in Chinatown, can walk out with an entire 10-pack carton for under $40, thanks to a yawning tax loophole that officials in several states are now trying to close.
The store is one of a growing number around the country that have come under fire over their use of high-speed cigarette rolling machines that function as miniature factories, and can package loose tobacco and rolling papers into neatly formed cigarettes, sometimes in just a few minutes.
The secret to Island's low prices is simple: Even though patrons leave carrying cartons that look very much like the Marlboros or Newports, the store charges taxes at the rate set for loose tobacco, which is just a fraction of what is charged for a commercially made pack.
Customers select a blend of tobacco leaves, intended to mirror the flavor of their regular brand. Then they feed the tobacco and some paper tubes into the machines, and return to the counter with the finished product to ring up the purchase.
The savings come at every level. Many stores sell customers loose pipe tobacco, which is taxed by the federal government at $2.80 per pound, compared with $25 per pound for tobacco made for cigarettes. The shops don't pay into the cigarette manufacturer trust fund, intended to reimburse government health programs for the cost of treating smoking-related illness. And the packs produced by roll-your-own shops are generally also being sold without local tax stamps, which in New York include a $1.50 city tax and a $4.35 state tax.
New York City's legal department filed a lawsuit against Island Smokes on Nov. 14, arguing that the company's Manhattan store and another on Staten Island are engaging in blatant tax evasion. |
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