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Supreme Court OKs early release plan for Calif. inmates
Law & Court News |
2013/08/02 08:30
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Despite warnings from California officials, the nation's highest court is refusing to delay the early release of nearly 10,000 California inmates by year's end to ease overcrowding at 33 adult prisons.
In its decision Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed an emergency request by the Gov. Jerry Brown to halt a lower court's directive for the early release.
Law enforcement officials expressed concern about the ruling.
The justices ignored efforts already under way to reduce prison populations and "chose instead to allow for the release of more felons into already overburdened communities," said Covina Police Chief Kim Raney, president of the California Police Chiefs Association.
Brown's office referred a request for comment to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where Secretary Jeff Beard vowed that the state would press on with a still-pending appeal in hope of preventing the releases.
A panel of three federal judges had previously ordered the state to cut its prison population by nearly 8 percent to roughly 110,000 inmates by Dec. 31 to avoid conditions amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. That panel, responding to decades of lawsuits filed by inmates, repeatedly ordered early releases after finding inmates were needlessly dying and suffering because of inadequate medical and mental health care caused by overcrowding.
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Pitt schools segregation lawsuit in federal court
Law & Court News |
2013/07/23 10:37
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Nearly 60 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in public schools, lawyers are set to square off in a federal courtroom in eastern North Carolina over whether the effects of that Jim Crow past still persist.
A trial was to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in Greenville in the case of Everett v. Pitt County Board of Education.
A group of black parents represented by the UNC Center for Civil Rights will ask the court to reverse a 2011 student assignment plan they say effectively resegregated several schools in the district.
Lawyers for the Pitt schools will ask a judge to rule that the district has achieved "unitary status," meaning the "vestiges of past discrimination have been eliminated to the extent practicable." The designation would end federal oversight of the Pitt schools, in place since the 1960s.
This case is the first of its kind brought in North Carolina since 1999. More than 100 school districts across the South are still under federal court supervision. The decision in the Pitt case is expected to be widely followed by those other school systems.
Mark Dorosin, the managing attorney for the UNC Center for Civil Rights, said the case is a critical test of the continued viability of one of the most fundamental principles of school desegregation: That school districts still under court order must remedy the lasting vestiges of racial discrimination.
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NJ court overturns award for view lost to dune
Law & Court News |
2013/07/08 00:25
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New Jersey's highest court on Monday overturned a $375,000 jury award given to an elderly couple who complained that a protective sand dune behind their house blocked their ocean views.
In a ruling seen as a wider victory for towns that want to build barriers to protect themselves from catastrophic storms, the state Supreme Court faulted a lower court for not allowing jurors to consider the dune's benefits in calculating its effect on property value. The high court ruled that those protective benefits should have been considered along with the loss of the ocean views.
The sand dune in question saved the elderly couple's home from destruction in Superstorm Sandy in October.
The 5-year-old case is being closely watched at the Jersey shore, which was battered by Sandy. Officials want to build protective dune systems along the state's entire 127-mile coastline, but towns fear they won't be able to if many homeowners hold out for large payouts as compensation for lost views.
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Special US Senate election in Oct. OK
Law & Court News |
2013/06/14 08:47
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A special U.S. Senate election to replace the late Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg can be held in October, as it was scheduled by Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a state court ruled Thursday.
The ruling could be appealed. And while it keeps an election on course it does not seem likely to chill criticism of the popular governor for how he chose to replace Lautenberg, the Senate's oldest member, who died last week at age 89.
Four Democrats and two Republicans have filed petitions to run in the Senate race to complete Lautenberg's term, with three early polls showing Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker as the front-runner.
Christie scheduled the election for Oct. 16. A group of Democrats sued, saying it should be held Nov. 5, the day voters are going to the polls in the general elections anyway.
Christie's critics have complained that holding the election in October will cost taxpayers unnecessarily. Officials say each election costs the state about $12 million to run.
Judge Jane Grall wrote Thursday that objections to the costs of the election are policy matters that aren't questions for the court.
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Court: $1M coverage for Conn. fire victim families
Law & Court News |
2013/06/11 08:58
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Families suing the operator of a Hartford nursing home where 16 patients died in a 2003 fire suffered a setback Monday, when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the home's insurance coverage was $1 million instead of the $10 million claimed by the victims' relatives.
The justices' 3-2 decision reversed a lower court judge's interpretation of Greenwood Health Center's insurance policy in favor of the families. The high court instead found in favor of Boston-based Lexington Insurance Co., a subsidiary of American International Group Inc.
"It just seems completely inadequate," Van Starkweather, an attorney for one victim's family, said about the lower coverage figure. "I'm disappointed. It was a close decision. Three justices went with AIG. Two justices went with the victims."
A lawyer for Lexington Insurance declined to comment Monday.
The fire at Greenwood Health Center on Feb. 26, 2003, broke out after psychiatric patient Leslie Andino set her bed on fire while flicking a cigarette lighter. Officials at the time said it was the 10th deadliest nursing home fire in U.S. history. Andino was charged with 16 counts of arson murder, but was found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Relatives of 13 of the 16 victims sued the nursing home's operator for cash damages, saying it failed to adequately supervise Andino. Hartford Superior Court Judge Marshall K. Berger Jr. ruled in 2009 that Greenwood's insurance policy with Lexington provided $250,000 in coverage for each plaintiff and the policy's maximum coverage was $10 million.
But Lexington Insurance appealed Berger's decision, saying that the $10 million was the total coverage for all seven nursing homes run by Greenwood's operator and that each home was insured up to $1 million.
In a decision written by Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, the Supreme Court's majority found that each plaintiff actually was eligible for up to $500,000 from the insurance policy if they won their lawsuit, but that the policy's total coverage was limited to $1 million. |
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