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Wash. gay wedding flowers case goes to court
Legal Blog News |
2013/06/28 09:04
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The dispute over a Washington state florist who declined to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding goes to court Friday.
Oral arguments are scheduled in Benton County Superior Court.
The Washington state attorney general's office sued the owner of Arlene's Flowers, Baronelle Stutzman, saying she violated consumer protection law by refusing service in March to customers Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed.
Stutzman says she has no problem with homosexual customers but won't support gay weddings because of her religious beliefs.
In addition to the state, the ACLU sued Stutzman on behalf of the Kennewick, Wash. couple. A religious freedom group, Alliance Defending Freedom, countersued the state on behalf of Stutzman.
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Corbett to pick Stevens for Pa. high court
Legal Blog News |
2013/06/19 11:20
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Gov. Tom Corbett plans to nominate state appeals court Judge Correale Stevens to temporarily fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court.
Two people familiar with the decision told The Associated Press of Corbett's plans on condition of anonymity, saying the information was part of private conversations.
The decision comes more than a month after the opening was created following the resignation from the bench of Joan Orie Melvin. Melvin was convicted of using public employees to help her political campaigns.
Stevens will require a two-thirds approval by the state Senate to take a seat on the bench.
Stevens is a familiar face in state politics and government, and is currently president judge of state Superior Court, which handles criminal and civil appeals. His long career in public service also includes time as Luzerne County's district attorney, a county judge and seven years as a state representative.
Melvin and Stevens are both Republicans, so if he is confirmed the court will return to a four-to-three Republican majority. |
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Court says human genes cannot be patented
Legal Blog News |
2013/06/13 09:19
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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes, a decision with the potential to profoundly affect the emerging and lucrative medical and biotechnology industries.
The high court's unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie's revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court's decision, said that Myriad's assertion — that the DNA it isolated from the body for its proprietary breast and ovarian cancer tests were patentable — had to be dismissed because it violates patent rules. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.
"We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated," Thomas said.
Patents are the legal protection that gives inventors the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on the two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say such protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body.
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Somali torture victim: Ohio court hearing a relief
Legal Blog News |
2013/06/05 08:54
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Torture victim Abukar Hassan Ahmed was living in London when he decided several years ago to search again for the man he says crippled him during interrogations in Somalia in the 1980s.
It took just a half-hour Internet search in 2005 to locate the former government official then living in Ohio. Ahmed finally got the chance to tell his story in court last week after a federal judge ruled in his favor in a lawsuit against the official, Abdi Aden Magan.
"Justice is universal," Ahmed told The Associated Press after the hearing. Those "who try to torture a human being will be brought to justice anywhere he is. That is my message."
Ahmed, a former human rights advocate in Somalia, alleged in a 2010 lawsuit that the beatings he endured at Magan's direction make it painful for him to sit and injured his bladder to the point that he is incontinent. He is seeking more than $12 million in damages, though he's unlikely to ever see the money. Magan is believed to be living in Kenya, where even if he had the funds, he would be out of reach of U.S. courts. |
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Chicago man pleads guilty in NY hacking case
Legal Blog News |
2013/05/30 10:21
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A self-described anarchist and "hacktivist" from Chicago pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges he illegally accessed computer systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors.
"As part of each of these hacks, I took and decimated confidential information stored on computer systems websites used by each of the entities," Jeremy Hammond told a judge in federal court in Manhattan. "For each of these hacks, I knew what I was doing was against the law."
Prosecutors had alleged the cyber-attacks were carried out by Anonymous, the loosely organized worldwide hacking group that stole confidential information, defaced websites and temporarily put some victims out of business. Hammond was caught last year with the help of Hector Xavier Monsegur, a famous hacker known as Sabu who later helped law enforcement infiltrate Anonymous.
A criminal complaint had accused Hammond of pilfering information of more than 850,000 people via his attack on Austin, Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Inc., a publisher of geopolitical information also known as Stratfor. He also was accused of using the credit card numbers of Stratfor clients to make charges of at least $700,000. He allegedly bragged he even snared the personal data of a former U.S. vice president and one-time CIA director.
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