Recently re-elected Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott agreed to terms with Tallahassee attorney Steven Andrews regarding a dispute over public records disclosure involving a property close to the governor’s mansion. Andrews sued Scott in 2012 after the governor stated his intent to use state funds to buy a building near a property known as “The
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before searching historical location data from a person’s cell phone. The case involved defendants Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan, who were accused of several Baltimore-area robberies. The
Another domino has reportedly fallen in the aftermath of the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) meltdown that was mostly responsible for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Multiple media outlets are reporting that Goldman Sachs will settle a class-action lawsuit led by the NECA-IBEW’s Health and Welfare Pension Fund of Illinois, among other investors, to
New York-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara may be the greatest prosecutor who ever lived. From the Bernie Madoff scandal to Toyota, to a large portion of the New York state legislature; he has left a historic level of convictions and penalty awards. This includes a remarkable streak of 85 consecutive insider trading convictions before losing
7/24/2015 The U.S. Probation Office has recommended that the former owner of Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell, be sentenced to life in prison for allowing several shipments of peanuts from facilities infected with salmonella. The peanuts led to the deadliest food outbreak in U.S. history from 2008-2009, causing nine deaths and over 700 illnesses
On Friday, banking giant JP Morgan Chase agreed to a $388 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company misled investors regarding the stability of $10 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The lead plaintiff in the case was the Fort Worth employees’ retirement fund, along with others including the Northern and Southern
7/19/2015 Former Congressman Michael Grimm (R-NY) was sentenced on Friday to eight months in prison and one year of supervised released in a Brooklyn federal court after pleading guilty to tax evasion. Apologizing in front of Judge Pamela Chen, Grimm pleaded for the judge to avoid prison; however Chen said that she was troubled by the
7/14/2015 A week after reaching a settlement agreement with six Occupy Wall Street Protesters for conduct that occurred in the early days of the 2011 protest; New York City agreed on Monday to give the Estate of Eric Garner $5.9 million. Garner was killed last July in Staten Island after being detained by police after
7/7/2015 New York City has agreed to pay six Occupy Wall Street protestors between $52,500 and $60,000 each, totaling $332,500 in a settlement over being illegally pepper sprayed by police in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. The incident happened in the early days of the original September, 2011 anti-inequality protest, when police Deputy Inspector, Anthony Bologna, was
7/3/2015 In a joint press conference, the attorneys general for Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi announced that it has agreed to settle the penalty phase regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The spill occurred on April 20th, 2010, when the aforementioned oil rig caught fire, killing 11 people and sent over 3 million barrels of