Category Archives: Legal News

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News

Assange Lawyer: UK and Sweden ‘Violating International Law’

U.K. authorities say they will arrest the Australian national if he leaves the embassy to seek medical treatment.

The United Kingdom and Sweden are “clearly violating international law” for refusing to grant Julian Assange medical attention outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London without arrest, a lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder told RT Thursday.

Assange, who has been living in asylum in the embassy for over three years, has been suffering from a “deep pain” in his right shoulder since June, for which his doctor has advised a magnetic resonance imaging scan.

U.K. authorities have said that they will arrest the Australian national if he leaves the embassy to seek medical treatment, which Assange’s legal team says is an affront on his human rights.

RELATED: The Revolutionary Act of Telling the Truth

“The U.K. and Sweden are clearly violating international law,” lawyer Carey Shenkman told RT in a televised interview. “The U.K. is effectively brushing off its international obligations.”

According to Shenkman, both the U.K. and Sweden are contravening legally binding accords, including the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which grant the right to medical treatment, while both nations recognize asylum in embassies.

“What they are doing in reality is making Assange choose between his asylum and getting medical treatment. No person should ever have to make that choice,” Shenkman added.

Assange is wanted for questioning by Sweden over sexual assault. If arrested he faces the risk of extradition to the U.S. where there has been an ongoing attempt to prosecute Wikileaks and its founder over the slew of damning revelations made about the U.S. military.

For Full Article and Video – This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Assange-Lawyer-UK-and-Sweden-Violating-International-Law–20151016-0002.html

Blog, Business Law, Legal News

Small-business legal group urges Supreme Court to hear property case

By Lydia Wheeler – 10/19/15 11:23 AM EDT

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Legal Center is urging the Supreme Court to take a case out of California that questions whether a city can constitutionally force developers to sell certain housing units below market rates.

The case, California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose, Calif., centers on a city rule that requires developers to set aside 15 percent of all newly constructed residential units for the city to use as affordable housing stock or opt out by paying a fee.

NFIB Small Business Legal Center is asking the Supreme Court to hear the case and reverse the California Supreme Court decision upholding the housing rule.

“Here we have the city of San Jose trying to use its power to bully landowners,” Karen Harned, the group’s executive director said in a news release. “Clearly, the constitution protects private property and the right of landowners to exercise their right to use and sell their property at market rate. The court should stop San Jose and other cities with similar schemes.”

The legal arm of the nation’s leading small-business association said the court should settle the lower court split and follow the legal precedence it set in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission. In that case, the court held that the government couldn’t require a landowner to dedicate property as a condition of a permit approval.

Read Full Article – http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/257306-small-business-legal-group-urges-supreme-court-to-hear-property-case

Blog, Criminal, Legal News

DEA Must Stop Interfering With Legal Medical Marijuana Dispensaries, Federal Court Rules

The judge said the DEA was defying the “language and logic” of the law

In a victory for state medical marijuana programs and patients, a federal court in California ruled Monday that federal authorities may not shut down medical pot dispensaries operating within state laws.

Under Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which accompanied last year’s spending bill, the Justice Department can not use federal dollars to interfere with state medical marijuana laws and practices, preventing the DEA from pursuing dispensaries and patients, the court ruled, according to the Washington Post.

The decision follows a leaked Justice Department memo that interpreted the amendment as offering protections limited to the actual states, not the individuals and businesses which deal with the day-to-day implementation of marijuana laws. As a result of the DEA’s continued enforcement, several dispensaries have been closed in California, including one owned by the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, the first licensed medical pot dispensary in the state.

Read Full Article – http://time.com/4080110/dea-medical-marijuana-california-ruling/

Blog, Legal News

Zofran Lawsuits Consolidated, Victory for Plaintiffs

. By Jane Mundy

Boston, MABecause so many Zofran birth defects lawsuits have been filed nationwide against GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer, a multidistrict litigation (MDL) has been ordered for all pending and future lawsuits – good news for plaintiffs. And attorneys say that the decision to send Zofran lawsuits to Boston is a “victory” for plaintiffs.

The order to consolidate was issued by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on October 13, 2015. At least 60 plaintiffs nationwide have one thing in common: they are all part of MDL No. 2657, centralized in the District of Massachusetts before US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor.

Zofran lawsuits that were filed in federal court have been consolidated because they have almost the same allegations:

• GSK fraudulently misrepresented Zofran to prescribing physicians about the safety of its anti-nausea drug for pregnant women.

• GSK knew and concealed the drug’s alleged association with serious birth defects, and failed to provide doctors and patients with information regarding this risk.

• GSK marketed the drug to pregnant women off-label, i.e., without FDA approval. (The FDA only approved Zofran to treat post-operative surgery patients, as well as those undergoing certain cancer treatments.)

While each lawsuit in an MDL remains individual, common questions will be raised, i.e., does Zofran cause birth defects and if so, which kinds? Plaintiffs have filed claims alleging Zofran has caused a number of congenital birth defects, including cleft palate, spina bifida and heart defects. A few claims have also been filed alleging hypospadias and even a missing kidney.

Why Boston?

The Panel’s choice is a victory for the families who have sued GSK, according to attorney Michael Monheit, writing in The Legal Examiner (October 15). Monheit said that GSK first proposed a MDL in Federal Court in Pennsylvania, which is close to the drug company’s headquarters. But plaintiffs argued that “few if any Zofran lawsuits had been filed in Pennsylvania” and Boston was a top choice, particularly because Zofran was first linked to a birth defect (cleft palate) by researchers at Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center. And five lawsuits have already been filed in Massachusetts, four of them already assigned to Judge Saylor.

Full Article Read Here – http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/zofran-birth-defects/glaxosmithkline-gsk-us-district-judge-f-dennis-20980.html#.ViTB12SrQy4

 

Blog, Criminal, Legal News

Cybercrime Is The Modern-Day Mafia

27 Comments

Tony Bradley ,

CONTRIBUTOR

Organized crime is nothing new. Mob gangsters and mafia families have been romanticized as the stuff of legend since the days of Prohibition. Just as the Internet has transformed the way we access information, shop, interact with each other, and conduct business, it has also completely altered the world of organized crime.

Crime is no longer confined to traditional brick and mortars–it’s all online. While the information and payout criminals are looking to attain are a bit different than in decades past, these are still thugs and true criminals. Now, however, they have the shield and anonymity of the Internet to hide behind.

It took a while for organized crime to adapt to cybercrime. I suppose it was a generational issue just as adoption of the Internet and cutting edge technologies are for the rest of society. Entrenched crime bosses probably shunned the Internet in favor of the proven business model they had used for decades. As younger criminals elevated through the ranks to take command, though, they saw the potential for crime on a massive scale with significantly less risk of arrest or physical harm.

It’s also possible that organized crime online is more or less organic—a logical evolution of Internet crime as cybercriminals band together to pool resources. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle—a combination of grassroots cybercrime organizations and traditional mafia operations transforming to embrace the Internet.

Full article read here – http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2015/10/16/cybercrime-is-the-modern-day-mafia/