News

Real Estate

[03/09] E-House Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2009 Results and Declares Cash Dividend
[03/09] CRIC Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2009 Results
[03/08] Chairmen Selected for Chinese Drywall Insurance Program
[03/08] Bairdwarner.com Offers Exclusive Online Search Engine for Investors & Prospective Buyers of Area Foreclosed Properties
[03/08] EZTEC Closes 2009 With Net Income of R$162.9 Million, Net Margin of 32.2%, EBITDA Margin of 31.7% and ROE of 20.6%
[03/08] Fighting the Headwind in Housing
[03/08] Piedmont Town Center Wins LEED Gold Certification
[03/08] First Team(R) Real Estate Earns Website Quality Certification
[03/08] The Case Against the Destruction of a Free Market Sector of Our State's Real Estate Industry: New York Taxpayers for Economic Justice Oppose Plans to Socialize the Title Insurance Industry
[03/08] Essex buys condominium project in California

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NHTSA Recalls

[03/06] AIRSTREAM ( 10V081000 )
[03/06] GEM ( 10V080000 )
[03/05] FOREST RIVER ( 10V079000 )
[03/06] COACHMEN ( 10V078000 )
[03/05] HEARTLAND ( 10V077000 )

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White Collar Crime

[03/08] Tax season bringing out the fraud artists
[03/03] 10th guilty plea in Galleon insider trading case
[02/25] Former Madoff operations exec arrested
[02/24] Fla. money manager due in court on fraud charge
[02/24] 3 Google execs convicted of privacy violations
[02/18] Court convicts 12 in Pinot Noir fraud scheme
[02/10] $1.8M in Stanford campaign donations not returned
[02/10] Rio Tinto employees to stand trial in China

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Case Summaries

Family Law

[03/05] People v. Warwick
Conviction of defendant of child abuse and neglect and jury's true finding on the enhancement that she personally inflicted great bodily injury on her child is affirmed as, when she gave birth to her son in her bedroom and concealed the birth causing severe injuries, defendant inflicted great bodily injury on her child.

[03/05] Doe v. S. Carolina Dep't of Soc. Servs.
In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action brought by a minor child and her adoptive parents against defendant, an Adoption Specialist with the South Carolina Department of Social Services (SCDSS), alleging violations of their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and state law claims against SCDSS under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act (SCTCA), judgment is affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded where: 1) when a state involuntarily removes a child from her home, thereby taking the child into its custody and care, the state has taken an affirmative act to restrain the child's liberty, triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause and imposing "some responsibility for the child's safety and general well being"; 2) because it would not have been apparent to a reasonable social worker in defendant's position that her actions violated the Fourteenth Amendment, she is entitled to qualified immunity; 3) prospective adoptive parents have no substantive due process right to the disclosure of a child's history of sexual abuse; and 4) district court's grant of defendants' motion for summary judgment on the state law claims for gross negligence against SCDSS is vacated and remanded for consideration of the applicability of section 15-78-60(25).

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Oil & Gas

[03/04] MacClarence v. EPA
In a petition for review of the EPA's order denying petitioner's request that the EPA object to the issuance of a Clean Air Act Title V permit for pollutant-emitting activities at an oil and gas processing facility, the petition is denied where: 1) the EPA Administrator's conclusion that petitioner failed to provide adequate information to support his claim that the entire facility should be aggregated was not arbitrary or capricious; and 2) the Administrator's order denying the petition properly set forth petitioner's burden under 42 U.S.C. section 7661d(b)(2), stating that "to justify exercise of an objection by EPA to a title V permit pursuant to section 7661d(b)(2), a petitioner must demonstrate that the permit is not in compliance with the requirements of the CAA" and later concluding that "the general allegations of the Petitioner in the April 2004 Petition . . . fail to demonstrate a basis for Petitioner's claim that Revision 1 to the GC 1 Permit violates the CAA . . . ."

[03/02] Mac's Shell Serv., Inc. v. Shell Oil Prods. Co.
In an action under the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act (Act) by service station franchisees, alleging that a petroleum franchisor, Shell, and its assignee had constructively terminated their franchises and constructively failed to renew their franchise relationships by substantially changing the rental terms that the dealers had enjoyed for years, increasing costs for many of them, a circuit court's order partially affirming judgment for plaintiffs is affirmed in part where a franchisee who signs and operates under a renewal agreement with a franchisor may not maintain a constructive nonrenewal claim under the Act. However, the court of appeals' order is reversed in part where a franchisee cannot recover for constructive termination under the Act if the franchisor's allegedly wrongful conduct did not compel the franchisee to abandon its franchise.

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White Collar Crime

[03/05] US v. Brown
Defendant's bank fraud conviction is affirmed where: 1) the extrinsic evidence of defendant's other uses of fictitious financial documents was substantively and temporally tied to the charged offenses, and those other uses were distinct enough not to be the "needless presentation of cumulative evidence" under Fed. R. Evid. 403; and 2) the extrinsic evidence that defendant had failed to pay for a house inspection was not probative of his intent to defraud the victim and therefore inadmissible under Rule 404(b), but this evidence was quite limited in length, not inflammatory, and was not mentioned during the government's closing arguments.

[02/23] US v. Brown
Former Chief Legal Counsel for Rite Aid's conviction and sentence for conspiracy to commit accounting fraud, filing false statements with the SEC, and other related crimes, is affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded where: 1) district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's Rule 33 motion based on newly discovered evidence; 2) defendant's pre-trial suppression motion of the taped conversations was properly denied; 3) district court did not abuse its discretion in its reaction to defendant's plea agreement; and 4) defendant's sentence is vacated and remanded as the district court failed to explain, in the manner now required under Booker, how it considered the section 3553(a) factors in imposing the sentence.

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