Current Events Archives - Page 3 of 10

Former Law Student’s Debt Forgiven, Bankruptcy Court Calls Asberger Syndrome “Undue Burden”

Law.com: “A former law student has won a bid in bankruptcy court to discharge nearly $340,000 in education debt because her diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome rendered her unable to repay the loans.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland on May 17 found that Carol Todd, who attended the University of Baltimore School of Law, met the difficult burden of showing that she would suffer undue hardship if forced to repay her debt.

Todd, who received her high school general equivalency diploma during the late 1980s, at the age of 39, began attending law school in 1992 but did not finish, according to the opinion. She went on to obtain a master’s degree from Towson University and a Ph.D. from an unaccredited online school in 2007. She filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009. At the time of her trial, she was 63 and owed $339,361 to three student loan creditors.”

E-Book Suit Goes Ahead Against Apple And Publishers

Thomson Reuters: “Apple Inc and five major book publishers have failed to persuade a U.S. judge to throw out a lawsuit by consumers accusing them of conspiring to raise electronic book pricestwo years ago.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York is related to government charges in April accusing Apple and publishers of colluding to break up Amazon.com’s low-cost dominance of the digital book market. HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Simon & Schuster Inc and Hachette Book Group reached settlements with the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division.

Apple and two of the publishers, Macmillan and Penguin, said in court last month that they want to go to trial to defend themselves against the government charges. The judge has scheduled the next pre-trial hearing for June 22.

The consumers’ main allegation is that the publishers worked together to raise prices and decrease retail competition with Apple coordinating the agreement among them.”

2 Roger Clemens Jurors Dismissed For Sleeping On The Job

ABA Journal: “Last week, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton warned lawyers in Roger Clemens’ perjury trial that they were dragging out the case and boring the jurors.

The trial is now in its fifth week, and two jurors are gone. They were dismissed after they were caught sleeping during the testimony, the New York Times reports.”

Employee Loses Job For 40 Year-Old Crime Conviction

miamicriminallawyer.com: “Even a small charge is worth fighting.” That was unfortunately true for the woman featured in this article, who lost her job when her employer, Wells Fargo, discovered a 40 year-old conviction. After five years of awards for employee excellence, she was terminated for a 1972 shoplifting conviction.

Phoenix Dog-Fighting Ring Busted

azcentral.com: A dog-fighting ring in Phoenix was busted recently and nine people have been arrested. Two more spectators left with injured dogs, which were never found. Dog-fighting is usually associated with other illegalities. There is a strong body of evidence that animal cruelty is linked to other crimes, particularly crimes against humans. According to the New York Times:

“….We discovered that in homes where there was domestic violence or physical abuse of children, the incidence of animal cruelty was close to 90 percent. The most common pattern was that the abusive parent had used animal cruelty as a way of controlling the behaviors of others in the home. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what links things like animal cruelty and child abuse and domestic violence. And one of the things is the need for power and control. Animal abuse is basically a power-and-control crime.”

Quote by Randall Lockwood, the A.S.P.C.A.’s then-senior vice president for forensic sciences and anticruelty projects and a member of the new Anti-Animal-Abuse Task Force in Baltimore.