Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues. Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose "the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military's detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict," Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco....

BERKELEY -- Berkeley activists can sue federal agents for their role in a 2008 raid in which officers seized their computers and records in search of alleged threats by animal-rights advocates, a federal judge ruled Monday. The activist group Long Haul Inc. can try to prove that the search of its Berkeley offices exceeded legal boundaries, that agents misled the judge who issued a search warrant, and that it was targeted because of its left-wing views, said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. An unaffiliated group with offices in the same Berkeley building, East Bay Prisoner Support, also won the right...

One of the many contentious issues in the national health care debate is something that began 34 years ago in California when Jerry Brown, in the first year of his first governorship, signed legislation imposing a $250,000 limit on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. The version of a national health care bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the House contains a provision that would push – but not quite compel – California and other states with malpractice damage caps to repeal them.

Thanks to a timely traffic wreck, a local real estate developer won 57 acres of prime Rancho Murieta property five years ago for just $2,000. And if that came as a shock to the big union pension fund and the bank that lost out in the deal, the bad news recently got worse for them.On Nov. 16, a judge gaveled more salt into the wounds of the Operating Engineers Local 3 Pension Trust Fund and the Amalgamated Bank. It came in a tentative decision that established the value of the land at $27 million, or 13,500 times more than what...

When California's political consultants share war stories, 1988's immensely expensive, multifront battle between insurance companies and lawyer-backed consumer groups takes center stage. Tens of millions of dollars were spent on a confusing array of competing ballot measures, and when the dust had settled, insurers had lost big, particularly with passage of Proposition 103, which made the state insurance commissioner an elected official and dramatically increased insurance regulation. It was a big battle in the decades-long "tort war" over rules governing who can sue whom for personal injuries, including auto accidents – a war fought in the Legislature, on the ballot...

California's government is in a state of civil war. The battlegrounds: courtrooms from San Francisco to Sacramento. The fight: furloughs. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration spent $228,000 on furlough litigation as part of an eight-month contract that ended in June with Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, a Sacramento-based law firm. "These legal costs wouldn't be so high if people weren't fighting the furloughs," said Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration. "That's ludicrous," said Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents about 95,000 state workers. "What audacity, to blame the very people they're hurting...

The American Civil Liberties Union and the United Farm Workers Union filed a lawsuit this morning against Cal-OSHA, accusing it of not being capable of protecting the state's 650,000 farm laborers from heat injury and death. The suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court credits occupational safety officials with stepping up enforcement in the wake of fatalities last year. But it says employers remain out of compliance with regulations. It cites as evidence six farmworker deaths last year -- three more than Cal-OSHA recognizes -- injuries of farmworkers this year and widespread violations of laws that Cal-OSHA inspectors have found...

In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Berserkeley joke as the campus' own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter. Around 1997, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2003, he was arrested for assaulting a staff member at a halfway house where he was a resident. He spent the next 21/2 years in Santa Clara County jail, its acute psychiatric unit, Napa and Atascadero state hospitals - until at age 33, he killed himself by suffocating himself with a plastic bag in a jail cell on...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday largely agreed with a landmark ruling that found cigarette makers deceived the public for decades about the heath hazards of smoking. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington upheld the major elements of a 2006 ruling that found the nation's top tobacco companies guilty of fraud and violating racketeering laws. The ruling said manufacturers must change the way they market cigarettes. It bans labels such as "low tar,""light,""ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes have been found to be no safer than others because of how people smoke them. It also...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Obama White House is reversing a Bush administration initiative that used federal health and safety regulations to limit the ability of injured consumers to sue companies in state courts. ...Trial lawyers who file class-action lawsuits on behalf of millions of consumers praised Obama's action.

Members of President Obama's Cabinet are three times more likely to have attended law school than boot camp. How things have changed since 2004, when Democrats were outraged that, in time of war, the GOP White House could be run by men with no combat experience. Saying that he was "reporting for duty," while speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., made much of his combat experience, as others criticized President George W. Bush for only serving in the Air National Guard during Vietnam. From the Senate floor, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., called Vice...

City Council members on Tuesday approved a resolution authorizing the city to file suit against national lenders who they say created a foreclosure crisis in Memphis and Shelby County that disproportionately affected African-Americans. The resolution alleges lenders engaged in "deceptive" and "discriminatory" lending practices targeted at the black community and "other select groups" that caused "substantial" and "irreparable" harm to neighborhoods and the governments. The Shelby County Commission recently approved a similar resolution, claiming the foreclosure epidemic has devastated neighborhoods, slashed property values, eroded the tax base and drained local government coffers because of a host of direct and indirect...

Louisville, Ky. (AP) -- A lawsuit can continue against the Vatican alleging that top church officials should have warned the public or authorities of known or suspected sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead for the lawsuit filed by three men who claim priests abused them as children. They allege the Vatican orchestrated a decades-long coverup of priests sexually abusing children throughout the U.S. Louisville attorney William McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims nationally in...

Santa Ana, CA (AP) -- Day laborers reached a tentative settlement with the Orange County Sheriff's Department in an unusual harassment lawsuit that saw workers take their case to federal court, an attorney said. . . . Trial had been set to begin Tuesday in the suit filed by more than 50 laborers who claimed deputies violated their right to free speech by telling them they couldn't seek work on a street corner in Lake Forest.

A tray of asymmetrical chocolate lumps balances on the counter behind the espresso machine, where owner Jean-Marc Gorce is slinging a cappuccino. Scotch-taped to the walls, clippings about the mom-and-pop truffle shop display accolades from Gourmet, the New York Times and 7 x 7. At the window, a few stools share a high counter; outside, two tables perch on the sidewalk. Cluttered but quaint, off-kilter but authentic, XOX Truffles is just the sort of place that one might associate with North Beach's motley character. Yet one of its design anomalies - a step from the curb into the shop -...

On one side are disabled Californians, who can't believe businesses still deny them access.On the other are angry business owners, who loathe the lawsuits spawned by a doorway too narrow, a toilet too high, a ramp too steep.After years of failed efforts, the Legislature is attempting again to bridge the divide with a proposal to curb lawsuits while improving public access for California's disabled. Democratic Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro has put together a complex bill she believes both Democrats and Republicans – as well as disabled Californians and business interests – can support.Critics say the plan is too...

The Antioch Police Department has been named in a federal lawsuit alleging the department's Community Action Team unfairly targets African-American families enrolled in the subsidized-housing program known as Section 8. Filed in U.S. District Court earlier this month by Bay Area Legal Aid — a civil legal service for low-income families — the suit alleges the city and police department are engaged in a "concerted and unlawful campaign to seek evidence which could lead to the termination of participants' Section 8 voucher benefits." Four individuals and a group of Section 8 families are named as plaintiffs. The suit seeks unspecified...

NEW YORK—A popular restaurant has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit with a lesbian who said a bouncer chased her out of the women's bathroom and forced her to leave because she looked masculine. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the settlement Tuesday on behalf of Khadijah Farmer. The Caliente Cab Company, while denying the allegations, also agreed to add gender identity to its nondiscrimination policy, amend its employee handbook with a section on customer restroom use and adopt a gender-neutral employee dress code. Farmer said the confrontation at the Greenwich Village eatery occurred June 24...

New Orleans (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam. Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf...

California has the seventh-worst legal climate in the nation for business, according to a survey released Wednesday by a leading business lobby. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform said California's legal climate moved up a spot from last year, but was still stuck in 44th place. "California's low ranking is not surprising, given the fact that California courts have a reputation for certifying class action lawsuits that most other jurisdictions would toss out, and that California juries are increasingly likely to award disproportionately large judgments in civil cases,"

Republicans complained Wednesday that Senate Democrats are scheduling votes around the plans of presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but predicted the ploy wouldn't save a pay equity bill. "To have the schedule of the Senate revolve around the schedule of the presidential candidates strikes me as particularly ridiculous," said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was delaying Senate business until late Wednesday to give Obama and Clinton time to return from the campaign trail. Republicans bristled at the move, particularly in the face of Reid's complaints earlier this week of GOP...

Why can't America find jurists like John Leighton Williams? Alexander Martin-Sklan, an accountant from a London suburb, tore his right quadriceps tendon in a fall in a store parking lot in June 2004. Stuck to the bottom of his right sandal was a grape, and a plan for raisin' money was born. Mr. Martin-Sklan sued the store for $600,000 for pain, suffering, depression, and compensation for lost business during his recuperation and his inability to ski or play tennis anymore. But Deputy Judge Williams ruled Mr. Martin-Sklan didn't have a leg to stand on. The plaintiff could have picked up...

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities. There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning. One alternative would be to do what the board has done for the past three years - seat its president near floor level, instead of the ornate, elevated podium that would require a significant retrofit of the historic room. Board President Aaron Peskin said he would like to find a...

WICHITA, Kan.—A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a patient-advocacy group to sue the federal government on behalf of patients of a physician who is charged with running a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown urged about 40 of Dr. Stephen Schneider's patients, some of whom had come to the hearing on crutches, to seek care at the emergency room, not the court. "If someone can prevent a criminal prosecution by filing a civil suit, there would be a flood of civil suits," Brown told the courtroom. The judge said the patients...

New Orleans (AP) -- A federal judge threw out a key class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding from a levee breach after Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over the failure of a wall on the 17th Street Canal that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. The suit led to 350,000 separate claims by businesses, government entities and residents, totaling billions of dollars in damages against the agency. The fate of many of those claims was pinned to that lawsuit...

San Francisco (AP) -- Lawyers for environmental and native Alaska groups are asking a federal appeals court in San Francisco to block an oil company's plans for exploratory drilling near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

SAN FRANCISCO - A lawsuit by animal-rights advocates accusing UCSF of illegally spending state money on painful and unnecessary experiments on dogs and monkeys was dismissed Tuesday by a San Francisco judge, who said Congress has designated federal regulators, not the courts, to oversee the research. "You want to have the court become the regulator of this particular lab," Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney told a lawyer for six health professionals who filed the taxpayer suit against the university. "I don't think that's what Congress intended." The plaintiffs wanted Mahoney to halt what they called illegal experiments and appoint a...

Spanish-speaking couple sues, accuses entities involved with mortgage, of negligence, misrepresentation -- ANTIOCH -- When it came time to sign her mortgage documents, Judy Murillo said she heard something in English that made her stop signing. The terms of her loan didn't sound right. "We weren't supposed to have Mello-Roos," she said, her brow furrowing as she sat at her dining room table. Although Murillo speaks some English, she is more comfortable with Spanish, the language she and her husband used when communicating with her real estate agent, who was also her loan consultant, and his assistant. She said...

A federal judge has dismissed the bulk of a civil rights lawsuit that accused Contra Costa sheriff's deputies of traumatizing the housemates of Scott Dyleski as they searched for Dyleski after the killing of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and television commentator Daniel Horowitz. Deputies had the right to enter the home on Hunsaker Canyon Road without warrants, as they believed Dyleski might be destroying evidence, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a ruling Monday. Kim and Fred Curiel and their three children, along with Mike Sikkema and his wife, Hazel McClure, and their two children, said deputies...

A judge dismissed three Ecuadorians from a lawsuit against San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., saying attorneys "manufactured" their claims that the company's chemical dumping in their country caused cancer. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco threw out the claims against Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company, Aug. 3. He blamed lawyers representing the Ecuadorians for fabricating their illnesses. Seven residents of Ecuador's Oriente region sued, claiming they contracted cancer due to Texaco Inc. and Texaco Petroleum Co.'s, now part of Chevron, contamination of rain forests. The case relies in part on Gloria Chamba, who in the complaint claimed her...

Four men who were allegedly refused ladies' night discounts at a Los Angeles nightclub have the right to sue on the grounds of discrimination even if they never demanded equal treatment from the club, the state Supreme Court said Thursday. California's Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits a broad range of discriminatory business conduct, including sex-based pricing, and does not require customers to demand that a company change its policies before going to court, Chief Justice Ronald George said in the unanimous decision. A lower court had thrown out the case because the men had not complained first. The ruling addressed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited workers' ability to sue employers for pay discrimination that results from decisions made years earlier. The court, in a 5-4 ruling, said that employers would otherwise find it difficult to defend against claims "arising from employment decisions that are long past." The case concerned how to apply a 180-day deadline for complaining about discriminatory pay decisions under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lilly Ledbetter sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., claiming that after 19 years at the company's Gadsden, Ala., plant, she was making $6,000 a...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a doctor who accused KFC of not telling customers that it used trans fats to fry its chicken. In an occasionally sarcastic opinion, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Dr. Arthur Hoyte could not show that he was harmed by KFC's use of the artery-clogging fats. That was enough to doom the lawsuit, but Robertson also noted other flaws in the case. "While it might be appropriate for this court to find, as a matter of law, that the consumption of fat — including trans fat —...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights filed suit in San Francisco today on behalf of Kebin Reyes, a 6-year-old U.S. citizen, saying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents violated the child's civil rights when they took him into custody on March 6. Kebin was detained along with his Guatemalan-born father, Noe Reyes, 37, during immigration raids in San Rafael that were part of the national campaign "Operation Return to Sender," which has picked up more than 18,000 people nationwide on immigration violations. Their attorneys charge the federal government violated Kebin's rights...

An appeals court ruling could spell trouble for New Yorkers suing the Environmental Protection Agency and its former chief for saying that sooty Lower Manhattan air was safe to breathe after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. A three judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared this week that EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and other agency officials can't be held constitutionally liable for making rosy declarations about air quality after the World Trade Center's destruction. The opinion, written by the court's chief judge, Dennis Jacobs, said opening EPA workers up to lawsuits for giving out bad...

LOS ANGELES - A lower court's decision to toss a $33 million jury verdict against the city and Budget Rent a Car was upheld by an appeals court. Jurors recommended the money be paid to Florida urologist Angelo E. Gousse, who filed a lawsuit in 2001 claiming he was manhandled by police when he was arrested for driving a rental car with stolen license plates. But Superior Court Judge Elizabeth A. Grimes tossed the jury award and the 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed there was insufficient evidence of emotional and physical injuries to support the large verdict. Gousse, who...

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal. James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam. In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become ''a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet...

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the social networking Web site MySpace filed by the family of a 13-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met online. The $30 million lawsuit accused the site of having no measures to protect children who use it. The lawsuit also named MySpace's parent company, News Corp., and the 19-year-old, whose criminal case has not yet gone to trial. In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said MySpace is protected under the Communications Decency Act and cannot be expected to verify the age of...

The Capitol's "tort war" began in 1975 when doctors, hospitals and other purveyors of medical care pressured the Legislature and then-Gov. Jerry Brown into placing a cap on "pain and suffering" compensation in medical malpractice lawsuits. They cited a steep increase in malpractice insurance premiums. The medicos blitzed the Capitol. Physicians' wives staged a sleep-in in the governor's office foyer to impose the $250,000 compensation limit, which resulted in a sharp drop in malpractice insurance premiums. The cap became a model for similar efforts in other states. It was a huge wake-up call for what was then called the California...

San Francisco -- A coalition of San Francisco lawyers is asking the California State Bar to investigate whether a Bush administration official violated legal ethics when he called for a boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Bar Association of San Francisco announced Thursday it wanted an investigation into the conduct of Charles "Cully" Stimson, a deputy defense secretary for detainee affairs and member of the California State Bar. On Jan. 11, Stimson told a radio audience that he was outraged that big law firms were assisting Guantanamo Bay detainees. He called for the boycott of firms...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday blamed delays in trying terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay on legal challenges filed by their lawyers. Those trials may start by this summer, Gonzales told Associated Press reporters and editors. He said rules for the military commission are being sent up to Capitol Hill this week. "It's not for lack of trying," Gonzales said, when asked about the legal fate of detainees who have been held at the military facility, in some cases for five years. "We are challenged very step of the way." "We are trying as hard as we can to bring...

Los Angeles -- Two black and two Hispanic Los Angeles police officers are accusing top department officials of discrimination for failing to include them in a new use-of-force investigation unit. The four announced a lawsuit Friday against the department. They contend the city failed to properly investigate their complaints that top department officials had excluded them from the Force Investigation Division because they were minorities or had disabilities. "My clients are just pure victims," said their lawyer, Bradley Gage. "But for race, but for their disability, they would still be in those positions."

Should taxpayers be on the hook when someone on the government payroll pulls a shenanigan that violates common sense and public policy? That's the fundamental question raised by otherwise dissimilar events in California's two largest cities, Los Angeles and San Diego. The 15-member Los Angeles City Council, with just one dissenting vote, approved a $2.7 million out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit, alleging racial discrimination, filed by an African American firefighter whose firehouse colleagues had put dog food in his spaghetti dinner as some sort of hazing prank. But Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed the action. Hazing is already outlawed...

CORAL SPRINGS -- The bathrooms in the country club were opulent, with marble floors and antique furniture. But months after purchasing the club, the owners gutted them. The problem: The walls at the Carolina Club were about an inch too narrow under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Robert Cohen and his attorney sued the place in 2003, saying he felt discriminated against, even though he was not a club member and had no interest in joining. He sued the same business in 1998 when it was under different ownership. Cohen has also filed ADA lawsuits against Publix supermarkets, McDonald's, Comfort...

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with Philip Morris USA, refusing to disturb a court ruling that threw out a $10.1 billion verdict over the company's "light" cigarettes. The court issued its order without comment. Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris, a unit of the Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving "light" cigarettes. Because the Federal Trade Commission allowed companies to characterize their cigarettes as "light" and "low tar," Philip Morris could not be held liable under state law even if the terms it used could be found false...

A large government study has concluded that monitoring fetal oxygen levels during labor does not lead to healthier newborns or reduce unnecessary Caesarean deliveries. Fetal monitoring has long been controversial. Since the 1970s, doctors have routinely listened to fetal heartbeats despite no real evidence it did any good. In fact, some research found that it increased the number of C-sections by making doctors nervously reach for a scalpel whenever the monitor showed an abnormal blip. New technology that measures oxygen levels in the blood of a fetus was thought to offer a better way to tell which babies were truly...

New Orleans -- Thousands of federal lawsuits claiming the drug Vioxx caused heart attacks and other conditions that killed or injured people cannot be pooled into one national class action, a judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Eldon Fallon, who was appointed to deal with pretrial matters for all federal suits involving Merck & Co.'s withdrawn painkiller, did not rule on the possibility of separate class-actions suits for each state and the District of Columbia.

A state appeals court on Friday threw out a jury's $34.2 million award to the Oakland Raiders over accusations that managers of the Oakland Coliseum falsely promised a sold-out stadium to lure the team back to the Bay Area. The case dates to 1995, when Raiders owner Al Davis maneuvered to get his team out of Southern California after revenues waned, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum's foundation was shaken by an earthquake and a deal collapsed to build a new stadium and horse track. The Oakland deal, first inked in 1995 and renegotiated a year later, gave the Raiders a...

Inmate rights lawyers filed a legal motion Monday to cap the population in the California prison system. The motion was filed in a pending class-action lawsuit in Sacramento, already settled on behalf of the plaintiffs, to improve mental health care in the prison system. A second motion was expected to be filed later in the day in San Francisco in the class-action case that regulates overall health care in the system. A press release filed by the attorneys cited two 2004 reports as saying that the prison population should be reduced to anywhere from 111,300 to 138,000. The prison population...