Free Republic

“They killed him,” Marvin Siegel’s daughter Lisa Siegel Belanger wrote in a text. She followed up to explain that six years of round-the-clock captivity in his own home and in various medical facilities, together with forced drugging and morphine, lack of proper care and the ability for his family to interact with him and help with decisions, accelerated her father’s death. As we previously reported in this paper through a multi-part series of articles, including a personal account by Lisa, six years ago her father was taken from his Boxford, Mass. home via ambulance at the direction of a visiting...

Being a good Samaritan in California just got a little riskier. The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a young woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle isn't immune from civil liability because the care she rendered wasn't medical. The divided high court appeared to signal that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued. Lisa Torti of Northridge allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by Alexandra Van Horn by yanking her "like a...

Ejected at ’04 Convention, a Protester Gets $55,000 By COLIN MOYNIHAN Published: November 15, 2008 During President Bush’s acceptance speech in Madison Square Garden at the 2004 Republican National Convention, a San Francisco woman briefly interrupted the proceedings by standing on a chair and unfurling a banner that accused the president of lying. That protest set into motion a chain of events that has ended in one of the more unusual legal resolutions connected to the four days of the convention, during which more than 1,800 demonstrators and bystanders were arrested, most of them in street protests. Hundreds of them...

Edwards gave loan to a federal judgeConflict issue arose as senator’s spouse played role in caseBy Geoff Earle In 1994, when Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) was still the biggest tort lawyer in North Carolina, he lent $30,000 to a federal bankruptcy judge who was then overseeing a case on which Edwards’s wife, Elizabeth, did much of the legal work. The judge, J. Rich Leonard, is a longtime friend of Edwards’s. Edwards, who won election to the Senate in 1998, did no business in Leonard’s courtroom. But in 1999, Leonard approved a $1 million contingency fee for Nicholls & Crampton,...

For Immediate Release: - 11/26/03 For Further Information Contact: Philip J. Berg, Esquire 706 Ridge Pike Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-1711 Cell (610) 662-3005 (610) 825-3134 (800) 993-PHIL Fax (610) 834-7659 PJBLAW@aol.com News Conference – Wednesday - 11/26/03 – 12 Noon 5th & Ranstead Streets, Philadelphia [corner of Bourse Building with Independence Hall in background] 911 Victim’s Wife, Ellen Mariani, files RICO Act [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] Federal Court Complaint against President Bush and Cabinet Members (Philadelphia, PA – 11/26/03) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, announced today that he, attorney for Ellen Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who...