Free Republic

A federal judge has ordered the attorneys of Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre to destroy documents related to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein confidant who has been frequently named as his former collaborator in child sex trafficking. Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska made the determination in lawsuits Giuffre and her attorneys, Cooper and Kirk, have filed against Maxwell and former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz. Preska rejected Dershowitz’s attempt to change a protective order to receive documents for his defense in the defamation case while ordering Giuffre’s attorneys to destroy documents from a previously-settled case involving Maxwell. Preska wrote in her...

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that attorneys for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s accuser Virginia Guiffre must destroy certain Epstein files that were improperly obtained.The ruling came after attorney Alan Dershowitz requested access to the documents, Newsweek reports.  Dershowitz said the documents would be an asset to his defense in his 2019 defamation case against Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who said Dershowitz was one of the men with whom Epstein forced her to have sex.“The Court is not convinced that the production of the [Ghislaine] Maxwell materials to Mr. Dershowitz would even vindicate those important objectives beyond making life easier for Mr. Dershowitz,” Senior...

FRESNO A Fresno County Superior Court has ruled that the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's regulation of developers for air-quality impacts is legal and valid. The lawsuit challenging the District's rule establishing development fees for air-pollution mitigation was filed by the California Building Industry Association. The lawsuit claimed that the District had no authority to regulate development and impose fees, and amounted to a tax under Proposition 13. The court disagreed Thursday in its ruling. The Valley Air District was the first in the state to put such a rule into place. other areas are now looking to...

A Kern County dairy violated the federal Clean Air Act when it built a new plant before obtaining an air permit and complying with the latest air pollution requirements, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment sued C&R Vanderham Dairy nearly two years ago in U.S. District Court in Fresno, claiming the dairy needed to apply for an air permit before beginning construction. The plaintiffs argued that volatile organic compounds in decomposing dairy manure, livestock feed, and cows' digestive systems contributed to the region's polluted air. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District...

Roadside camping and parking bans are constitutional, a federal judge ruled, blocking protesters from pitching tents or placing portable toilets in ditches near President Bush's ranch. Protesters sought to make a smaller makeshift campsite than what Cindy Sheehan set up a year ago off the winding, two-lane road leading to Bush's ranch, said attorney David Broiles, who sued on behalf of Sheehan, of Berkeley, Calif., and four other anti-war demonstrators. But less than a week after asking the protesters and McLennan County officials to try to reach a compromise, U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith ruled unexpectedly late Monday that...