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The Red Rooster III was 90 miles out of San Diego on an afternoon in July when it came across a fisherman's dream, a school of albacore tuna. Suddenly, the charter boat's skipper, John Grabowski, saw a rod flying in the air as a passenger, a 72-year-old man, seized up with a heart attack. Mr. Grabowski ran to get the portable defibrillator kept on board. Shocked with the device, the man appeared to revive, but more shocks were needed. They never came. The device signaled that it was out of power and failed to work again. A replacement battery did...

Justices Uphold Lawyer Fees in Advocacy SuitsDefendants should pay if a public benefit results, even if there are no damages, panel says.By Maura Dolan Times Staff Writer December 3, 2004 SAN FRANCISCO — Lawyers for advocacy groups and others who file cases that achieve a public benefit should be rewarded by requiring defendants to pay their legal fees, a sharply divided California Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Justice Carlos R. Moreno, who wrote the 4-3 decisions in two related cases, said lawyers need incentives to bring lawsuits that generate beneficial changes but often produce little or no money in damages. The...

As many of you heard, Lt. Bryan Suits wants to collect boots and warm socks to hand out to the Iraqi kids. Most of them are still wearing sandals although the weather has grown colder and it rains a lot. If you would like to help out Bryan, you can by sending him children's -sized rubber rain boots and wool socks. Packages can be mailed directly to Bryan at: Lieutenant Bryan Suits C CO, TF161INF 3BCT, 1CavDiv APO AE 09348 Thanks for supporting Boots for Suits!

The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops. Many of these former soldiers - some of whom say they have not trained, held a gun, worn a uniform or even gone for a jog in years - object to being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan now, after they thought they were through with life on active duty. They are seeking exemptions, filing court cases or simply failing to report for duty, moves that will be watched closely by approximately 110,000...

CHICAGO (Nov. 11) - It's a lesson children learn even before their ABCs - say you're sorry when you hurt someone. But it's now being taught in the grown-up world of medicine as a surprisingly powerful way to soothe patients and head off malpractice lawsuits. Some malpractice-reform advocates say an apology can help doctors avoid getting sued, especially when combined with an upfront settlement offer. The idea defies a long tradition in which doctors cultivated a Godlike image of infallibility and rarely owned up to their mistakes. The softer approach, now appearing in some medical school courses and hospital policies,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 -The Supreme Court today allowed several current and former prisoners in Washington State to challenge a law there stripping them of their right to vote, a move that could have repercussions in a number of other states. The justices left intact a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over seven Western states and held that the convicts were at least entitled to trials in federal district courts to contest their loss of voting rights. The Supreme Court tacitly upheld that position today, with potential implications for prisoners in...

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 15 - As the secretary of state of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who is unabashed about his ambition to be governor, has issued a series of rulings on obscure issues like provisional ballots, voting notices to parolees and the weight of registration forms. To Democrats, who say he has repeatedly tried to disenfranchise Democratic voters with those rulings, Mr. Blackwell is reminiscent of Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who made her name in the chaotic election of 2000. On Friday they challenged him again, filing suit to block a directive they say will...

MIAMI, Oct. 13 - Not a single ballot has been counted in the presidential election, yet Florida is already teeming with lawsuits charging the state and its county elections supervisors with voter disenfranchisement, a legal muddle likely to grow worse before Election Day. On Wednesday, the State Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit seeking to require election officials to count provisional ballots - which voters can cast when their names do not appear on precinct rolls - regardless of where they are cast. And on Tuesday, labor unions and voting-rights groups sued to stop the disqualification of more than...

The Emperor Has No Clothes By: Brian Tracy John Kerry is neither a “war hero” nor a “patriot.” It is about time that someone pointed out that “the emperor has no clothes” and that Americans are being presented with a false choice. If you read the newspapers long enough, a series of facts emerge that appear undeniable and irrefutable. But no one seems to want to “connect the dots” for fear of offending the powers that be in the national media, such as CBS. Here is what we know. First of all, Kerry did not “volunteer” for service in Vietnam....

WASHINGTON - House Republicans pushed through legislation Tuesday aimed at reducing frivolous lawsuits. The Republicans prodded Democrats with statements by the Democratic presidential team of John Kerry (news - web sites) and John Edwards (news - web sites) in favor of tougher sanctions against lawyers who abuse the system. Most Democrats were not persuaded, and voted against the bill. They said it went too far in limiting access to the courts and was a campaign-season distraction from more important matters before Congress. The bill passed, 229-174, sending it to an uncertain fate in the Senate. Democrats did succeed in blocking...

Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything about that night in late 2001 when he killed his grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that screamed as he drove away from their rural South Carolina home after setting it on fire. "Something kept telling me to do it," he later told a forensic psychiatrist. Now, Christopher, who was 12 years old at the time of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder. The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an adult could send him to prison for life. While prosecutors...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Wednesday held five journalists in contempt of court for refusing to disclose the names of their confidential sources for reports about a nuclear weapons scientist under government investigation in 1999. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the journalists, including a reporter for The Times, to pay fines of $500 a day until each divulges information about his sources to lawyers for Wen Ho Lee, who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The order will not be enforced while it is being appealed.

<p>Playing for the Pittsfield High School baseball team in Illinois, Danny Hannant threw a pitch that a Calhoun High School player hit in a line drive right at the pitcher's mound. The ball bounced off Hannant's head.</p> <p>Rather than blame the mishap on a lousy pitch or a missed catch, or on the intrinsic risks of the game, Hannant sued the maker of the bat, Hillerich & Bradsby. Seeking in excess of $1 million, Hannant's lawyer argued that the company should have put labels on its Louisville Slugger bats warning that the product "could cause a baseball to be propelled with such velocity that when hit directly towards a pitcher it does not allow the pitcher sufficient reaction time to avoid being struck."</p>

<p>Some Washington-area residents think the new crop of lawsuits targeting the ice-cream industry is leaving out a key ingredient to junk-food consumption: personal responsibility.</p> <p>In fact, the latest step in the self-termed "sue fat movement" had some people laughing in their dulce de leche milkshakes.</p>

<p>Californians have put themselves at the forefront of a movement to use the state civil courts to pursue international human rights violations. In doing so, they have raised concerns in parts of the federal government and put global corporations on the defensive.</p>

I watched with disgust as the daily Centcom briefing on the war for Iraq took place Wednesday morning. While there has been an obvious anti-American tenor from the press corps throughout Iraqi Freedom, the questions on Wednesday were so virulent that they are worth revisiting. First and foremost, the majority of reporters did not have questions at all. The majority of reporters wanted to do nothing more than make a statement on camera, and then ask Brigadier General Vincent Brooks to address it. One of these statements was the regurgitation of an Internet rumor that said Vice President Dick...

BUDAPEST, March 10 (AFP) - Hungary may offer 2,000 chemical defense suits in answer to a NATO request to provide military equipment to Turkey in case of war on Iraq, Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz said Monday. The suits, complete with gas masks, are "of limited military use but are excellent for civilian purposes," the minister told MTI news agency. Juhasz said the government would decide on the offer during a session on Wednesday. The suits, of a total value of some two million euros (2.2 million dollars), would come from stock set aside for civil defense services and will have...

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Thursday rejected three lawsuits by six plaintiffs against the city government for damages suffered by hostages in the terrorist seizure of a Moscow theater last year. The court did not rule on the remaining 18 lawsuits because the plaintiffs had not appeared during the hearings. ``I have no words, only emotions,'' said Alexander Karpov, the father of one of the victims. His case was not among those rejected, but he said he now held out little hope for winning a judgment. Sixty-one victims of the Oct. 23-26 theater siege filed suit for nearly...

MIDI - BATTLE HYMN - scroll under Marches If you want to bribe a senator and you've looked high and low Rest assured that there is one who's guaranteed to take the dough He's done it all before, that's something that you need to know The Torch awaits your call Pass the loot to Torricelli…pass the loot to Torricelli…pass the loot to Torricelli The Torch awaits your call

RIYADH, 21 August - A Saudi lawyer is planning to file more than 15 lawsuits against the US government and other parties for causing physical and psychological damages to his clients, preventing them from completing their studies and damaging their reputation through the media.Katib Fahd Al-Shammary, the lawyer, told Arab News that he had collected powers of attorney from Saudi victims and that he would file the suits within two months, seeking damages.He spelled out the reasons that delayed the filing of suits, saying there was lack of clarity about procedures at US courts and prisons, disappearance of certain evidence...