“A St. Louis County Circuit judge has given preliminary approval to a nearly $1.7 million settlement on a class-action lawsuit. It affects about 10,000 people who were charged fees for the issuance of warrants or for failing to appear for a municipal court date in Ferguson, said Michael-John Voss, co-founder and special projects director with ArchCity Defenders,” reports The St. Louis American.

“These municipal court abuses were at the heart of the Ferguson uprising, which began after the killing of Michael Brown in August of 2014 and continued for about two years. Roelif Carter, a 62-year-old disabled military veteran, who depends on disability payment and food stamps, filed the case represented by ArchCity Defenders, the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics, and the Campbell Law Firm.”

“The city did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement. The American reached out to the city’s attorney for comment and is awaiting a response.”

“Circuit Judge Joseph Dueker has approved a settlement of $1,699,405 to be distributed among Roelif and 10,000 person class, as a partial return for the exploitative warrant and failure to appear fees they were charged by Ferguson’s municipal court between 2009 through the present. The parties have valued the total settlement being worth more than $5 million — a value that reflects the additional amount Ferguson would have continued to collect from 2014 through 2022 if it had not stopped charging the improper fees, attorneys said. The class of people who paid the fees will get 80 percent of what they paid back in a refund if they file a claim.”

Read the article.

“In April 2019, a federal jury found seven defendants associated with the Forest Park Medical Center (FPMC) in Dallas, Texas guilty on charges of conspiring to pay or receive health care bribes. The defendants in United States v. Beauchamp were convicted of collecting over $200 million dollars in a kickback scheme under which doctors were paid to refer patients to FPMC,” reports Alan J. Bozer and Joshua Glasgow in Phillips Lytle’s articles.

“Prosecution of this case was in many ways unsurprising. In 2018 alone, the federal government prosecuted more than 30 health care fraud cases yielding over $2.5 billion dollars in settlements and fines. The Beauchamp case is notable, however, because of the particular charges filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ).”

“In addition to alleging violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute … the government charged several defendants with violating the Travel Act of 1961 … an anti-racketeering statute that is rarely used in health care fraud cases. This novel use of the Travel Act may foreshadow a new government enforcement strategy that could broaden the scope of liability for uninformed physicians and health care administrators across the United States.”

Read the article.

“One after another, like dominos, court systems are shutting down or moving to drastic restrictions. In the process, court dates are being pulled and cases are moving into limbo. As that happens to your own once trial-bound cases, you think, ‘What now?’ What do you do with the time that you now unexpectedly have as your case is put on pause?” asks Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm in Persuasive Litigator.

“Clients will often issue a ‘Stop work’ notice, thinking, ‘Let’s put a pin in it, package everything so it’s fresh, then revisit the situation down the road, closer to the new date.’ Limiting the expenses is, of course, a worthwhile goal, particularly now that the economy is moving into limbo as well. But sometimes, the decision to call an abrupt and complete halt can be more penny-wise than actually wise. When a pause is created, not just by the current Coronavirus measures, but by any delay or uncertainty over a court date, that pause can be an opportunity.”

In this post, Dr. Broda-Bahm shares seven ideas on how to make the best use of an unexpected delay.

Read the article.

Read the article.

“Amid investigations, litigation and public scrutiny over allegedly exorbitant executive compensation at the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Tiffany Carr, the woman at the center of the maelstrom, has remained almost silent,” reports The Gainesville Sun.

“But a lawyer who represents Carr, the former CEO of the nonprofit organization, provided a glimpse in a court filing into her defense against accusations that she misspent public funds meant for the state’s domestic-violence centers.”

“Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody and House and Senate leaders in recent weeks have vilified Carr for orchestrating $7.5 million in compensation over three years, which included more than $4 million in paid time off. Inquiries into the nonprofit’s finances have also targeted the coalition’s executive staff and board of directors, who each year signed off on her salary and benefits.”

Read the article.

“New court filings reveal that the Department of Defense wants to ‘reconsider certain aspects’ of its decision to award Microsoft with the coveted $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract,” reports Taylor Soper in GeekWire.

“The latest legal development is part of Amazon’s protest over the prestigious cloud computing deal, known as JEDI. Amazon Web Services sued the federal government after Microsoft emerged as the surprise winner of the JEDI contract last year.”

“In the new filing, a motion for voluntary remand, the DoD said that it ‘wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS.’ The DoD is asking for 120 days to assess the matter. It wants to specifically examine one issue related to ‘online marketplace offerings.'”

Read the article.

“Disruptionware is defined by the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) as a new and “emerging category of malware designed to suspend operations within a victim organization through the compromise of the availability, integrity and confidentiality of the systems, networks and data belonging to the target.” New forms of disruptionware can be a more crippling form of cyber-attack than other more “garden-variety” malware and ransomware attacks.” warns an article in JDSupra.

“Generalized forms of ransomware attacks – designed to block access to the victim’s computer systems until money is paid – are continuing to represent a more prevalent threat to government agencies, healthcare providers and educational institutions … another publication has noted the rise of ransomware attacks since the beginning of 2019 finding that there have been at least 621 reported successful ransomware attacks against U.S.-based corporations. Of these attacks, at least 491 were targeted against healthcare providers, while another 68 of the attacks were directed at county and municipal institutions, and 62 of the attacks were focused on school districts.”

“The FBI’s PSA serves as a warning to businesses that they should have a plan in place to respond efficiently and appropriately in the event of high impact ransomware and disruptionware attacks.”

Read the article.

“The opening debate of the Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday afternoon was supposed to be merely about the trial rules. But members of President Donald Trump’s legal team wasted no time telling a number of lies before things really got going.” reports Vox.

“Though getting facts wrong might be somewhat understandable in the context of extemporaneous statements, these falsehoods came in the context of prepared remarks read by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow.”

Read Vox‘s article.

Ken Starr

President Trump has added some high-wattage lawyers to round out his defense team for the Senate impeachment trial, including Ken Starr, a Fox news commentator whose special counsel investigations led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.

NPR reports that the team will be led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, a private attorney who represented Trump in the Russia investigation.

Read the NPR article.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has been aggressively processing President Trump’s nominations to the federal bench, will follow precedent set during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial and delay considering nominations until Trump’s trial has concluded.

Courthouse News Service reports that Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and former presidential candidate, on Wednesday called on Senate Republicans to hold up their judicial confirmation pipeline during Trump’s impeachment trial.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat and Judiciary committee member, had earlier criticized a decision to hold a meeting after the articles of impeachment were walked over to the Senate on Wednesday, saying it didn’t align with precedent, according to Bloomberg Law.

Read the Courthouse News article.

Newsweek reports that the New York City Bar Association has asked congressional leaders to launch a formal inquiry into Attorney General William Barr’s conduct, claiming it threatened the public’s confidence in the “fair and impartial administration of justice.”

“Mr. Barr’s recent actions and statements position the Attorney General and, by extension, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) as political partisans willing to use the levers of government to empower certain groups over others,” the letter to the congressional leaders stated.

The letter to the leaders highlighted four public statements the AG made that the association found troubling.

Read the  Newsweek article.

The U.S. Justice Department says the Equal Rights Amendment can no longer be ratified because its deadline expired decades ago, throwing a barrier in the path of activists who want the amendment enacted if ­Virginia’s new, majority Democratic legislature approves it, reports The Washington Post.

Thirty-eight states are required to pass a constitutional amendment, and only 35 had approved it before the 1979 deadline and a subsequent extension to 1982, explains the Post‘s Patricia Sullivan. Two more states ratified the ERA since 2017, and Virginia would be the 38th.

The ERA Coalition said it “strongly disagrees” with the DOJ’s memo.

Read the Washington Post article.

The Supreme Court will hear a slate of highly charged disputes when the justices return to the bench in the new year and resume one of the most politically volatile terms in recent memory, reports The Hill.

The court already has heard high-profile fights over LGBT rights in the workplace, the scope of the Second Amendment and the deportation status of nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants. But the remaining cases on the court’s docket are no less explosive, write The Hill‘s John Kruzel and Harper Neidig.

The top seven cases to be heard this session involve a separation of powers fight over President Trump’s financial records, Louisiana’s abortion law, religious school scholarships, religious exemptions from discrimination suits, the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a fight over how copyright law treats software interfaces, and Bridgegate and public corruption.

Read the Hill article.

The former general counsel of Faraday & Future Inc. sued the company for $106 million Jan. 3, according to a Bloomberg Law article.

Hong Liu, a China expert, claimed in Manhattan federal court that the electric car startup lured him away from a Mayer Brown LLP partnership by fraudulently overstating its prospects.

He alleges top executives made false claims about a pending $2 billion investment to persuade him to abandon his lucrative practice and move his family from New York to California. The investment didn’t materialize, and Liu alleges he was fired after less than a year without receiving the compensation he’d been promised: $6 million in cash and 20 million shares—valued at $100 million—in Faraday affiliate Smart King Ltd.

Read the Bloomberg article.

A financial tug-of-war is emerging over the $13.5 billion that the nation’s largest utility has agreed to pay to victims of recent California wildfires, as government agencies jockey for more than half the money to cover the costs of their response to the catastrophes, reports Insurance Journal.

Pacific Gas & Electric had acknowledged that  its power lines ignited some of the 2017-2018 fires that caused billions in damages. The company declared bankruptcy nearly a year ago as it faced about $36 billion in claims.

“Those claims were settled as part of the $13.5 billion deal that PG&E reached last month with lawyers representing uninsured and underinsured victims,” explains the Journal‘s Daisy Nguyen.

But the settlement leaves open just how much would be used to compensate victims, their lawyers and federal and state agencies for the money they spent on rescue and recovery operations.

Read the Insurance Journal report.

The Louisville Courier Journal is reporting that Kentucky’s attorney general is asking the FBI to investigate former Gov. Matt Bevin’s pardons.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, cited concern for public safety in a letter he wrote to state legislators who had asked him to launch a state investigation into the pardons. The 650 pardons and commutations included cases involving a convicted child rapist and a man convicted of reckless homicide and robbery.

Cameron told the legislators he and his office will assist federal, state and local investigators as needed.

Read the  Courier Journal article.

Chief Justice John Roberts faces the challenge of trying to bring judicial independence — and a modicum of decorum — into the political maelstrom of a Senate impeachment trial, writes Greg Stohr for Bloomberg.

“Roberts, 64, will take up those duties as a singular figure in American public life,” Stohr explains. “Even as he has steered the court to the right over the past 15 years, the Republican-appointed Roberts has staunchly defended the judiciary’s independence and shown an occasional willingness to push back against Trump.”

The extent of Roberts’ role in the impeachment trial of President Trump may be limited, however. Roberts may not want to call a vote on every issue, and he could use some disputes as an opportunity to try to give the proceedings an aura of fairness.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Trump International Hotel
Image by Mike Peel

A federal appeals court in Virginia heard arguments Thursday about whether to revive a lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution by profiting from his hotel near the White House, according to a report by  The New York Times.

The hearing marks the first time that a full appellate court has considered the emoluments or anticorruption clauses of the Constitution, and Trump is the first president to be sued for allegedly violating those clauses, writes the Times‘ Sharon LaFraniere.

The hearing was a spirited session that indicated sharp divisions among the judges over the legal consequences of the president’s conduct, according to LaFraniere.

Read the  NY Times article.

Attorneys representing both sides of the aisle will present evidence, but no witnesses, when the House Judiciary Committee holds its next hearing in the impeachment inquiry Monday, reports Courthouse News Service.

Reporter Brandi Buchman explains the process that in the potential impeachment of President Trump:

“According to the rules authorizing the inquiry passed in October, attorneys for both the Democratic and Republican parties will have a chance during the 9 a.m. hearing Monday to give written statements explaining the scope of evidence they wish to put forward for articles, as well as a ‘detailed presentation’ of that evidence ‘other than the testimony of the witnesses.’”

Read the Courthouse News article.

Chief Justice John Roberts

CNN takes a look back at how Chief Justice William Rehnquist captured unprecedented attention as he presided over the Senate trial of a president, a role that would fall to Chief Justice John Roberts if the U.S. House were to impeach President Donald Trump and a Senate trial were launched.

“The magnitude of an impeachment trial for a US president — only two have been held in US history — is underscored by the Constitution’s specific mention that the chief justice presides,” writes CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

Read the CNN article.