|
|
|
France ponders removing risky breast implants
Court Watch |
2011/12/22 11:04
|
Emmanuelle Maria's breasts were burning and globules of silicone gel were protruding into her armpits. Her implants had exploded inside her. Yet her doctors, she says, told her nothing was wrong.
Now, she wants the French government to tell 30,000 women to get their implants removed — at the state's expense — to call attention to their risks and save others from potential pain and indignity.
Prompted by calls from implant wearers and leading doctors, French health authorities are considering a drastic and unprecedented move: recommending mass surgery to rid the country of a type of breast implant that investigators say was secretly made with cheap industrial silicone whose medical dangers remain unclear.
Governments around Europe are hanging on France's decision Friday. Tens of thousands more women in Britain, Italy, Spain and other European nations are walking around with the same pre-filled implants, made by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP.
Health officials from several European countries held a conference call Wednesday to discuss the implants, Portugal's Director-General of Health, Dr. Francisco Jorge, told The Associated Press. European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said no decisions were made, but France informed the others of the situation. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Environmental groups sue US over flood management
Court News |
2011/12/22 11:04
|
The National Wildlife Federation filed a motion in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, asking a judge to stop the U.S. government from issuing any more flood insurance policies for new development in flood-prone areas around the Puget Sound until it changes its flood plain plans to consider the impact on endangered species like salmon and orcas.
The motion for a preliminary injunction is the latest move in a decades-long fight to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay more attention to endangered species, said Jan Hasselman, an attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that filed a motion in Seattle, on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation.
The environmental group won a lawsuit in 2004 that found FEMA did not create its flood plain management standards with the Endangered Species Act in mind. Hasselman said the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2008 issued a plan for changing the flood standards, setting various deadlines, the last of which recently passed. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pa.'s rhyming justice pens insurance fraud opinion
Headline Legal News |
2011/12/21 11:04
|
A state Supreme Court justice known for opinions written in rhyme has done it again, producing six pages of verse Thursday in the case of whether the maker of a forged check also had committed insurance fraud.
Justice J. Michael Eakin, writing for a 4-2 majority, concluded in six-line stanzas that a man's attempt to deposit a forged check appearing to be from State Farm didn't constitute insurance fraud.
"Sentenced on the other crimes, he surely won't go free, but we find he can't be guilty of this final felony," Eakin wrote. "Convictions for the forgery and theft are approbated -- the sentence for insurance fraud, however, is vacated. The case must be remanded for resentencing, we find, so the trial judge may impose the result he originally had in mind."
A dissenting three-page opinion by Justice Thomas G. Saylor didn't rhyme.
Eakin was first elected to the high court in 2001 after earning a reputation as the "rhyming judge" by issuing some opinions entirely in verse while sitting on an intermediate state appellate court in the late 1990s. Two former state Supreme Court justices, Stephen A. Zappala and the late Ralph J. Cappy, had expressed concern in the past that the practice could reflect poorly on the court.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Polygamous family launches challenge of Utah law
Court Watch |
2011/12/20 10:24
|
Reality TV stars Kody Brown and his four wives say they just want one thing: to be left alone.
As authorities investigate them for bigamy, the TLC "Sister Wives" family is asking a federal judge to overturn part of Utah's bigamy law because it bans them from living together and criminalizes sexual relationships between unmarried consenting adults.
"What they are asking for is the right to structure their own lives, their own family, according to their faith and their beliefs," said Jonathan Turley, their attorney, adding that the lawsuit is about privacy — not polygamy.
The case in federal court in Utah, however, could open up the possibility that a way of life for tens of thousands of self-described Mormon fundamentalists could be decriminalized.
While all states outlaw bigamy, some like Utah have laws that both prohibit having more than one marriage license at a time and also ban adults from living together and having a sexual relationship.
The latter provision could include same-sex couples, unmarried heterosexual couples and those, like the Browns, who do not have licenses but have created within their homes a marriage-like relationship. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gingrich assails judges as he courts conservatives
Court News |
2011/12/20 10:24
|
As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state's caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.
There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich's ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it's taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.
"I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job," Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.
Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed "radical" rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he'd consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.
In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts "grotesquely dictatorial." He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.
The targets of Gingrich's strongest derision: the West Coast's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a perennial punching bag for the right, and a federal judge in Texas who banned prayer in a public school.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Legal News RSS Feed
