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High court to hear dispute about TV over Internet
Topics in Legal News |
2014/04/21 14:15
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Thirty years ago, big media companies failed to convince the Supreme Court of the threat posed by home video recordings.
Now they're back — and trying to rein in a different innovation that they say threatens their financial well-being.
The battle has moved out of viewers' living rooms, where people once marveled at their ability to pop a cassette into a recorder and capture their favorite programs or the sporting event they wouldn't be home to see.
The new legal fight shifts to the Supreme Court Tuesday with arguments against a startup business using Internet-based technology to give subscribers the ability to watch programs anywhere they can take portable devices.
Aereo takes free television signals from the airwaves and sends them over the Internet to paying subscribers in 11 cities. |
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Lawyer: Evaluate stabbing suspect's mental health
Topics in Legal News |
2014/04/15 14:18
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The attorney for a 16-year-old accused of stabbing 21 other students and a security guard at their high school said Thursday he wants to have a mental health expert evaluate the boy and hopes to have the case moved to juvenile court.
For now, Alex Hribal is charged as an adult with four counts of attempted homicide, 21 counts of aggravated assault and a weapons charge, and is being held without bond in the Westmoreland County juvenile detention center.
In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," attorney Patrick Thomassey acknowledged that his client stabbed the victims, and said any defense he offers will likely be based on the boy's psychological state, which he hopes to have an expert evaluate soon.
"I would assume so, yes, depending on what the mental health experts tell me," Thomassey said.
He said that, under Pennsylvania law, he will have to convince a judge that Hribal can be rehabilitated in juvenile court, which would have jurisdiction over him until he's 21. If convicted as an adult, Hribal faces likely decades in prison.
The attorney told several media outlets that Hribal was remorseful, though he acknowledged his client did not appear to appreciate the gravity of his actions. Thomassey said he is still getting to know his client, saying he spoke with Hribal only for about 20 minutes before his arraignment late Wednesday. |
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Egypt court sentences 528 Morsi supporters to death
Topics in Legal News |
2014/03/24 14:19
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A court in southern Egyptian has convicted 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, sentencing them to death on charges of murdering a policeman and attacking police.
The court in Minya issued its ruling on Monday after only two sessions in which the defendants' lawyers complained they had no chance to present their case.
Those convicted are part of a group of 545 defendants on trial for the killing of a police officer, attempted killing of two others, attacking a police station and other acts of violence.
More than 150 suspects stood trial, the others were tried in absentia. Sixteen were acquitted.
The defendants were arrested after violent demonstrations that were a backlash for the police crackdown in August on pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo that killed hundreds of people. |
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Supreme Court allows Stanford Ponzi scheme suits
Topics in Legal News |
2014/02/28 15:19
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The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that victims of former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme can go forward with class-action lawsuits against the law firms, accountants and investment companies that allegedly aided the $7.2 billion fraud.
The decision is a loss for firms that claimed federal securities law insulated them from state class-action lawsuits and sought to have the cases thrown out. But it offers another avenue for more than 21,000 of Stanford's bilked investors to try to recover their lost savings.
Federal law says class-action lawsuits related to securities fraud cannot be filed under state law, as these cases were. But a federal appeals court said the cases could move forward because the main part of the fraud involved certificates of deposit, not stocks and other securities.
The high court agreed in a 7-2 decision, with the two dissenting justices warning that the ruling would lead to an explosion of state class-action lawsuits. |
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Argentina asks top US Court to stop 'catastrophe'
Topics in Legal News |
2014/02/20 14:51
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Argentina filed a long-shot appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday asking the justices in Washington to avert an "economic catastrophe" by overturning lower court rulings that could force the South American government to default on billions of dollars in debts.
Making Argentina pay cash in full to investors who didn't accept bond swaps in exchange for defaulted debt could destabilize the global economy by making other voluntary debt restructurings "substantially more difficult, if not impossible," the petition said.
"Full payment of the holdouts would cut Argentina's reserves approximately in half, an unimaginable result for any nation," Argentina's lawyers argued. "Any sovereign would protest if a foreign court issued an extraterritorial order threatening its creditors and citizens and coercing it into turning over billions of dollars from its immune reserves."
By ignoring the federal sovereign immunity law that normally protects other countries' assets from seizure outside the United States, the lower court decisions also could make U.S. assets overseas vulnerable to similar seizures by other governments, the petition said. |
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