Ford is recalling around 450,000 vehicles for various safety reasons. The Ford SUV and minivan recall includes several of the automaker’s popular models including the 2001 and 2002 Ford Escape compact SUV and the 2004 and 2005 Ford Freestar and Mercury Monterey minivans. The Escape has a reservoir cap that may leak brake fluid. This could lead to smoke and fire. There are approximately 245,000 Escapes on the road, reports CNN....
Freedom Not to Snitch Mark Burns was an inmate at Coxsackie Correctional Facility when he got a black eye in the prison commissary. Correctional officers pressed him to tell them who caused the black eye, but he maintained it was the result of a falling can. They then threatened involuntary protective custody which can include a lot of solitary confinement. He refused to snitch and spent six months on highly restrictive status as a result....
An Illinois cop who was videotaped shoving a woman face-first into a jail cell bench has been charged with two felonies for the incident. Skokie Police Officer Michael Hart, 43, was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct, both felonies. The woman he shoved suffered a fractured eye socket and had to undergo reconstructive surgery, including placement of a titanium plate in her cheek, prosecutors allege. Here’s the video clip, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, that got Hart in trouble:...
Juvenile life sentences are not common and they’re generally reserved for serious crimes. Those sentences may be even more unusual after Monday’s Supreme Court decision on juvenile life without parole. The Court ruled that mandatory life sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Sentencing schemes for juveniles must allow for discretion by judges and juries. This rule applies regardless of the crime committed according to the majority opinion in Miller v....
Big celebrities have many perks. But is skipping the dreaded airport security checkpoint one of those perks? It’s not supposed to be. But for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, they apparently (almost) lucked out at New York’s JFK airport earlier this week. While they were trying to make a connecting flight on their way home from Brazil, the couple somehow cleared customs and skipped security, Access Hollywood reports. From what the Transportation Security Administration is saying, Kim and Kanye were escorted through a non-public area at JFK and sped through the airport to that they could get to their connecting flight on time....
In a settlement mental health advocates are calling a landmark, hundreds of mentally ill patients under the care of the state of Illinois will have a chance to live a more independent life. Under the settlement, the state will have five years to help residents of “institutions for mental disease” (IMD’s) make the transition to smaller, more private living situations like apartments and smaller houses. The court will need to approve the settlement and both sides have asked for a hearing to review details....
In the much anticipated opinion in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Vaughn Walker, found on August 4 that California’s law banning same sex marriage violates the Constitution of the United States. Proposition 8 was passed by a narrow margin of voters in 2008. Previous to its passage, 18,000 same sex couples were granted marriage licenses in the state of California....
Country crooner Randy Travis is likely singing the blues after his arrest for public intoxication outside a Texas church early this morning. Police in Sanger, Texas, about 50 miles north of Dallas, responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle in front of the town’s Baptist church, the website TMZ.com reports. Police approached the vehicle and found Travis inside, smelling of alcohol and with an open bottle of wine, the Denton Record Chronicle reports....
Rap artist Young Buck has come up a few bucks short once again. Young Buck’s bankruptcy has been changed to Chapter 7, and he’s blaming his former mentor 50 Cent. Young Buck had already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was working with a trustee to get back on his feet, The Wall Street Journal reports. The trustee wanted to modify Young Buck’s contract with 50 Cent’s recording company, and use the added revenue to pay down the rapper’s debts....
Sean Penn is not happy with the co-creator of the TV show Empire. But he’s not throwing any punches, just launching legal attacks, Variety reports. The actor filed a $10 million defamation suit against Lee Daniels, co-creator of the Fox television series Empire. Penn’s complaint is that Daniels mentioned his name when discussing the legal troubles of the show’s actor, Terrence Howard, who has been repeatedly accused of physically abusing women and has reportedly admitted as much....
Sex tourism is a major industry in some parts of the world. That doesn’t mean that those who partake don’t risk major penalties. Michael James Dodd, 61, learned that lesson after being sentenced to 104 months in federal prison. Dodd traveled abroad to have sex with a 14-year-old girl, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reports. He admitted to having a sexual relationship with the minor for five months while teaching at a school in Cambodia....
United Airlines has settled the legal case against it being brought by Dr. David Dao, the UA passenger who was forcibly removed from his seat by law enforcement, on April 9 of this year, when he refused to get bumped from a flight. Dr. Dao allegedly suffered a concussion, a dental injury, and other injuries, as a result of the incident which went viral causing a PR nightmare for UA....
Video game smack talk: it can lead to real bloodshed. The two victims had been hanging out at DeJesus’ apartment when the video game playing became competitive. First, it escalated into a fist fight, reports the Wisconsin State Journal. Then as one of the victims retreated into the kitchen saying it was time to leave - DeJesus allegedly stabbed him in the left thigh. When another man went to help the first victim, DeJesus stabbed him in the buttocks area, according to the Wisconsin State Journal....
Walmart will pay $27.6 million to settle allegations that it dumped hazardous waste at its California stores. According to San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, each of the company’s 236 stores and distribution centers across California were violating environmental laws. Dumanis joined more than 20 prosecutors and 32 environmental groups in a five-year investigation into the retailer. Walmart allegedly dumped pesticide, fertilizer, paint, aerosols and other chemicals. As the Associated Press reports, the Walmart settlement may not be the end of the story, as the possibility of civil suits remain, as well as possible federal charges....
It’s a whale of a legal tale, but no laughing matter for The Hump, a Santa Monica, California sushi restaurant and sushi chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto who are charged with serving Sei whale to undercover customers investigating the fishy – actually, mammal – caper. The Sei whale is a federally protected marine animal. That makes catching and selling sei whale meat against the law. What makes this case so brazen, however, is that Yamamoto is charged (see below) with not simply a single offense of selling whale meat to sushi customers, but that it happened multiple times…sometimes together with horse meat....
A jury yesterday found James Holmes guilty on all murder counts in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting. Holmes killed 12 people in the shooting, and was charged with two murder counts for each: murder in the first degree after deliberation, and murder in the first degree with extreme indifference. But what is extreme indifference murder, and how does it differ from a standard first degree murder charge? Colorado Law and the Theater Shooting Colorado’s homicide statutes define extreme indifference murder as knowingly causing the death of another “under circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally,” while the defendant was “engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death to a person or persons other than himself....
A nationwide court email scam could leave a nasty virus on your computer if you’re not too careful. Several federal and state courts are warning the public about an email scam that tells recipients that they have an upcoming court hearing, missed a jury summons, or have a warrant out for their arrest. The fraudulent emails will either contain an attachment that contains a virus, or the email will tell the reader to pay money to avoid arrest....
It’s going to be back to the drawing board for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania after two separate panels of the court issued opinions reaching opposite results in two very similar student speech cases. Both cases concerned parodies of school principals, one by a middle-schooler and one by a high school student set up as fake MySpace pages. The result? According to an attorney in one of the suits, “a state of chaos....
An increased media focus on deadly police shootings, combined with the absence of reliable data on how many people are shot by police officers each year, it can be hard to keep track of which police shooting case is which. The New York Times had compiled 16 cases of fatal police shootings since Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson Missouri, and that was back on April 8. And that doesn’t include older cases that are just making their way through courts, or have recently been decided....
Britney Spears is close to settling her sexual harassment lawsuit with her former bodyguard Fernando Flores. The sexual harassment suit brought against Britney Spears had led to an almost two-year legal battle. The singer is accused of not being able to keep her clothes on around her bodyguard. Flores says that Spears was always flashing her naked body parts at him and would even intentionally drop her cigarette lighter in his presence and then bend to pick it over, exposing her uncovered genitals, reports gossip website TMZ....
