Recent Updates
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Transit Panel Urges Gas Tax Increase
Legal News Center 01/16/2008Federal gasoline taxes should be increased up to 40 cents per gallon over five years, a divided special commission urged Tuesday in calling for drastic changes to fix aging bridges and roads and reduce traffic deaths.The two-year study by the Nationa...
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Supreme Court rules against investors in fraud case
Legal News Center 01/15/2008[##_1L|1154685571.jpg|width="180" height="122" alt=""|_##]The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against investors seeking to sue businesses for scheming to manipulate stock prices of publicly traded companies. In a 5-3 ruling, the court gave a measure o...
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Supreme Court Declines Pollution Case
Legal News Center 01/14/2008The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear industry complaints that the Environmental Protection Agency should have dropped some old clean air safeguards when it imposed a more stringent air quality standard for ozone.EPA concluded that its existing s...
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2 Lawyers Quit High-Profile Bribery Case
Legal News Center 01/10/2008Two members of a law firm that was searched by federal agents last month have resigned as defense attorneys in the high-profile bribery case involving wealthy lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. Now a third lawyer in the case is asking to do the same.U....
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Craig Continues Minnesota Legal Appeal
Legal News Center 01/09/2008Seeking to have his guilty plea in a bathroom sex sting erased, the attorneys for Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho argue in a new court filing that the underlying act wasn't criminal because it didn't involve multiple victims.An appeals brief filed Tuesday ...
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Do-it-yourself Legal Services Booming
Legal News Center 01/06/2008Tax giant H&R Block Inc. has a lock on one of life's two certainties. Now it is going after the other. Two months ago, the Kansas City firm launched a new service --online and in-store software packages designed to help everyday people to write t...
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Voter ID Law Heads to Supreme Court
Legal News Center 12/31/2007[##_1L|1360048639.jpg|width="130" height="98" alt=""|_##]The dispute over Indiana's voter identification law that is headed to the Supreme Court next week is as much a partisan political drama as a legal tussle. The mainly Republican backers of the l...
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Nevada judge abused authority, court rules
Legal News Center 12/29/2007The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that Justice Nancy M. Saitta abused her authority when, as a Clark County District Court judge, she issued a gag order and sealed child-support proceedings involving a former judicial colleague. Saitta did not meet ...
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U.S. appellate court overturns state murder conviction
Legal News Center 12/20/2007[##_1L|1042948632.jpg|width="180" height="128" alt=""|_##]A federal appeals court overturned a Santa Rosa woman's murder conviction Wednesday for killing a man during an attempted carjacking in 1996, saying she had been forced to go to trial with a l...
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Death penalty revoked in N.J.
Legal News Center 12/18/2007[##_1L|1078730658.jpg|width="140" height="105" alt=""|_##]New Jersey became the first state in decades yesterday to abolish the death penalty, giving hope to opponents of capital punishment that Maryland and other states could soon follow. But the ob...
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Supreme Court rules on sentences
Legal News Center 12/16/2007[##_1L|1396992692.jpg|width="131" height="91" alt=""|_##]Advocates of greater fairness in criminal sentencing won an important battle at the U.S. Supreme Court last week. But they could lose the war if individual judges exploit the decision to return...
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High court gives U.S. judges more freedom in sentencing
Legal News Center 12/11/2007The Supreme Court restored federal judges Monday to their traditional central role in criminal sentencing.In two decisions, the court said U.S. district judges have broad discretion to impose what they think are reasonable sentences, even if federal ...