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NJ court rules against son in Plain estate dispute
Court News |
2011/07/26 09:02
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A New Jersey court has ruled against the son of Belva Plain in a dispute over the late author's estate.
John Plain had claimed his mother, the bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and sisters had schemed to cut him out of her will.
Attorneys for Belva Plain's estate argued that her son had signed an agreement in the 1990s vowing not to contest her will.
Friday's decision in state Superior Court in Essex County dismissed John Plain's claim. Plain's lawyer said he was reviewing the decision.
Belva Plain began writing her novels after raising her children and becoming a grandmother. When she died in her sleep last fall at her home in New Jersey at age 95, more than 28 million copies of her books were in print. |
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Ex-CEO convicted in scam at auto-chemical company
Court News |
2011/07/20 04:21
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A former corporate executive officer of a New York-based automotive-chemical company was convicted Tuesday in a multimillion-dollar investor fraud scheme that enabled him to buy expensive jewelry and take private jets.
A jury in Manhattan state Supreme Court found Cleveland lawyer James Margulies guilty of charges including grand larceny and scheme to defraud. He faces up to 25 years on the top two counts, which could run consecutively. Bail was set at $1.5 million.
Ira London, an attorney for Margulies, said he planned to file a very vigorous appeal.
The jury has spoken. I believe they have convicted an innocent man, he said.
While serving as the company's finance chief — and briefly as CEO — of Industrial Enterprises of America, Inc., from 2004 to 2008, Margulies illegally issued millions of shares of stock to friends and relatives, inflating the share price by making the company look more profitable than it was, prosecutors said.
A teachers' pension fund in Ohio and a church were among the victims of the scheme, prosecutors said.
Margulies personally reaped more than $7 million, spending it on lavish luxuries such as a $350,000 diamond ring for his wife from jeweler Harry Winston, prosecutors said.
He also paid more than a million dollars on the mortgage of his first home, bought a second home and spent $500,000 on a vacation club membership, prosecutors said.
Margulies was charged in the scheme in 2010 along with John D. Mazzuto, who pleaded guilty Jan. 14 to his role in issuing fraudulent shares of stock. |
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High court sets oral arguments in campaign lawsuit
Court News |
2011/07/15 22:21
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A conservative group fighting campaign finance rules in Montana says in a recent filing that it agrees disclosure laws can apply to corporate speech, but Western Tradition Partnership argues it isn't subject to current disclosure laws because its attack mailers fall outside the definition of electioneering.
The Montana Supreme Court has set oral arguments for September in the state's challenge to a district court decision that tossed out the outright ban on corporate political spending.
Western Tradition Partnership first filed the lawsuit last year piggybacking on the high-profile Citizen's United case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The group aims to undo Montana's century-old restriction on corporate political spending.
Western Tradition is separately fighting a decision that it failed to report campaign expenditures. The group argues its activities are not intended to influence elections.
In a brief filed earlier this month with the Supreme Court on the main case fighting the ban corporate campaign spending, WTP made it clear it believes campaign finance regulation is OK.
If the State is truly concerned with accountability, the state has other means at its disposal, such as disclosure laws, to make sure that people know who is speaking, Western Tradition argued in the brief. It is inappropriate, and indeed, unconstitutional, to completely outlaw corporate political speech. |
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Court documents shed light on Bulger travels
Court News |
2011/06/22 22:39
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Newly-unsealed court documents detail some of the early travels of James Whitey Bulger and his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig following Bulger's 1995 indictment.
In an affidavit dated April 25, 1997, then-FBI Special Agent Charles Gianturco writes that Bulger and Greig spent time in New York on Long Island and in Grand Isle, La., in 1995 and 1996.
According to the affidavit, Bulger and Greig checked into a hotel under the names Mr. and Mrs. Tom Baxter in the fall of 1995, and that Bulger had also used that name when he befriended a man in neighboring Selden told him he was a merchant seaman.
The criminal complaint against Grieg was unsealed Thursday in Boston following the arrests of Bulger and Grieg in Santa Monica, Calif. It charges Greig with harboring and concealing Bulger. |
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