(From The American Lawyer)
A federal jury in Idaho has ruled in favor of four farmers who claimed their crops were destroyed by the Bureau of Land Management's use of a powerful herbicide. After a 17-week trial, jurors in the U.S. district court in Boise ruled that the government and the manufacturer of the herbicide must pay $17.8 million to cover the growers' losses.
At issue in the case was the bureau's decision to use Oust, an herbicide manufactured by E.I. DuPont, to kill off brush growth and prevent wildfires on government-owned land. But, the jury ruled, the government should have known that the herbicide it used, sprayed on fields by helicopter, would be caught by the wind and blown to adjacent farm land, causing the barley, wheat, potatoes, and beets grown on Idaho fields to wither or die. Worse, the government sprayed Oust repeatedly over the course of many growing seasons, between 2000 and 2004, causing the farmland to lie fallow for extended periods. (The suit was originally filed in 2002.)
Continue reading here: http://snurl.com/rrcwu
Friday, September 11, 2009
Ordinary Injustice: America's Judicial System Gone Awry
(From The American Lawyer)
Lazy or overwhelmed public defenders. Wrongful convictions. Abuse of power. Amy Bach, a former staff reporter for The American Lawyer and a Stanford law school graduate, discusses it all in her new book, Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (Henry Holt, September 2009). After spending seven years in criminal courts in Georgia, New York, Illinois, and Mississippi, she chronicles a judicial system that fails not only those most in need, but society at large.
Where did the idea for Ordinary Injustice come from?
Before I went to law school I had a [Soros Justice Media] fellowship to write about civil rights. In courtrooms, I was seeing injustice everywhere. And no one was telling these stories.
Continue reading here: http://snurl.com/rocyp
Lazy or overwhelmed public defenders. Wrongful convictions. Abuse of power. Amy Bach, a former staff reporter for The American Lawyer and a Stanford law school graduate, discusses it all in her new book, Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (Henry Holt, September 2009). After spending seven years in criminal courts in Georgia, New York, Illinois, and Mississippi, she chronicles a judicial system that fails not only those most in need, but society at large.
Where did the idea for Ordinary Injustice come from?
Before I went to law school I had a [Soros Justice Media] fellowship to write about civil rights. In courtrooms, I was seeing injustice everywhere. And no one was telling these stories.
Continue reading here: http://snurl.com/rocyp
Debevoise on $500 Million AIG Sale, Skadden Joins In
(From The American Lawyer)
To repay loans to the federal government, taxpayer-supported AIG has sold off another piece of its business--this time to the son of a billionaire in Hong Kong.
The insurer announced over the weekend that it had reached an agreement to sell its external fund management business, called AIG Investments, to Pacific Century Group for $500 million in cash and other considerations, including future interest payments from the managed funds.
Continue reading here: http://snurl.com/rocrd
To repay loans to the federal government, taxpayer-supported AIG has sold off another piece of its business--this time to the son of a billionaire in Hong Kong.
The insurer announced over the weekend that it had reached an agreement to sell its external fund management business, called AIG Investments, to Pacific Century Group for $500 million in cash and other considerations, including future interest payments from the managed funds.
Continue reading here: http://snurl.com/rocrd
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