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Court allows hotly disputed discount contact lens price law
Topics in Legal News |
2015/06/13 12:22
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A federal appeals court ruling has cleared the way for discount contact lens retailers to drop prices while a legal battle is waged between the state of Utah and manufacturers who want to impose minimum prices on their products.
The decision handed down from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Friday comes after three of the nation's largest contact lens manufacturers sued to halt a hotly contested law.
Supporters, including Utah-based discount seller 1-800 Contacts, say the newly enacted legislation bans price fixing for contact lenses. But opponents, including Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb, say it's a brazen overreach that allows discount sellers to violate interstate commerce regulations and skirt industry price standards.
Utah's attorney general has said the companies are wrongly driving up prices, and the law is a legitimate antitrust measure designed to enhance competition and help customers. Attorney General Sean Reyes' office didn't have a comment on the decision Friday.
The ruling allows the law to go into effect while a legal battle over the measure works its way through the courts. The appeals court did agree to fast-track the case and new briefs are due in the case later this month.
Donna Lorenson, a spokeswoman for Alcon, says the company is "extremely disappointed" and maintains the law violates interstate commerce rules. |
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New Jersey's top court sides with Christie on pensions
Topics in Legal News |
2015/06/10 12:21
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New Jersey's top court sided with Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday, giving him a major victory in a fight with public worker unions over pension funds and sparing a new state budget crisis.
The state Supreme Court overturned a lower-court judge's order that told the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled Legislature to work out a way to increase pension contributions for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
In a 5-2 ruling, the court said there wasn't an enforceable contract to force the full payment, as unions had argued there was.
"That the State must get its financial house in order is plain," Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in the majority opinion. "The need is compelling in respect of the State's ability to honor its compensation commitment to retired employees. But this Court cannot resolve that need in place of the political branches. They will have to deal with one another to forge a solution to the tenuous financial status of New Jersey's pension funding in a way that comports with the strictures of our Constitution."
She noted that the state is obligated to pay individual retirees their pensions. That's not in danger this year, but unions say the funds could start going insolvent within the next decade.
Justice Barry Albin dissented and was joined by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner.
"The decision unfairly requires public workers to uphold their end of the law's bargain — increased weekly deductions from their paychecks to fund their future pensions — while allowing the State to slip from its binding commitment to make commensurate contributions," Albin wrote. "Thus, public workers continue to pay into a system on its way to insolvency."
One of Christie's signature achievements as governor has been a 2011 deal on pensions for public workers. Employees had to pay more and the government was locked into making up for years of skipped or reduced contributions.
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Suge Knight returns to court to try to dismiss murder case
Topics in Legal News |
2015/06/04 22:40
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Marion "Suge" Knight's lawyer argues that a murder case against the former rap music mogul should be dismissed because one of the men he allegedly ran over earlier this year didn't identify him in court.
Attorney Matt Fletcher contends in a motion filed before a hearing Friday that murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run charges filed against the Death Row Records co-founder should be thrown out based on the testimony of a man seriously injured in January. Knight has pleaded not guilty to running over Cle "Bone" Sloan and another man who died from his injuries.
Sloan refused to identify Knight while testifying during a preliminary hearing last month, but gave detectives a lucid account after being struck by Knight's pickup and said he started a fight in the parking lot of a Compton burger stand in late January.
A response filed by prosecutor Cynthia Barnes points to Sloan's statements to detectives and other evidence to support their case, including Knight's unique nickname, "Suge."
Fletcher contends that is not enough.
"There is nowhere in this transcript that Mr. Sloan ever identifies Marion Knight, the defendant, as a murderer," Fletcher wrote. "There is nowhere in the entire transcript that Mr. Sloan even identifies Marion Knight as a driver of the red truck in question; the red truck that hit the victims."
The 50-year-old Knight is charged with running over the two men outside a Compton burger stand. Fletcher has said his client was fleeing an ambush. A trial in the case has been scheduled for July 7.
Knight is also scheduled for a hearing in a separate robbery case that a judge delayed. The former rap mogul told deputies he was too sick to come to court, but Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen said he would order Knight forcibly brought to court on Friday if necessary. |
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Appeals court: Apple must submit to imposition of monitor
Topics in Legal News |
2015/06/02 22:40
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A federal appeals panel has refused to disqualify a court-appointed monitor after a judge found Apple colluded with book publishers in 2010 to raise electronic book prices.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled against Apple Inc. Thursday. The three-judge panel concluded that a judge did not act improperly when she declined Apple's request to disqualify a monitor she had appointed to evaluate Apple's antitrust policies.
A lawyer for Apple, based in Cupertino, California, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2nd Circuit did not yet rule on a separate appeal in which Apple is challenging the judge's finding that it colluded with publishers.
After a 2013 civil trial, a judge ordered the technology giant to modify contracts with publishers to prevent price fixing.
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Ex-Premier Zia avoids arrest as Bangladesh court grants bail
Topics in Legal News |
2015/04/07 13:41
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Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia avoided arrest on corruption charges Sunday after a court granted her bail.
Judge Abu Ahmed Jamadder approved Zia's request for bail when she surrendered to court in the capital, Dhaka.
Zia left her office for the first since Jan. 5, when authorities had initially barred her from leaving to attend an anti-government rally calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her archrival. Authorities later said she was free to move to her nearby residence, but Zia refused, vowing to continue with anti-government protests that have turned violent, leaving nearly 115 people dead since the beginning of the year.
Zia's lawyers have rejected allegations that she illegally collected more than $1 million in donations for a charity during her last premiership in 2001-2006, and say the charges are politically motivated, which authorities deny. The trial began early last year.
The court had issued an arrest warrant for Zia in February after she failed to appear to answer the charges against her. Prosecutors on Sunday did not oppose Zia's bail request.
Zia currently leads a 20-party opposition alliance that has been enforcing a nonstop transportation blockade across the South Asian country since early January to demand that Hasina resign and a new election be called.
The blockade began after a year of relative calm following a January 2014 election that was boycotted by Zia's party. The boycott allowed Hasina to come to power with an overwhelming majority, and she says there is no need for another election before 2019, when her five-year term ends. |
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