Daily Archives: May 31, 2012 - 4 results

Two-time presidential candidate John Edwards did not accept illegal campaign contributions from a Virginia heiress, a North Carolina jury ruled Thursday after more than eight days of deliberations. But whether he’ll face up to 25 years for conspiracy, lying on campaign finance reports, and illegally taking other contributions could take years to sort out. After jurors deadlocked on five of the six charges filed against Edwards, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles on Thursday agreed to defense attorney Abbe Lowell‘s request for …

Institutionalized discrimination by Uncle Sam against the LGBT community is no more, says a federal court in Boston. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that specifically denies federal marriage benefits to gay couples regardless of whether they are legally married in their state, is unconstitutional. Opponents of the law, including the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), had argued that the federal government had never before interfered with …

Attorney’s fees may seem expensive at first glance, but there are a number of reasons why they charge the rates they do. Lawyers see people in some of the most stressful times of life, often with issues of vital importance hinging on the outcome of a case. A lawyer takes the client’s problem and makes it his or her own. When asked why lawyers charge so much, Richard Quadrino, a disability attorney in practice with his partner Evan Schwartz, says, …

Workers trying to organize a union at a Connecticut museum have accused their bosses of unfair labor practices in a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees U.S. union activity. According to the complaint by the Mystic Seaport Museum workers, administrators at the 200-employee maritime education center were illegally working against efforts by the group calling itself Mystic Seaport United to join the American Federation of Teachers, which also represents union workers. AFT …