| Asarco LLC files legal challenge against parent company | | Posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 3:00:23 PM by Blog57 Team | | HELENA - The copper mining, refining and smelting company Asarco LLC filed court documents claiming that its parent company, Grupo Mexico, bought Asarco with the intent to strip it of its assets and leave the company with only its liabilities, a newspaper reported Saturday.Asarco filed a "fraudulent transfer" complaint Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Corpus Christi, Texas.Asarco attorneys wrote that mining giant Grupo Mexico sold Asarco's 54 percent interest in a Peruvian copper company for a low-ball price, which eventually caused Asarco to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2005, the Independent Record reported.Asarco is asking the bankruptcy court judge to invalidate that sale and return the interest in the mine to Asarco. .... | |
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| | | Union, Enloe argue over legal bills | | Posted Friday, February 02, 2007 1:03:00 PM by Blog57 Team | | The union planning a strike at Enloe Medical Center next week has long claimed the hospital spends a fortune on anti-labor attorneys. On Thursday, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) passed out leaflets at Enloe saying it had discovered the hospital has spent even more on legal fees than it had imagined. But Laura Hennum, spokesperson for Enloe, said the union had misunderstood tax documents and was making false claims about the hospital's spending. It's "an inaccurate statement to say we spent millions," she said in a telephone interview Thursday. For more than three years, the SEIU has been trying to win the right to represent about 600 service workers, including certified nursing assistants (CNAs). In April 2004, workers voted for the union by a narrow margin, but Enloe challenged the vote, arguing the outcome was invalidated by irregularities.... | |
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| | | Rep. Castro ordered to pay city's legal fees (7:58 pm) | | Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 1:14:30 PM by Blog57 Team | | A state district judge has ordered Northeast city Rep. Melina Castro to pay the city $31,200 in legal fees resulting from her year-old lawsuit alleging that El Paso City Attorney Charles McNabb improperly withheld documents from Castro. If the judgment awarded by Judge Neil Caldwell is ever paid, it will be significantly less than the $50,000 that the city has already paid lawyer Jeffery Ray for his defense of McNabb and the city. Castro, a first-term representative, could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Travis Ketner, said he would recommend that she appeal the decision, even though Caldwell's Dec. 21 decision advises Castro that he will award the city $10,000 more in legal fees if she takes the case to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and $17,000 more if she then goes to the Texas Supreme Court.... | |
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| | | Libby can use some secret documents | | Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 11:04:27 PM by Blog57 Team | | A federal judge has handed I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Cheney, a partial legal victory in his long battle to present classified documents portraying him as so consumed by matters of national security importance in the summer of 2003, that any mistakes he made remembering his conversations with three reporters about Valerie Plame were, "inadvertent and not the product of willful disinformation." Judge Reggie Walton - in an opinion Monday - writes that substitutions and summaries which Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has offered the Libby defense team instead of their using actual classified documents at trial are inadequate for them to put on a proper defense. Judge Walton ordered Fitzgerald to "go back to the drawing board and come forth with a more balanced proposal." At issue are classified daily intelligence briefings (PDBs) and terrorism threat assessments (TTMs) which Libby wants to use as evidence to show he was so preoccupied with sensitive national security matters that he did not remember - what his lawyer's describe as "insignificant" - details about his conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame, the wife of former Amb.... | |
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| | | Vietnamese businesses confident entering “new playground” | | Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 1:16:00 PM by Blog57 Team | | VietNamNet Bridge - WTO is considered as a “new playground" with new opportunities and also new challenges for Vietnamese businesses. Local business leaders should not be too optimistic, and also not too anxious but confident and composed in entering this playground. These are the opinions from local businessmen on Vietnam's accession into the WTO. Tran Duc Lai, Deputy Minister of Posts and Telematics: MPT ensures equal competition between telecoms enterprises When Vietnam becomes an official member of the WTO, competition between telecom enterprises will be fiercer, especially in the services sector. Challenges posed for the telecommunications and information technology upon Vietnam's accession into the WTO are not small at all as the country's network scale is small, domestic enterprises' capacity is not high and their competitiveness is weak.... | |
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| | | HBOS to offer legal services in Scotland | | Posted Monday, November 13, 2006 7:18:24 AM by Blog57 Team | | Scotland's high street solicitors will soon face a serious competitive threat from Edinburgh-headquartered Hbos, the first major bank to enter the legal services marketplace. Hbos, which has 2 million customers and a relationship with two out of every five households in Britain, has launched a new service offering "everyday legal products" to customers at what it claims will be considerably lower fees than those offered by high street solicitors. The service is currently being rolled out through the bank's Halifax arm and is restricted to England and Wales. However, Joel Ripley, head of Halifax Legal Solutions, said plans are advanced to extend it to Scotland. The Halifax service, which will include discounted conveyancing, will preparation and a 24-hour legal helpline, will also provide access to a website where customers can prepare their own documents, including tenancy agreements and letters of complaints about faulty goods.... | |
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| | | NYC Seeks to Ease Rules for Documents Reflecting Gender Change | | Posted Saturday, November 11, 2006 3:21:14 PM by Blog57 Team | | NEW YORK (AP) -- The city wants to make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to switch the sex listed on their birth certificate even without undergoing sex-change surgery, putting the city at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender. Under present city rules, only people who can show proof of surgery qualify for getting a revised birth certificate. Even then, the only change made is the elimination of any reference to gender on the document. The new plan, unveiled last month, would let birth records reflect the new gender. It would also allow changes for people who hadn't had genital surgery, but could show substantial proof that they have undertaken other steps to irrevocably alter their gender-identity - like undergoing hormone therapy. The policy change is one that advocates for New York's sizable transgender community have requested for years, but which has taken on greater significance in a post-Sept.... | |
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| | | Litigation, Arbitration and Dispute Resolution | | Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 3:04:43 AM by Blog57 Team | | The AWB Ltd v Cole decision on 18 September 2006, confirms that communications between a lawyer and a client which facilitate a fraud or an improper purpose are not protected by legal professional privilege, and that privilege can be waived by general reference to the substance of the legal advice contained in privileged documents. AWB Limited V Cole1 Justice Young, in the Federal Court determined the validity of AWBs claims for legal professional privilege in relation to some 900 documents.... .... | |
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| | | Highlights from the world's press | | Posted Monday, November 06, 2006 3:17:16 PM by Blog57 Team | | With Saddam Hussen receiving a death sentence yesterday in an Iraqi court, papers around the world have commented on the outcome and its ramifications for Iraq. The New York Times says while "Hussein's horrendous crimes deserve exemplary punishment" Iraq has not received the full justice it deserves. "Mr. Hussein got a fairer trial than he ever would have allowed in his courts. But Iraq got neither the full justice nor the full fairness it deserved. President Bush overreached in calling the trial a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law. "From the beginning, the now dominant Shiite and Kurdish politicians have been determined to use Mr. Hussein's trial and punishment to further their own political ends, as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has continued to do in recent days.... | |
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| | | Enactment of legal documents delayed until WTO commitments ... | | Posted Sunday, November 05, 2006 12:58:17 PM by Blog57 Team | | VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam still cannot promulgate regulations stipulating the right of foreign investors to do business in ‘sensitive' fields in Vietnam because it must wait to announce the commitments it has made to join the WTO. According to Pham Manh Dung, Director of the Legislative Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, there are a lot of issues foreign investors are very interested in. These include the right to invest in the distribution sector, the list of investment fields close to investors, and the foreign ownership ratio in ‘sensitive' fields. However, Mr Dung said that these issues cannot be made public until Vietnam can announce its official commitments upon joining the WTO. In fact, the compilation of legal documents on the issues has been nearly completed.... | |
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