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Ohio taxpayers lose right to take disputes to high court
Attorney News |
2017/10/09 01:38
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Ohioans lost the right Friday to appeal disputed tax decisions directly to the state’s high court, a scarcely debated policy change that critics say will have sweeping consequences for businesses, individuals and governments.
The Ohio Supreme Court advocated for and defends the change, arguing it was necessary to lighten its docket of a flood of market-driven property tax disputes and to preserve its role as arbiter of the state’s most significant legal questions.
Administrative Director Mike Buenger said the Supreme Court is intended to deal with categories of cases that are of great statewide public importance or of constitutional magnitude.
“We started looking at these cases because there was concern by the court that many of them presented basic disputes over mathematic valuations and calculations, and often little more than that,” he said. “With limited exception, these cases did not present great questions of statewide importance.”
A court analysis found that only 14 of the 152 appeals of Ohio Board of Tax Appeals decisions the court was compelled to accept in 2014 involved matters of law appropriate for the high court’s attention.
Justices took their concerns to the Ohio Senate, which quietly slipped language into the state budget bill signed in June removing the court’s obligation to accept direct tax appeals - an option since 1939 - and sending them through the appellate courts first.
Business groups pushed back, arguing that sending tax appeals through regional appellate courts would add costs, inconsistency and competitive disadvantages to Ohio’s tax system.
“The impact will be extremely negative. Over time, it will erode the uniformity of the tax code in the state of Ohio,” said Tom Zaino, a Columbus tax attorney and former state tax commissioner under Republican Gov. Bob Taft. “It’s going to be equally bad for government as it is for taxpayers.”
Zaino said his business tax clients often have more than one location and eliminating direct Supreme Court appeals will lead to decisions that are applicable in only one part of the state, to some but not all of a business’ properties or to one competitor but not another. |
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Abortion clinic seeks to sue Ohio over budget restrictions
Legal PR |
2017/10/09 01:37
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A Cleveland abortion clinic asked Ohio's high court on Tuesday to grant it legal standing to sue over abortion-related restrictions tucked into the state's 2013 budget bill.
Preterm of Cleveland argued that the provisions impose added administrative and caseload burdens that clearly qualify the clinic to proceed with its constitutional challenge to the manner in which the bill was put together.
The clinic's attorney, B. Jessie Hill, told justices significant new hurdles are not required to meet the legal burden for standing.
"We have to do something we didn't have to do before: We have to enter into a new contract every two years," she said. "That's all we need to demonstrate."
The clinic disputes budget provisions that required more frequent renewal of a clinic's emergency transfer agreement with a local hospital after prohibiting public hospitals from participating and required testing for a fetal heartbeat before an abortion can be performed.
The state's attorney, Ryan Richardson, argued the clinic has not demonstrated true or threatened harm and so can't legally sue.
"As this court has said, really the essence of standing is having a plaintiff that has a direct and concrete stake in the issues, so that the plaintiff is able to properly sharpen the issues for the court's resolution," she said. "Bringing a plaintiff who is not directly affected impacts the ability to properly present the facts and legal issues that the court needs to properly adjudicate the case."
The lawsuit comes amid abortion clinic closures across Ohio that have coincided with falling abortion rates.
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Record $417M award in lawsuit linking baby powder to cancer
Legal PR |
2017/10/07 01:36
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A Los Angeles jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $417 million to a hospitalized woman who claimed in a lawsuit that the talc in the company's iconic baby powder causes ovarian cancer when applied regularly for feminine hygiene.
The verdict in the lawsuit brought by the California woman, Eva Echeverria, marks the largest sum awarded in a series of talcum powder lawsuit verdicts against Johnson & Johnson in courts around the U.S.
Echeverria alleged Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers about talcum powder's potential cancer risks. She used the company's baby powder on a daily basis beginning in the 1950s until 2016 and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007, according to court papers.
Echeverria developed ovarian cancer as a "proximate result of the unreasonably dangerous and defective nature of talcum powder," she said in her lawsuit.
Echeverria's attorney, Mark Robinson, said his client is undergoing cancer treatment while hospitalized and told him she hoped the verdict would lead Johnson & Johnson to put additional warnings on its products.
"Mrs. Echeverria is dying from this ovarian cancer and she said to me all she wanted to do was to help the other women throughout the whole country who have ovarian cancer for using Johnson & Johnson for 20 and 30 years," Robinson said.
"She really didn't want sympathy," he added. "She just wanted to get a message out to help these other women."
The jury's award included $68 million in compensatory damages and $340 million in punitive damages, Robinson said. The evidence in the case included internal documents from several decades that "showed the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew about the risks of talc and ovarian cancer," Robinson said.
"Johnson & Johnson had many warning bells over a 30 year period but failed to warn the women who were buying its product," he said.
Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman Carol Goodrich said in a statement that the company will appeal the jury's decision. She says while the company sympathizes with women suffering from ovarian cancer that scientific evidence supports the safety of Johnson's baby powder.
The verdict came after a St. Louis, Missouri jury in May awarded $110.5 million to a Virginia woman who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012.
She had blamed her illness on her use of the company's talcum powder-containing products for more than 40 years.
Besides that case, three other trials in St. Louis had similar outcomes last year — with juries awarding damages of $72 million, $70.1 million and $55 million, for a combined total of $307.6 million.
Another St. Louis jury in March rejected the claims of a Tennessee woman with ovarian and uterine cancer who blamed talcum powder for her cancers.
Two similar cases in New Jersey were thrown out by a judge who said the plaintiffs' lawyers did not presented reliable evidence linking talc to ovarian cancer.
More than 1,000 other people have filed similar lawsuits. Some who won their lawsuits won much lower amounts, illustrating how juries have wide latitude in awarding monetary damages.
Johnson & Johnson is preparing to defend itself and its baby powder at upcoming trials in the U.S., Goodrich said. |
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Court: Utility, not gov't responsible for Fukushima disaster
Attorney News |
2017/10/07 01:36
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A Japanese court has ruled that a utility, not the government, should pay compensation to dozens of former residents of Fukushima for losses to their livelihood caused by meltdowns at a nuclear plant after a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Chiba District Court ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday to pay a total of 376 million yen ($3.4 million) to most of the 45 plaintiffs who sought compensation over the loss of their livelihoods and communities because of radiation contamination.
The court dismissed the plaintiffs' claim the government should also be held responsible for its failure to enforce tsunami safety measures.
About 30 other compensation suits filed by tens of thousands of former Fukushima residents are still pending.
The wrecked Fukushima plant's decommissioning is expected to take decades.
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Court Rules 2 Texas Congressional Districts Unconstitutional
Court Line |
2017/10/07 01:33
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A federal court nullified two of Texas’ 36 congressional districts Tuesday, unanimously ruling that they were drawn with the intent to weaken minority voting power in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.
Hispanic voters in one county in the state's 27th Congressional District, which includes Corpus Christi, “were intentionally deprived of their opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice,” the three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas wrote in a 107-page ruling.
The court also called the 35th Congressional District, which includes parts of San Antonio and Austin, an “impermissible racial gerrymander.”
However, the court sided with the state with regard to other districts, ruling there was no evidence of “intentional discrimination/dilution” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston or the 23rd Congressional District.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling “puzzling” because “the legislature adopted the congressional map the same court itself adopted in 2012, and the Obama-era Department of Justice did not bring any claims against the map.”
“We appreciate that the panel ruled in favor of Texas on many issues in the case,” Paxton said in a statement Tuesday. “We look forward to asking the Supreme Court to decide whether Texas had discriminatory intent when relying on the district court.”
The suit was brought in 2011 by several Texas voters, Democratic and minority lawmakers along with several advocacy groups, including the NAACP, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the League of United Latin American Citizens.
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