|
|
|
Court allows hotly disputed discount contact lens price law
Court Line |
2015/06/12 00:24
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Jersey's top court sides with Christie on pensions
Court Watch |
2015/06/11 00:24
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Appeals court sides with tribes in fight over land decisions
Legal News |
2015/06/05 07:22
|
In a victory for Native American tribes, an appeals court ruled Thursday that states cannot use negotiations for a Native American casino to challenge the federal government's decisions to recognize a tribe and set aside land for it.
An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said states have to use a separate process to contest those decisions and have a window of six years to file their challenge.
The decision removes the uncertainty many tribes faced about their land status after a smaller 9th Circuit panel reached a different conclusion, said Joe Webster, a partner with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker who was closely watching the case.
"This is certainly an important decision for tribes," he said.
The ruling came in a fight between California and the Humboldt County-based Big Lagoon Rancheria over the tribe's plan for a Las Vegas-style casino.
The tribe accused the state in a lawsuit of failing to negotiate a casino deal in good faith, and largely won its case in federal district court. A call to the state attorney general's office for comment about Thursday's ruling wasn't immediately returned.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another Arizona immigration law dismantled by the courts
Court Watch |
2015/06/05 07:21
|
The U.S. Supreme Court landed the final blow against an Arizona law that denied bail to immigrants who are in the country illegally and are charged with certain felonies, marking the latest in a series of state immigration policies that have since been thrown out by the courts.
The nation's highest court on Monday rejected a bid from metro Phoenix's top prosecutor and sheriff to reinstate the 2006 law after a lower appeals court concluded late last year that it violated civil rights by imposing punishment before trial.
While a small number of Arizona's immigration laws have been upheld, the courts have slowly dismantled most of the other statutes that sought to draw local police into immigration enforcement.
"At this point, we can say that was a failed experiment," said Cecillia Wang, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who led the challenge of the law. "Like the rest of the country, Arizona should move on from that failed experiment."
Voters overwhelmingly approved the no-bail law as the state's politicians were feeling pressure to take action on illegal immigration. It automatically denied bail to immigrants charged with a range of felonies that included shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and murder. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supreme Court to hear Texas Senate districts case
Legal News |
2015/06/04 07:21
|
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear an important case about whether states must count only those who are eligible to vote, rather than the total population, when drawing electoral districts for their legislatures.
The case from Texas could be significant for states with large immigrant populations, including Latinos who are children or not citizens. The state bases its electoral districts on a count of the total population, including non-citizens and those who aren't old enough to vote.
But those challenging that system argue that it violates the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote. They claim that taking account of total population can lead to vast differences in the number of voters in particular districts, along with corresponding differences in the power of those voters.
A ruling for the challengers would shift more power to rural areas and away from urban districts in which there are large populations of immigrants who are not eligible to vote because they are children or not citizens. Latinos have been the fasting growing segment of Texas' population and Latino children, in particular, have outpaced those of other groups, according to census data.
"And because urban areas are more Democratic, the ruling could help Republicans," said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine law school.
The Project on Fair Representation is funding the lawsuit filed by two Texas residents. The group opposes racial and ethnic classifications and has been behind Supreme Court challenges to affirmative action and the federal Voting Rights Act.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Law Firm & Attorney Directory |
| Law Firm PR News provides the most current career information of legal professionals and is the top source for law firms and attorneys. |
| Lawyer & Law Firm Directory |
|
|
Law Firm PR News RSS
