Eideard

Two of Belniak’s victims – Denise and Gerard Bassi, dead

David Belniak had drugs in his system and never braked when he slammed into the back of a family’s car stopped at a red light on Christmas Day 2007. Three people died.

In August, Belniak pleaded guilty to three counts of DUI manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He never said a word in court, not even when the victims’ children begged him for an apology…

Now, he’s saying he’s not responsible for the crash. And he wants to be paid for his suffering…

The suit asks for the victims’ relatives to pay Belniak, 38, for his “pain and suffering … mental anguish … loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life” and the medical bills he got as a result of a crash he pleaded guilty to causing…

Georgette DeFranco lost her mother, Linda McWilliams, 66; her sister, Denise Bassi, 50, and her brother-in-law, Gerard Bassi, 51, in the crash. DeFranco’s stepfather, Ray McWilliams, was injured but survived. Family members said he never fully recovered and he died last March at age 68…

The crash happened about 2:20 p.m. Dec. 25, 2007…Authorities said Belniak was driving between 75 and 85 mph when his pickup smashed into the back of McWilliams’ Chevrolet Tahoe. The SUV crumpled. Gerard Bassi died at the scene. Denise Bassi died in surgery that day. Linda McWilliams was taken off life support a week later.

Authorities said Belniak had alcohol, Xanax and evidence of cocaine in his system.

Belniak had a history of driving infractions. He’d faced DUI charges twice before. One of those times, in 2003, New Port Richey police searching his Ford Mustang found a gallon of the intoxicant GHB, commonly known as the “date rape” drug. Belniak served 17 months in prison after pleading no contest to trafficking the drug…

Maureen M. Deskins, the Tampa attorney representing the estate of Linda and Ray McWilliams, said the lawsuit is “gut-wrenching” and the relatives are “stunned.”

“It seems there is no end to the pain David Belniak is willing to inflict on this family,” Deskins said.

One more case added to the sum of frivolous litigation that has become the American standard for lawyers. My friends who practice that craft with justice and honor are as embarrassed as our whole nation must be – especially by the lack of concern that results from drunk driving convictions.

Neil Parry fought in court for 17 months for justice

An Australian man has been paid thousands of dollars in compensation after being wrongly accused of smuggling ecstasy in shampoo bottles.

Neil Parry of Darwin spent three days in jail after being arrested at the city’s airport last year. But his bottles were found to contain shampoo and conditioner, not 1.6kg of liquid ecstasy as alleged.

Mr Parry said the AUS$100,000 payout from customs “was not worth it”.

He told ABC radio he had spent 17 months in a legal battle with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, and that most of the compensation would go towards his legal costs.

In a statement, the customs service said “mistakes were made during the presumptive testing of Mr Parry’s goods” and additional drug-testing procedures had been introduced.

Mr Parry’s boat and the homes of two friends were searched during the customs investigation.

I know we all tire of asking these questions. Why does it take 17 months for governments to admit they’ve screwed up? It’s bad enough they’ve messed with the life of an innocent citizen – but, they care so much about protecting their pimply-ass bureaucratic turf that someone like Mr. Parry has to hire a lawyer and sue to get any compensation for being locked-up and his home, his friends, being tossed by the coppers. They are the criminals.

They let me go; but, required I had to exit the UK within 30 days. They had to apply some sort of sanction to cover their stupidity.

When Teresa Culpepper called Atlanta police to report her car stolen, the last thing she expected was to land behind bars for 53 days in a case of mistaken identity.

Mistaken for a woman of the same first name who was wanted on a battery charge, Culpepper is now trying to return her life to normal after the ordeal cost her home and her car. Her attorney said none of it would have happened if police had followed basic procedures…

Culpepper’s saga started August 21, whe she called police to report that her car was stolen, attorney Ashleigh Merchant said. An officer took information from her, but never filed a report. Shortly after, police dispatchers called out a bulletin, alerting officers to look out for a woman named Teresa Gilbert who was suspected of aggravated battery.

Police returned to Culpepper’s house and arrested her. And the differences between the two women didn’t stop at their last names, Merchant said.

“The birth dates didn’t match. The addresses were different. The description didn’t match. Other than the name Teresa, nothing matched,” Merchant said. “All they had to do was show a picture of Teresa to the victim and none of this would have happened…”

Weeks later…the battery victim came forward in court and cleared Culpepper’s name. Released on October 12, Culpepper found herself homeless and her car in the impound lot.

“After investigating this matter thoroughly and discussing it carefully with the Atlanta Police Department, we have concluded that the wrong person was arrested,” District Attorney Paul Howard Jr. said in a written statement to CNN affiliate WSB. “The fact that both of the women in question had the same first name and lived in the same police beat led the officer to believe Ms. Culpepper was responsible … Unfortunately, the officer never presented a picture or any form of identification to the victim.”

Culpepper is seeking legal action against the Atlanta police, Merchant said.

“It is scary, really,” Merchant said. “Because it is not like Teresa is an uncommon name. It makes you feel that it could have happened to anybody.”

Well, at least anybody who is Black and named Teresa – in Atlanta.

A Missouri man filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that a priest in the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese — who for years has sat on the diocese’s Marriage Tribunal — fathered a child with the man’s wife.

The civil suit…alleges that the Rev. Joseph Matt had an affair with the man’s wife between 2004 and 2005…and that the woman became pregnant and had a boy.

It also alleges that the diocese and Matt committed fraud by keeping silent about the sexual misconduct.

“It’s been a nightmare,” the man said in an interview with The Kansas City Star. “It’s not a good thing to find out that your son is not yours and the father is actually a priest that you thought you could trust. I still can’t believe it.”

The man, who is filing the lawsuit anonymously to protect the identity of the child, learned last September that the boy was not his biological son…

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions involving the diocese, from civil suits to criminal charges against a priest, to a grand jury investigation into how diocesan leaders have handled some allegations.

But unlike this case, the others revolve around accusations of priests sexually abusing minors.

Matt still sits on the diocese’s Marriage Tribunal. He judges the quality and holiness of marriages of members of the Catholic Church. Apparently, the princes of the church think he’s qualified for that judgement. Incredible.

RTFA. A corrupt soap opera that surprises no one except loyal members of the church, I guess.

Eileen Foster

In the summer of 2007, a team of corporate investigators sifted through mounds of paper pulled from shred bins at Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage shops in and around Boston.

By intercepting the documents before they were sliced by the shredder, the investigators were able to uncover what they believed was evidence that branch employees had used scissors, tape and Wite-Out to create fake bank statements, inflated property appraisals and other phony paperwork. Inside the heaps of paper, for example, they found mock-ups that indicated to investigators that workers had, as a matter of routine, literally cut and pasted the address for one home onto an appraisal for a completely different piece of property.

Eileen Foster, the company’s new fraud investigations chief, had seen a lot of slippery behavior in her two-plus decades in the banking business. But she’d never seen anything like this. “You’re looking at it and you’re going, Oh my God, how did it get to this point?” Foster recalls. “How do you get people to go to work every day and do these things and think it’s okay..?”

One executive, Foster says, sent an email to dozens of workers in the Boston region, warning them the fraud unit was on the case and not to put anything in their emails or instant messages that might be used against them…Her team was not allowed to interview a senior manager who oversaw the branches. Instead, she says, Countrywide’s Employee Relations Department did the interview and then let the manager’s boss vet the transcript before it was provided to Foster and the fraud unit.

In the end, dozens of employees were let go and six branches were shut down. But Foster worried some of the worst actors had escaped unscathed. She suspected, she says, that something wasn’t right with Countrywide’s culture — and that it was going to be rough going for her as she and her team dug into the methods used by Countrywide’s sales machine.

By early 2008, she claims, she’d concluded that many in Countrywide’s chain of command were working to cover up massive fraud within the company — outing and then firing whistleblowers who tried to report forgery and other misconduct. People who spoke up, she says, were “taken out.”

By the fall of 2008, she was out of a job too. Countrywide’s new owner, Bank of America Corp., told her it was firing her for “unprofessional conduct.”

Foster began a three-year battle to clear her name and establish that she and other employees had been punished for doing the right thing. Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor ruled that Bank of America had illegally fired her as payback for exposing fraud and retaliation against whistleblowers. It ordered the bank to reinstate her and pay her some $930,000.

Bank of America denies Foster’s allegations and stands behind its decision to fire her. Foster sees the ruling as a vindication of her decision to keep fighting.

“I don’t let people bully me, intimidate me and coerce me,” Foster told iWatch News during a series of interviews. “And it’s just not right that people don’t know what happened here and how it happened.”

This is the intro to Part 1 of Eileen Foster’s tribulations as whistleblower on Countrywide Financial. The single company that can assume credit for the Great Recession over any other. Add to it the continued attempts by present owners Bank of America to paper over the crimes committed, fraud perpetrated.

Part 2 appears today. Just click the link above and follow the slime trail.

Sony is preparing to ban gamers from the PlayStation Network (PSN) unless they waive the right to collectively sue it over future security breaches. The firm has amended PSN’s terms and conditions and users have to agree to them next time they log in…

The new clauses, dubbed “Binding Individual Arbitration,” state that “any Dispute Resolution Proceedings, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative action or as a named or unnamed member in a class, consolidated, representative or private attorney general action”…

Those that want to opt out will have to send a letter to Sony’s Los Angeles headquarters in the US. Once they do, the subscribers will be able to keep their right to file a class action lawsuit without any need for arbitration.

But before subscribers have a chance to opt out, they will still be required to agree to the new terms the next time they log into their accounts. Otherwise they will not be able to use the online services.

In many countries, forcing individuals to agree to contracts which violate constitutional rights – are automatically invalid. Someone might mention that to Sony.

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed most of the constitutional claims raised by a Charlottesville man who was arrested after stripping down to his running shorts during an airport checkpoint protest…

False imprisonment and malicious prosecution claims against three Richmond International Airport police officers were not included in the motions for dismissal.

Aaron Tobey, 21, was detained at an airport security checkpoint on Dec. 30 after partially disrobing to display part of the text of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment handwritten on his chest. Tobey says he was protesting security measures, including enhanced pat-downs and the use of whole-body imaging scanners that he believes violate the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

…Judge Henry E. Hudson also rejected the equal protection and search-and-seizure claims against the TSA screening officers who summoned police, but said it was premature to dismiss the free-speech claim…

“The question, then, is whether the TSOs in fact radioed for assistance because of the message Plaintiff sought to convey, as opposed to Plaintiff’s admittedly bizarre behavior or because of some other reasonable restriction on First Amendment activity in the security screening area,” Hudson wrote.

The president of The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based civil liberties group that filed the lawsuit on Tobey’s behalf, said the answer to that question is clear.

“Aaron Tobey was arrested for exercising his right to free speech, which is clearly protected under the First Amendment,” John W. Whitehead said after Hudson issued his ruling.

Tobey, a University of Cincinnati student at the time of the arrest, staged the protest as he prepared to board a flight to Wisconsin to attend his grandfather’s funeral. Disorderly conduct charges were later dropped by the Henrico County prosecutor.

You can’t always fight City Hall. I recommend against trying it alone. But, I applaud those who use their Constitutional rights to free speech to do so. The TSA – like most Homeland Insecurity mutants – stinks on ice for limiting our freedom to travel while achieving next to nothing at providing safety and security for air travelers.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman

Two days after same-sex marriage became legal in New York, the state’s attorney general has taken legal action challenging the constitutionality of the U.S. law which defines marriage as between a man and woman.

In court papers filed on Tuesday in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, violates same-sex couples’ right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

The 1996 law prohibits same-sex couples from receiving marriage-based benefits such as Social Security survivor benefits, health benefits and the right to file taxes jointly.

Schneiderman argued the law intrudes on the state’s right to regulate marriage. On Sunday, gay couples began to marry in New York after it was made legal…

“By discriminating among married couples based on sexual orientation and sex, DOMA deprives New York of the ability to extend true equality to all marriages valid in the State,” Schneiderman wrote…

In February, the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act’s section which defines marriage as between a man and woman.

Yes, the bigots and homophobes of America will continue to join with the most backwards elements in American politics to try to halt the progress of this new generation of civil rights advances. They should fail as abysmally as they did in the 1960′s.

This act by the New York State AG feels to me like the 1958 passage of the Fair Housing Practices Law. When the business and commercial capital of the world stands up for human rights, the nation, the world, has to step back and acknowledge their failings. The state of New York has set an example for all the United States that pretend to modernity to get up on their hind legs and fight for the rights of all their citizens.

DaVita’s new planned world headquarters in Denver

One of the nation’s largest providers of kidney dialysis deliberately wasted medicine in order to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in extra payments from Medicare, a former clinic nurse and a doctor are charging in a whistle-blower lawsuit.

The lawsuit says that the company, DaVita, used larger than necessary vials of medicine knowing that Medicare would pay for the unused portion of each vial if it were deemed unavoidable waste. DaVita, which treats nearly a third of the nation’s dialysis patients, denies the accusations.

The accusations are the latest related to how financial incentives may have driven overuse of pharmaceuticals in the dialysis business. In January, Medicare began a payment system that pays for the overall treatment and does not pay separately for the drugs accompanying it. Many practices, including the size of some vials used, suddenly changed, providing an instant case study of how financial incentives can influence treatment choices.

The lawsuit says that until January, for example, DaVita required nurses to use one 10-microgram vial of Zemplar, a vitamin D drug, instead of a six-microgram dose in three two-microgram vials,. It then billed Medicare for all 10 micrograms even though four went unused.

Instead of giving an entire 100-milligram vial of Venofer, an iron drug, once or twice a month, the clinics gave 25-milligram doses more frequently, the suit says. But since the drug came only in a 100-milligram vial, Medicare was billed for 100 milligrams for each dose, even though 75 milligrams were wasted, the lawsuit says…

This so-called bundled payment system has instantly turned drugs from a source of profit to a cost to be avoided. And dialysis clinics have responded.

Not especially different from the ever-popular cost-plus billing often used in the military-industrial complex. My least favorite form of welfare for capitalists producing non-consumable goods. If you have a guaranteed profit of any size – and can inflate the legitimate costs 100% – you double your profit.

The “unusable” bikini photo

A US beauty contest winner who claimed she was stripped of her crown because she had gained weight has won her courtroom fight to regain the title.

Seventeen-year-old Domonique Ramirez claimed pageant officials in Texas had told her to “get off the tacos”. Organisers of the Miss San Antonio contest said she was dismissed because she had breached her contract.

After nearly 12 hours of deliberation, jurors in Bexar County, Texas, ruled in favour of Ms Ramirez…

“This is about principle, this is about what’s right,” the 5ft 8in, 129lb Ms Ramirez said after the verdict on Thursday…

During the week-long trial, pageant director Linda Woods said the teenager had turned up to a bikini shoot overweight, making the pictures “unusable”.

Ms Ramirez told the court that pageant bosses had said she “needed to lay off the tacos and the junk food“…

Jury foreman Jesse Sanchez told the local newspaper, the Express-News, that the verdict was a “a hard decision”. She declined to divulge what damages and fees were awarded to Ms Ramirez.

Now that she has her title back, Ms Ramirez is eligible to compete for the titles of Miss Texas and Miss America.

The judges appointed a replacement while all this was going on – but Domonique says she’s perfectly willing to move on and compete alongside the substitute, Ashley Dixon, in the follow-on contests that can lead to Miss America.