The Office of Special Counsel is a federal agency that is supposed to handle whistleblowing complaints of federal employees.  It’s supposed to be the investigator for and of the federal government.  Instead, the head of the Office has been under investigation for about two years for, among other things, failing to investigate whistleblowing claims and retaliating against whistleblowers.  On May 6, 2008, the FBI raided the agency’s DC office (as well as other agency offices), seized computers, issued search warrants, and tainted even further the integrity of the Office of Special Counsel.

Many companies now have “compliance officers” or “compliance departments” to, more or less, do what the Office of Special Counsel was set up to do:  make sure there is overall compliance with the law and ethics policies and investigate any alleged violations.  To have any chance of doing that job, the compliance officer or the head of the department must be above reproach.  Once his/her integrity is called into question, the office or the department might as well not exist.

All organizations should study what’s happened with the Office of Special Counsel.  It’ll help you strengthen what you have in place to enforce compliance and uphold ethics policies.

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Title VII requires an employer to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs unless it causes the employer an undue hardship.  Sometimes, an accommodation is possible.  Sometimes, it’s not.  But the employer must always consider whether it’s possible.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals provides some guidance on the concept of religious accommodation in Sturgill v. United Parcel Service, Inc. (Check out the Nebraska Employment Law Letter for a summary of this case.)  A UPS package car driver was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  A fundamental tenet of the church is that you can’t work past sundown on Friday.  The driver requested a year-round accommodation that would ensure his never having to work past sundown on Friday.  The company rejected this request as being too broad.

On one Friday, it became apparent that the driver wouldn’t be able to complete his deliveries before sundown.  He requested an accommodation.  It was denied.  He quit and sued UPS for violating Title VII.  The case was tried before a jury, which found in favor of the employee, returning a verdict of $103,722.25 in compensatory damages, $207,444.50 in punitive damages, and $134,838.37 in attorneys’ fees.  On appeal, the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.

The problem for UPS was that it had, almost routinely, made it possible for the employee to avoid working past sundown on Friday in the past by splitting up deliveries among other drivers so that the employee in question could be through by sundown.  It was obvious that it could be done without causing an undue hardship.  At least, there was enough evidence for a jury to reasonably draw that conclusion.

A big company will have a more difficult time showing that a religious accommodation causes an undue hardship than a smaller company will.  UPS has a lot of drivers.  It’s a bit of a stretch for a jury to accept the argument that there’s just no way for the company to figure out some way for a driver to meet his religious obligation to stop work before sundown on Friday.  That’s particularly true when accommodations have already been provided to the driver without bringing the company’s work to a standstill.  That’s a reminder that before you start handing out accommodations, look at the big picture and make sure your supervisors check with human resources before deciding an accommodation question on their own.

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Sec. 49.07.  INTOXICATION ASSAULT. 

(a)  A person commits an offense if the person, by accident or mistake:

(1)  while operating an aircraft, watercraft, or amusement ride while intoxicated, or while operating a motor vehicle in a public place while intoxicated, by reason of that intoxication causes serious bodily injury to another;  or

(2)  as a result of assembling a mobile amusement ride while intoxicated causes serious bodily injury to another.

(b)  In this section, "serious bodily injury" means injury that creates a substantial risk of death or that causes serious permanent disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.

(c)  Except as provided by Section 49.09, an offense under this section is a felony of the third degree.

Added by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994.  Amended by Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 1364, Sec. 10, eff. Jan. 1, 2000.

Amended by: Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 662, Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2007.

Customers showing up for lunch at Bennigan's restaurants across the country found quite a surprise Tuesday morning, when all the corporate-owned locations had signs on display reading "closed for business."

Bennigan's Grill and Tavern closed all of its corporate-owned locations nationwide after filing for bankruptcy. That amounts to 160 locations, and about 10,000 employees are out of work. Independent franchises remain open for business as usual.

Some managers and some employees say they were called in the middle of the night. People got the calls at the stores, others were called at 1:00 in the morning at their homes. No one expected it.

Bennigan's spokeswoman Leah Templeton said Bennigan's and Steak & Ale restaurants – both of which are owned by Plano, Texas-based Metromedia Restaurant Group – have filed for bankruptcy, along with the holding company S&A Restaurant Corp.

But not all stores that use the Bennigan's and Steak & Ale names have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, Templeton said in a statement. Franchise locations are not named as debtors in the bankruptcy filing and thus are not affected, she said.  The corporate-owned locations comprise about half the entire chain. Bennigan's was founded in 1976 and the restaurant has (or had) locations in 32 states.

The statement said a trustee would determine "future decisions regarding the affairs of the debtor companies."

CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller explains that Chapter 7 bankruptcy means the company is being liquidated, as opposed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which a company tries to reorganize and remain in business.

Miller said a Chapter 7 filing usually means a company has "major league debt," and it is unlikely that employees would get their last paycheck. He said someone could conceivably buy the assets and reopen the full Bennigan's chain, but that would only be after a long, drawn out court process.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Metromedia Restaurant Group violated several terms of a lending agreement with GE Capital Solutions. The company prepared a bankruptcy filing, the newspaper reported.

The bankruptcy filing does not affect other two restaurant chains owned by Metromedia, Ponderosa and Bonanza Steakhouse, Templeton said in the statement.

"When consumers are squeezed, they don't have the money to eat out that they did before," said food industry consultant Ron Paul with Technomic, Inc.

Paul also criticizes Bennigan's for opening too many restaurants. He says other chains have made the same mistake. Between 2002 and 2007 the top 20 chains grew more than 7 percent per year, when demand was only 2 percent. That spells more bad news for more restaurants.

"We're going to have to see more units closed, because they're not going to get the traffic to justify the rent and pay the other expenses," Paul warned.

Given the state of the economy, customer Bob Perkins said such mass-shutdowns as these are to be expected.

"The cost of food is just too high, and it's all related, with gas prices and the economy itself," Perkins said. "Until somebody takes a stand and does something, you're going to keep seeing this."

SAN ANTONIO — A special prosecutor said insufficient evidence prompted him to seek dismissal of a drunken driving charge against a state district judge.

Tony Hackebeil wouldn't elaborate on why he asked County Court-at-Law Judge Michael Mery to dismiss the charge stemming from a February traffic stop involving Raymond Angelini, a longtime judge. Hackebeil's motion was granted Thursday.

Angelini, 57, who has maintained his innocence all along, said some will see the dismissal as a reflection of his position.

"I had nothing to do with what (Hackebeil's) decision was," Angelini said. "I didn't talk to him."

Andrew Del Cueto, who represents Angelini, said his report to the prosecutor includes information that questions the credibility of one of the arresting officers, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Angelini was arrested after an officer pulled him over for weaving. In his police report, the officer said Angelini's speech was slurred, that he had bloodshot eyes, that he had to use his car door to remain standing and that he failed a field sobriety test.

The report also said Angelini admitted having "maybe three drinks." He refused to take a breath test.

Jay Norton, an attorney who handles DWI cases and has acted as a special prosecutor, has seen a video of Angelini taken at the police department about an hour after his arrest. The video has not been released.

"He clearly is not intoxicated on that video," Norton said. "If this had gone to trial, it would have been a not-guilty."

After Angelini's arrest, District Attorney Susan Reed filed a motion to recuse her office from prosecuting his case. She cited years spent as Angelini's colleague on the bench as well as other connections that created a conflict of interest for the office. Reed and Angelini are both Republicans.

Shortly after his arrest, an administrative law judge ruled that Angelini be prohibited from hearing any case in which the officers who arrested him were involved.

That judge rejected a request from Reed that Angelini be recused from hearing all criminal cases.

Source: Houston Chronicle

After much research, I've decided to plunk down some cash for the new ebook reader from Amazon.  I was an early adopter of the Franklin Rocket ebook about 10 years ago but stopped using it for various reasons.  I'll update the blog on how it works out.

If you want to see the Kindle for yourself, here's a link:

Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

Former Houston lawyer Stuart Bryson Collins, now the owner of an organic farming business in Canada, is fighting extradition to Texas. After Collins gave up his Texas law license over a discipline suit and moved to Canada, a grand jury indicted him on two felony charges of misappropriation of fiduciary property from clients. Collins says he is not guilty of the charges, and is appealing the extradition orders in Canadian courts. "The moment I step out of Canada, it's all over for me," he says. Continue . . .

 

 

If you have recently been charged with a Collin, Dallas or Denton County DWI and submitted to field sobriety tests then you NEED to read this article by JL Booker from the journal of Science and Justice Journal volume 44 pages 133-139 (18 June 2002) about the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test (HGN).
Download file

The HGN test is typically the first test officers administer to drivers suspected of DWI. The officer will instruct the suspect to focus his or her eyes on a stimulus (usually a light or the tip of a pen) that is positioned 12-15 inches from, and slightly above, the subjects eyes. The officer will then make several passes in from of the subject’s eyes to look for an involuntary jerking (nystagmus) in the subjects eyes.

Prosecutors and police officers will say that the HGN is the most "scientific" and accurate of the three SFSTs. Articles like Dr. Bookers and Dr. Rubenzer's HGN study may open your eyes to the flawed "science" of the HGN eyes test.

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The insurance industry has been the leading advocate for red-light cameras since they were first introduced in the United States and it’s worth examining why they push so hard for their installation.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which is wholly funded by the insurance industry, is often quoted by media as an unbiased source despite the fact they benefit financially from their installation.

Richard Retting is a senior transportation engineer for IIHS. He has even been called the "father of the red-light camera movement" in the United States. He’s also the author of nearly every red-light camera study that suggests that installing the cameras has a positive impact on traffic safety. However, as reporter Matt Labash pointed out in his 2002 series on red-light cameras, Retting and IIHS have a vested interested in seeing red-light cameras go mainstream:

Retting is a near ubiquitous presence in the debate. Statistics floated by his Institute are unblinkingly regurgitated by journalists, even if no one notices, for instance, that they have variously put the number of annual red-light-running fatalities at 750, 800, or 850 depending on which day you catch them.
[...]
Taking Retting’s word on the safety benefits of camera enforcement, say the critics, is a bit like trusting the Tobacco Institute that smoking increases lung capacity.
[...]
While most states don’t yet assess driver’s license points for automated infractions, plenty are toying with the idea, and a few, like California and Arizona, actually do. The insurance industry, then, has a financial stake in seeing as many photo tickets issued as possible, since speeding and red-light infractions allow insurance companies to bleed their customers with higher premiums for the next three to five years.

As Labash mentions above, cities in the state of California report ticket camera violations to insurance companies. This is an important point, especially when you consider that a recent report from the LA Times showed that 80% of red-light camera tickets in Los Angeles were right turn on red violations, which have never been linked to increased accidents.

Obviously, this is an insurance company’s dream.

They’re able to charge higher premiums without exposing themselves to increased risk of insurance claims.

Ultimately though, the red-light cameras are only the foot in the door that will allow speed cameras to become mainstream. Because the majority of speed limits in the United States are underposted, it’s likely that the majority of drivers will exceed the speed limit at some point. Once the speed cameras are installed, the discretion of an officer is removed from the equation and a huge increase in the number of speeding tickets becomes inevitable.

It’s already happening in Arizona where speed camera tickets are being used to balance the state budget.

With each ticket leading to increased insurance premium, drivers are being hit hard financially. Meanwhile, insurance industry profits skyrocket.

There’s no conspiracy theory necessary to understand why the insurance industry loves ticket cameras. It’s logical for them to support them.

But it’s also logical for everyone to take their pro-camera research with a grain of salt.

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Most of the time the War on Drugs is actually a pretty sad thing, but every once in a while, something amusing comes out of it:

An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.

A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.

Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.

Who said there’s no such thing as unwitting possession?

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