General Law and Lawsuits

[RTH10260]

Mississippi judge drops punishment of probation and book report for a child who urinated in public
An attorney says a 10-year-old Black child who urinated near his own mother’s car in Mississippi will no longer be required to serve probation and write a book report about Kobe Bryant

By The Associated Press
Published: Feb. 6, 2024 at 3:39 PM CET

SENATOBIA, Miss. (AP) — A 10-year-old Black child who urinated near his mother’s car outside a Mississippi office building will no longer be required to serve probation and write a book report about Kobe Bryant, an attorney for the child’s family said Monday.

Tate County Youth Court Judge Rusty Harlow set the three-month probation and the book report about the late NBA star as punishment in December. But the child's mother said she would not agree to the terms because of concerns that the probation would treat her child like a criminal.

Harlow held another hearing Monday and dismissed a Youth Court petition that sought to designate the child as one in need of supervision — a decision that pleased his mother, according to Carlos Moore, an attorney for the family.

Moore had said the probation agreement had terms similar to what prosecutors set for an adult, including a requirement to submit to drug tests at a probation officer’s discretion.

The child’s mother has said her son urinated behind her vehicle while she was visiting a lawyer’s office in Senatobia, Mississippi, on Aug. 10. Police officers in the town of about 8,100 residents, 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Memphis, Tennessee, saw the child urinating and arrested him. Officers put him in a squad car and took him to the police station.

Senatobia Police Chief Richard Chandler said the child was not handcuffed, but his mother has said he was put in a jail cell.

Days after the episode, Chandler said the officers violated their training on how to deal with children. He said one of the officers who took part in the arrest was “ no longer employed" by the department, and other officers would be disciplined.




https://www.wafb.com/2024/02/06/mississ ... ed-public/

[MN-Skeptic]

We had a thread on this court case in the old Fogbow - Mann v National Review. Here's the latest update with a gift link to the NYTimes article -

Michael Mann, a Leading Climate Scientist, Wins His Defamation Suit

The climate scientist Michael Mann on Thursday won his defamation lawsuit against Rand Simberg, a former adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a contributor to National Review.

The trial transported observers back to 2012, the heyday of the blogosphere and an era of rancorous polemics over the existence of global warming, what the psychology researcher and climate misinformation blogger John Cook called “a feral time.”

The six-member jury announced its unanimous verdict after a four-week trial in District of Columbia Superior Court and one full day of deliberation. They found both Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn guilty of defaming Dr. Mann with multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in compensatory damages from each writer.

The jury also found the writers had made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,” and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same.

“This is a victory for science and it’s a victory for scientists,” Dr. Mann said.

In 2012, Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn drew parallels between controversy over Dr. Mann’s research and the scandal around Jerry Sandusky, the former football coach at Pennsylvania State University who was convicted of sexually assaulting children. Dr. Mann was a professor at Penn State at the time.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Good catch, MN!

[RTH10260]

Prosecutors reach plea deals with couple whose gender reveal party inadvertently started deadly El Dorado fire

By EMILY HOLSHOUSER
PUBLISHED: February 9, 2024 at 10:06 p.m. | UPDATED: February 11, 2024 at 11:38 a.m.

San Bernardino County prosecutors announced plea deals Friday with a couple whose actions during a gender reveal party in September 2020 helped to accidentally ignite a wildfire at El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa that ultimately grew to more than 20,000 acres and killed a veteran firefighter, who perished while battling the blaze.

Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr. pleaded guilty to a felony involuntary manslaughter count for the death of firefighter Charlie Morton and two felony counts of recklessly causing a fire to an inhabited structure. He has been sentenced to two years of felony probation, one year in county jail, and 200 hours of community service.

Morton, a Forest Service firefighter on a Big Bear hotshot team, died after he became trapped against a wall of flames in the El Dorado fire.

Angelina Jimenez pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of recklessly causing a fire on another person’s property. She was sentenced to a year of probation and 400 hours of community service.

The Jimenez’s also have been ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution, according to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office.

The couple was charged in 2021. They both pleaded not guilty, and requested that all charges be dismissed. One charge was dismissed in January.

“Resolving the case was never going to be a win,” District Attorney Jason Anderson said in a press release. “The Defendants’ reckless conduct had tremendous impact on land, properties, emergency response resources, the displacement of entire communities, and resulted in the tragic death of Forest Service Wildland Firefighter Charles Morton. All these factors were given an extraordinary amount of consideration throughout every step of investigation, the Grand Jury process, and court proceedings.”

Residents of Mountain Home Village, Forest Falls, Angelus Oaks, Seven Oaks, Barton Flats and Oak Glen were among those evacuated. The fire also burned in Cherry Valley in Riverside County. The fire burned 22,680 acres, destroyed five homes and damaged four others.

In addition to the criminal charges, the couple also faced a lawsuit from the U.S. Forest Service over the illegal fireworks that allegedly started the fire.




https://www.sbsun.com/2024/02/09/prosec ... rado-fire/

[RTH10260]

Widow of man killed when hit by state trooper not eligible for compensation

NewsChannel 5
9 Feb 2024

It is a question of responsibility. If a loved one is hit and killed by a Tennessee State Trooper should the family be compensated?

[raison de arizona]

What a terrible story.

[RTH10260]

Three men go on trial in New York over Eagles’ Hotel California manuscript
Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski accused of conspiring to own and try to sell Eagles manuscripts

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/ ... manuscript

Edit: messed with original post when quoting. please follow link to article

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Fascinating!

[Maybenaut]

And not al all surprising. The Eagles, and Henley in particular, have been extraordinarily aggressive in protecting their copyright. I think they’d be just as aggressive in protecting their ownership of their creative process.

[RTH10260]

from late last year

$16 million lawsuit filed against PG County police for 2021 killing of dog

By Elissa Salamy
Published November 27, 2023 Updated 7:28PM

WASHINGTON - A $16 million lawsuit has been filed against the Prince George’s County Police Department for the alleged unlawful home invasion and unjust killing of a dog that happened in June of 2021.

The civil rights lawsuit alleges that three police officers, Jason Ball, Joseph Mihanda, and Anthony Jackson, entered the apartment of Erica Umana, Erika Erazo Sanchez, Dayri Amaya, and Brandon Cuevas, "without any legal justification, mitigation, a warrant, or any exception to the 4th Amendment warrant requirement" and killed Umana's dog.

Attorneys for these four residents obtained cell phone video from their clients and body worn footage from police which helps piece together what they call the terror their clients went through.

On June 2, 2021, two Prince George’s County police officers responded to Allison Street for the report of a dog bite. A victim told two officers that she had just been bitten by two large dogs.

When the officers knocked on the door of the apartment where the dogs were said to live and received no answer, they got a key from the apartment complex and went inside the apartment, according to PGPD. A third officer arrived on the scene and also went into the apartment.

$16 million lawsuit filed against PGPD for 2021 'unjust' killing of dog

A $16 million lawsuit has been filed against the Prince George’s County Police Department for the alleged unlawful home invasion and unjust killing of a dog that happened in June of 2021.

In footage of the incident, residents can be seen asking the officers for a warrant, which they didn't have.

When one

officer opened the door to come out of a bedroom, a dog, Hennessey, got out too. Two of the officers fired at Hennessey and a third tased her. The dog was critically injured and later euthanized.

[RTH10260]

Food Not Bombs trial rescheduled after too many jurors objected to $500 fine for feeding homeless

By R.A. Schuetz, Staff writer
Jan 19, 2024

Fifteen Houstonians called for jury duty filed into a courtroom Thursday afternoon. They were there for an unusually high-profile case for municipal courts, known for hearing traffic violations and facilitating weddings.

Three of the 15 would be selected to decide the outcome of a case alleging that a woman had violated Houston law by feeding the homeless without the city’s permission.

Roughly an hour later, the jury pool filed back out — all 15 of them. The lawyers had been unable to fill an unbiased jury.

Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, were guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows' attorney. A few jurors were also struck because they could not stay late that afternoon to serve on a jury.

The busted jury panel illuminates the potential difficulties the city could face in enforcing its controversial law through a jury of peers. Roughly 90 tickets have been issued since March to volunteers with the loosely organized Food Not Bombs, which serves meals to people in need near Central Library. The city has yet to win a single case. The one case that reached a verdict was decided for the defendant. City attorneys have repeatedly asked for the other cases to be reset, according to the defendant’s lawyers. On Thursday, two other cases against Food Not Bombs volunteers were dismissed, said Remington Alessi, who represented the volunteers, because the city had not filed responses to motions.



https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/h ... 617041.php

[RTH10260]

Bachground to above

Food Not Bombs tickets for feeding homeless outside of Houston library continue, 2 arrested
Whitmire's office says he's yet to decide whether to continue cracking down on volunteers

By R.A. Schuetz, Staff writer
Jan 5, 2024

Shortly after Mayor John Whitmire’s inauguration, the Houston Police Department issued its 86th ticket Wednesday evening to a Food Not Bombs volunteer providing free meals outside the Central Library downtown. Two volunteers were taken away in handcuffs that evening by Harris County Precinct 1 deputy constables for reasons not directly related to the food serving.

The ticket and arrests come as volunteers and people who receive meals are trying to discern whether Whitmire will continue efforts to move the volunteers away from the Central Library, a strategy previous Mayor Sylvester Turner took up in the final months of his administration. Turner has said on social media that he believes the meals bring the homeless to the area and discourage families from using the library. Some considered the arrests on Whitmire’s third day in office a troubling sign, saying they felt “targeted.”

The people arrested were Shere Dore, who has volunteered with Food Not Bombs at the location for about a decade, and Jerrode Brown, also a longtime volunteer. Like many he served, Brown was without a home, according to other volunteers.



https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/h ... 578758.php

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

news/us/man-guilty-in-black-transgender-woman-s-killing-in-1st-federal-hate-trial-over-gender-identity/ar-BB1iNJZG?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Man guilty in Black transgender woman's killing in 1st federal hate trial over gender identity


A South Carolina man was found guilty Friday of killing a Black transgender woman in the nation’s first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity.

Jurors decided that Daqua Lameek Ritter fatally shot Dime Doe three times Aug. 4, 2019, because of her gender identity. Ritter was also convicted of using a firearm in connection with the crime and obstructing justice.

The four-day trial centered on the secret sexual relationship between Doe and Ritter, who had grown agitated in the weeks preceding the killing by the exposure of their affair in the small town of Allendale, South Carolina, according to witness testimony and text messages obtained by the FBI.

There have been hate crime prosecutions based on gender identity in the past, but none of them reached trial. A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in 2017 as part of a plea deal after he admitted to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.

In the trial over Doe’s kiling, the Department of Justice presented text exchanges between the pair that they said showed Ritter trying to dispel gossip about the relationship in the weeks preceding Doe’s death. He subsequently kept tabs on the investigation while giving coy responses to questions from Delasia Green, his main girlfriend’ at the time, according to trial testimony.
Texts obtained by the FBI suggested that Ritter sought to keep his connection with Doe under wraps as much as possible, prosecutors argued. He reminded her to delete their communications from her phone, and hundreds of texts sent in the month before her death were removed.

Shortly before Doe’s death, the text messages started getting tense. In a July 29, 2019, message, she complained that Ritter did not reciprocate her generosity. He replied that he thought they had an understanding that she didn’t need the “extra stuff.”

He also told her that Green had insulted him with a homophobic slur. In a July 31 text, Doe said she felt used and that Ritter should never have let his girlfriend find out about them.

Ritter’s defense attorneys said the sampling of messages introduced by the prosecution represented only a “snapshot” of their exchanges. They pointed to a July 18 message in which Doe encouraged Ritter, and another exchange where Ritter thanked Doe for one of her many kindnesses.

[Rolodex]

Don Henley is in the courthouse testifying. This is a case about the status of a manuscript of Hotel California.

[RTH10260]

‘Medical colonialism’: midwives sue Hawaii over law regulating Native birth workers
Exclusive: Native Hawaiian midwives say new law criminalizes Indigenous birthing customs and will deal blow to maternal health

Ava Sasani
Tue 27 Feb 2024 20.31 CET

Six midwives, including three midwifery students, and three patients sued the state of Hawaii on Tuesday after the government last year prohibited birth workers without a specific midwifery license from providing maternal healthcare.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, claims that state lawmakers have criminalized Indigenous birthing customs and hollowed out medical care for pregnant women and families across Hawaii.

Ki’i Kaho‘ohanohano, a Native Hawaiian midwife, was forced to end her two-decade career as a maternal care provider on 1 July 2023. That month, the state required all birth workers, even Native Hawaiian medicine experts like Kaho‘ohanohano, to obtain a specific midwifery license.

Now a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Kaho‘ohanohano is part of a network of Native Hawaiian midwives who risk a $2,000 fine and up to one year in prison if they are caught offering care – or even advice – to pregnant women and families.

Attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Rights told the Guardian that Hawaii law is startlingly vague on what legally constitutes a midwife, “essentially requiring anyone providing advice, information or care during pregnancy, birth and postpartum to have a specific state license”. They say it effectively chills the provision of much-needed support in a state struggling to ensure adequate maternal healthcare.

The lawsuit, one of the first major legal challenges designed to protect Native Hawaiian healing practices, comes amid renewed calls for Indigenous self-governance following the Maui wildfires of August 2023.

The complaint also says that state lawmakers have created unreasonably steep barriers that block the next generation of Native Hawaiian midwifery students from obtaining legal credentials, shirking their state constitutional duty to “protect all rights customarily and traditionally exercised” by Native Hawaiians.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... indigenous

from last year

‘The model is not working’: US midwives navigate legal limbo as they save lives
Lack of legislation leaves midwives vulnerable to prosecution as home births rise amid growing maternal mortality rates

Carter Sherman
Thu 28 Sep 2023 15.00 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ocumentary

[RTH10260]

OpenAI: ‘The New York Times Paid Someone to Hack Us’

February 27, 2024
by Ernesto Van der Sar

OpenAI accuses The New York Times of paying someone to hack OpenAI’s products. This was allegedly done to gather evidence for the copyright infringement complaint the newspaper filed late last year. This lawsuit fails to meet The Times' "famously rigorous journalistic standards," the defense argues, asking the New York federal court to dismiss it in part.

openai logoIn recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

The list includes record labels, individual authors, visual artists, and more recently the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation.

A few hours ago, OpenAI responded to The New York Times complaint, asking the federal court to dismiss several key claims. Not just that, the defendants fire back with some rather damning allegations of their own.

OpenAI’s motion directly challenges the Times’s journalistic values, putting the company’s truthfulness in doubt. The notion that ChatGPT can be used as a substitute for a newspaper subscription is overblown, they counter.

“In the real world, people do not use ChatGPT or any other OpenAI product for that purpose. Nor could they. In the ordinary course, one cannot use ChatGPT to serve up Times articles at will,” the motion to dismiss reads.



https://torrentfreak.com/openai-the-new ... us-240227/

[RTH10260]

A man who crashed a snowmobile into a parked Black Hawk helicopter is suing the government for $9.5M
A Massachusetts man wants the government to pay $9.5 million after being badly injured in a crash with a Black Hawk helicopter

MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press
March 6, 2024, 6:19 AM

BOSTON -- Jeff Smith was whizzing along on a snowmobile one evening a few years back when something dark appeared in front of him. He hit his brakes but he couldn't avoid clipping the rear tail of a Black Hawk helicopter parked on the trail.

The March 2019 crash almost cost Smith his life and is now the subject of a federal lawsuit by the Massachusetts lawyer. He is demanding $9.5 million in damages from the government, money he says is needed to cover his medical expenses and lost wages, as well as hold the military responsible for the crash.

“The last five years, there’s been surgery, recovery, surgery, recovery,” said Smith, who lost the use of his left arm, suffered respiratory issues since the crash, and hasn't been able to work full time. “Honestly, right now, it feels like I’m in a worst place than when I first had the surgeries in 2019.”

A U.S. District Court judge in Springfield is expected to rule on the lawsuit later this year.

Smith's lawyers in the yearslong court case argue that the crew of the Black Hawk helicopter that flew down from New York's Fort Drum for night training was negligent for parking a camouflaged 64-foot (19.5-meter) aircraft on a rarely used airfield also used by snowmobilers. Smith also sued the owner of Albert Farms airfield in Worthington, Massachusetts — accusing them of both giving permission to snowmobilers to use the trail and the Blackhawk crew to land in the same area. He settled with the farm owner for an undisclosed sum.

Smith argues that the crew didn't do enough to protect him, including failing to warn snowmobilers of the helicopter's presence on the trail, leaving the 14,500-pound (6,577-kilogram) aircraft unattended for a brief time and failing to illuminate it. The helicopter landed on an air strip approved by the Federal Aviation Administration and the crew members testified that trainings are often conducted in similar locations. But Smith, who said he had snowmobiled on the trail more than 100 times, said the last time an aircraft used it was decades ago when he was a child — and never a military aircraft.

“Our argument from the beginning has been that it’s incompatible to have a helicopter land on an active snowmobile trail,” Smith's attorney, Douglas Desjardins, said, adding that the lawsuit was filed after the government failed to respond to their damages claim.




https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/man ... -107836191

[Sam the Centipede]

There is a general principle in motoring law in many countries that if you drive into the back of something stationary it's your fault, because you were driving too fast for the conditions (by not allowing adequate stopping distance) or weren't being attentive.

I get the helicopter is black but it is also seriously big. Perhaps he shouldn't have hit it?

This also exemplifies one problem with being too legalistic or focused on one's rights or others duties: whether the snowmobile guy wins more money or not, he still lost because he's had to endure the surgery and stress.

Better to not crash than to win an "I had right of way!" argument!

[RTH10260]

Michigan cop's mistake leads to $320,000 deal with Japanese man wrongly accused of drunken driving
A Michigan village has agreed to a $320,000 settlement with a man from Japan who was wrongly accused of drunken driving

ByED WHITE Associated Press
February 29, 2024, 8:47 PM
.
A Michigan village has agreed to a $320,000 settlement with a man from Japan who was wrongly accused of drunken driving after a police officer badly misread a breath test, court records show.

Ryohei Akima blew a 0.02 on the test, but it was mistakenly read by the Fowlerville officer as 0.22 — nearly three times over Michigan's blood-alcohol limit for driving.

Caitlyn Peca, who was a rookie officer, told a colleague over the radio, “I have no idea what I’m doing," according to a summary of the case.

Akima, a native of Yonago, Japan, was in the U.S. on a work visa in 2020. Charges of driving while intoxicated were dropped when a blood sample further showed that he wasn't drunk.

Akima, 37, filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Peca's actions violated the U.S. Constitution. A settlement was reached in January, a few months after a federal appeals court said the case could move forward.

“It would be evident to a reasonable officer that (Akima) was, quite apparently, sober,” Judge Jane Stranch said in a 3-0 opinion. “So a reasonable jury could conclude that (the) arrest was not supported by probable cause and that Officer Peca was not entitled to qualified immunity.”

Fowlerville is paying the lawsuit settlement through insurance, records show.

An email seeking comment from Akima's lawyer wasn't immediately answered Thursday.

T. Joseph Seward, an attorney who represented Peca, claimed that performance on roadside sobriety tests was enough to make an arrest and avoid civil liability in the lawsuit.

“We're disappointed the courts didn't see it that way,” he said.

Peca is no longer an officer in Fowlerville.





https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mic ... -107690518

[RTH10260]

Colorado grandmother awarded $3.76M after bungled SWAT raid based on Find My iPhone ping
The woman's home was raided after a truck with firearms was reported stolen.

March 6, 2024, 12:33 AM CET
By Antonio Planas

A Colorado grandmother has won a $3.76 million jury verdict after her home was mistakenly searched in a bungled 2022 SWAT raid for a stolen truck, guns and an iPhone based on information from Apple’s “Find My” app.

A jury sided with Ruby Johnson, 78, and determined Friday that Denver police Det. Gary Staab and Sgt. Gregory Buschy violated the state’s constitution by “hastily seeking, obtaining and executing a search warrant" on her home without probable cause or proper investigation, according to a Monday statement from the ACLU of Colorado, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of Johnson.

A “SWAT team ransacked Ms. Johnson’s home of 43 years based on an alleged location ping from an iPhone’s 'Find My' app that the officers did not understand and for which they had no training. Ms. Johnson lived alone in her Montbello home and was in her robe, bonnet, and slippers when she was subjected to the terrifying police raid,” according to the ACLU. “Donning body armor and automatic weapons, police officers searched Ms. Johnson’s home for stolen items from an incident that she had absolutely nothing to do with.”



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/co ... rcna141909

[RTH10260]

Remains the question why there was even the SWAT team involved and not simply a normal police search.

iirc the owner of the iphone himself traced it to the vincinity of this location.

I wonder how much damage the SWAT team did during the search to result in this high payout.

[RTH10260]

Judge orders NSO to cough up Pegasus super-spyware source code

Thomas Claburn
Fri 1 Mar 2024 // 21:34 UTC

NSO Group, the Israel-based maker of super-charged snoopware Pegasus, has been ordered by a federal judge in California to share the source code for "all relevant spyware" with Meta's WhatsApp.

The order [PDF] from Judge Phyllis Hamilton at the end of last month stems from WhatsApp's 2019 lawsuit [PDF] against NSO for allegedly spying on 1,400 WhatsApp users.

The spyware maker is accused of sending carefully crafted data over the internet to select people's phones that, via a vulnerability in the chat app's VoIP stack, allowed malicious code to silently run on those devices, code that in turn allowed victims' conversations and other sensitive information to be accessed remotely. NSO marketed this surveillance service to governments around the world.

Judge Hamilton's ruling covers Pegasus and other relevant NSO spyware during the period from April 29, 2018 to May 10, 2020. And it represents a significant legal setback for NSO Group which has been fighting tooth and nail not to be held accountable for providing surveillance tools to government clients.

The court order is not a complete rout, however: The judge allowed NSO to withhold its client list and details about its server architecture.

NSO Group, which reorganized in 2022, declined to comment on the record.

During the period from January 2018 through May 2019, NSO Group allegedly created WhatsApp messaging accounts, set up a series of proxy and relay servers using cloud service providers, and used this infrastructure to send maliciously crafted network packets, via WhatsApp's systems, to mobile devices to exploit CVE-2019-3568.



https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/01/ ... urce_code/

[RTH10260]

Video shows Henderson police beating store employee who tried to help, city to pay victim $450K

8 News Now — Las Vegas
9 Mar 2024

The City of Henderson must pay $450,000 in damages after a jury decided a former sergeant was negligent and violated a man's civil rights when he used excessive force against him in 2018. A jury in Clark County delivered a verdict on Wednesday.

[RTH10260]

[RTH10260]

Three men go on trial in New York over Eagles’ Hotel California manuscript
Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski accused of conspiring to own and try to sell Eagles manuscripts

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/ ... manuscript

now in the criminal case of presumed theft:

Charges are dropped midtrial in ‘Hotel California’ lyrics case. Don Henley plans to fight on

JENNIFER PELTZ
Updated 11:55 PM CET, March 6, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — From the start, the case was highly unusual: a criminal prosecution centered on the disputed ownership of a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.

Its end was even more unexpected.

In the middle of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday against three collectibles experts who had been accused of scheming to hang onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained were stolen, private artifacts of the band’s creative process.

In explaining the stunning turnabout, prosecutors agreed that defense lawyers had essentially been blindsided by 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. Prosecutors and the defense got the material only in the past few days, after Henley and his lawyers apparently made a late-in-the-game decision to waive their attorney-client privilege shielding legal discussions.

“These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore” when Henley and other prosecution witnesses testified late last month, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes told the court.




https://apnews.com/article/hotel-califo ... 9c39cda889