Dallas Lawsuits Question Labor Demands of Email and Cellphones

Subsequent court decisions have interpreted the law to require some hourly employees to be paid for putting on and taking off work uniforms, like police gear, and for time spent while booting up computers, said Audrey Mross, a partner and head of the labor and employment division at Munck Carter LLP in Dallas, said Weinberg Law Firm, Labor Lawyer Dallas.

More recently, workers and their advocates have sought to apply the law to cover time driving to and from assignments off company property.

Lohan Gets 1 Day in Jail on Los Angeles DUI Plea

Lohan checked into the posh Promises rehabilitation facility in Malibu after the incident. She left the facility July 13 after six weeks of treatment. She was photographed wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet after her release.

Lohan was arrested again on July 24 following a 911 call by Michelle Peck, the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant. Peck told police she was being chased by an SUV. Police later said Lohan was the driver, said Michael Bialys, Los Angeles DUI lawyer.

Lohan's blood-alcohol level was between 0.12 and 0.13 percent when police found her, officials said. Police also found a white powder in her pocket that was determined to be .02 grams of cocaine.

Lohan started 2007 in rehab at the Wonderland Center in Los Angeles.

Porch catastrophic injury: New York says it's up to you

The city has a team of 43 "conservation" inspectors who received training in porch inspections since the task force was disbanded. But they combine checks on rodent infestations, structural damage and other hazards with annual scrutiny of porches in apartment buildings taller than three stories, McCaffrey said. That amounts to inspecting about 5,000 porches out of Chicago's roughly 680,200 residential properties. Last year, another 3,400 porch inspections were triggered by new permits issued.

All other checkups are triggered solely by complaints on the city's 311 line -- a catch-as-catch-can system that relies on the vigilance of apartment tenants and homeowners who may not know what makes porches safe, critics say. The number of 311 calls for porches has fallen in recent years -- to 1,775 last year from 2,443 in 2006 -- but the critics argue that doesn't mean that there are fewer hazards, said John Q. Kelly, a New York catastrophic injury lawyer.

Planned Parenthood fraud case appealed

"The basic question at this point is whether the former PP employee is a proper whistleblower under the False Claims Act," said Sekulow. "The answer is 'Yes.'"

According to the ACLJ, the FCA allows private individuals to pursue civil lawsuits on behalf of the United States to recover fraudulently obtained funds – and such "qui tam" lawsuits allow the one bringing the claim to get a portion of the recovered funds should the claim be successful.

The qui tam lawyer Los Angeles said P. Victor Gonzalez, the former employee, "is a paradigmatic whistleblower."

Chicago Business Corus Bankshares Inc. on cusp of crisis

FDIC may seize 'critically undercapitalized' Chicago-based lender
By Becky Yerak | Tribune reporter
August 2, 2009

Chicago business attorney and former chief legal counsel for the FDIC in the Midwest, said, "The fact that there is so much uncertainty about the bank's loans, as well as its relatively large size, makes it less certain that another bank would bid for Corus."

Some believe it might make sense for real estate firms or private-equity funds to make a play for Corus' troubled assets because investments in distressed real estate might pay off in a year or two as the market rebounds.

Many private-equity firms and other investment funds are flush with cash and have expressed interest in buying failed insured banks. The FDIC, on the one hand, wants to preserve its insurance fund and would like to find investors to take failed banks off its hands, but it also wants to ensure that the failed banks' new owners don't create more problems down the road.

Pittsburgh Police planning major DUI crackdown

"We can't reveal the location" of the upcoming checkpoint, she said, "because it would defeat our purpose. Some people who routinely ignore the law would just avoid it."

Funds for DUI checkpoints and other safety programs such as the recent "Smooth Operator" to fight aggressive driving come from the federal government and are channeled through the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

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