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Court: Ukraine can try to avoid repaying $3B loan to Russia
Legal Topics |
2023/03/16 02:22
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The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Ukraine can go to trial to try to avoid repaying $3 billion in loans it said it took under pressure from Russia in 2013 to prevent it from trying to join the European Union.
The court rejected an attempt to avoid a trial by a British company acting on Russia’s behalf to collect the loans. Ukraine said it borrowed the money while facing the threat of military force and massive illegal economic and political pressure nearly a decade before Russia invaded its neighbor.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that the ruling was “another decisive victory against the aggressor.”
“The Court has ruled that Ukraine’s defense based on Russia’s threats of aggression will have a full public trial,” he tweeted. “Justice will be ours.”
The case was argued in November 2021, and the court was not asked to consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three months later.
Ukrainian authorities allege that the corrupt government of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych borrowed the money from Moscow under pressure before he was ousted in protests in February 2014, shortly before Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
After the 2014 Ukraine revolution, the country’s new government refused to repay the debt in December 2015, saying Moscow wouldn’t agree to terms already accepted by other international creditors.
The case came to British courts because London-based Law Debenture Trust Corp. had been appointed by Ukraine to represent the interests of bondholders. The company initially won a judgment to avoid trial but Ukraine appealed.
The Supreme Court rejected several of Ukraine’s legal arguments, including that its finance minister didn’t have authority to enter into the loan agreement and that Ukraine could decline payment as a countermeasure to Russia’s aggressions.
The ruling, however, said a court could consider whether the deal was void because of threats or pressure that are illegitimate under English law.
While the court noted that trade sanctions, embargoes and other economic pressures are “normal aspects of statecraft,” economic pressures could provide context to prove that Russia’s threats to destroy Ukraine caused it to issue the bonds. |
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Georgia grand jury heard another Trump call recording
Legal Topics |
2023/03/15 22:32
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A special grand jury that investigated whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia heard a recording of the former president pushing a top state lawmaker to call a special session to overturn his loss in the state, according to a newspaper report.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday that it spoke to five members of the special grand jury who said they heard a recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston that had not previously been reported and has not been made public. Ralston, who died in November, did not call a special session in the weeks after the November 2020 election.
The five grand jurors — three men and two women — spoke to the newspaper but declined to be named because they were concerned about their safety and privacy.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the Georgia investigation in early 2021, shortly after another recording of a phone call between Trump and a top state official was made public. During that Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, Trump suggested that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to reverse his narrow loss in the state. |
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N. Carolina courts director leaving, deputy replacing him
Legal Topics |
2023/02/08 10:28
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The North Carolina court system’s top administrator is stepping down soon to join a law firm, and his top deputy will succeed him.
Andrew Heath became Administrative Office of the Courts director in early 2021 as Chief Justice Paul Newby was sworn in following his election the previous November.
In news releases Friday, the Nelson Mullins firm said Heath would join its Raleigh office and the court system said Newby had appointed deputy AOC director Ryan Boyce as Heath’s replacement effective April 4.
Heath has held many state government positions previously, serving as a special Superior Court judge, state budget director to then-Gov. Pat McCrory and chairman of the North Carolina Industrial Commission.
Heath will focus on government relations and civil litigation at his new job, and he’ll also be a registered lobbyist, Nelson Mullins said.
Newby praised Heath in the AOC release, saying there are nearly 10% fewer pending cases in the courts compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed proceedings. An effort to switch court filings from paper to digital statewide began publicly this week with a four-county pilot.
Boyce led the court system’s governmental affairs activities under previous AOC directors and served as a lawyer within two other state departments. |
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Canadian kills 2 in Philippine court, is shot dead
Legal Topics |
2023/01/16 10:32
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A Canadian man facing charges of illegal possession of firearms opened fire in a Philippine courtroom Tuesday, killing two people and wounding a prosecutor before police fatally shot him, officials said. The suspect, John H. Pope, appeared in court in central Cebu city, where he resided, to face the charges when he pulled out a gun and shot a lawyer and a physician who filed a case against him, police said. He then fired at a prosecutor in the hallway of the building before responding police fatally wounded him, said Cebu police chief Mariano Natuel. Regional police director Marcelo Garbo said Pope ignored orders to surrender and tried to fire at police. Police said they were investigating Pope's background. Local media mentioned Pope in 2011, when he was held by police on charges of illegal possession of firearms. The same physician who was killed in Tuesday's shooting accused Pope, his neighbor, of brandishing a weapon and threatening him and other residents in their condominium. Pope was quoted as saying at the time that the pistol he was carrying was for self-defense. Apart from illegal weapons possession, he was also charged with malicious mischief and grave threats. |
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Military police enforce driving ban in snow-stricken Buffalo
Legal Topics |
2022/12/27 17:32
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State and military police were sent Tuesday to keep people off Buffalo’s snow-choked roads, and officials kept counting fatalities three days after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations.
Amid some signs of progress — suburban roads reopened and emergency response service was restored — County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned that police would be stationed at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections to enforce a ban on driving within New York’s second-most populous city.
“Too many people are ignoring the ban,” Poloncarz, a Democrat, said at a news conference.
The National Weather Service predicted that as much as 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) more snow could fall Tuesday in Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its 275,000 residents. County Emergency Services Commissioner Dan Neaverth Jr. said officials also were somewhat concerned about the potential for flooding later in the week, when the weather is projected to warm and start melting the snow.
The rest of the United States also was reeling from the ferocious winter storm, with at least an additional two dozen deaths reported in other parts of the country, and power outages in communities from Maine to Washington state.
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Indiana Democrats pin legislative gains on abortion debate
Legal Topics |
2022/11/01 20:31
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Even before Republican legislators this summer made Indiana the first state to pass an abortion ban since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats started urging angry voters to take their revenge at the ballot box.
Indiana Democrats haven’t let up on that push in the final days of this year’s elections, although a limited number of competitive races on the Nov. 8 ballot for the currently Republican-dominated Legislature leave them with slim chances of being able to do much about abortion access that is also being debated during campaigns across the country.
Indiana Republicans, meanwhile, argue that voters are more worried about other issues such as inflation and crime — concerns widely believed to favor the GOP.
Democratic candidate Joey Mayer said the abortion ban has remained a top issue as she’s talked with voters in a northern Indianapolis suburban district where she’s challenging a four-term Republican House member who voted in favor of the ban when it passed in August.
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Fishermen hire Bush-era official in challenge to whale laws
Legal Topics |
2022/10/11 16:50
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Maine lobster fishermen have hired a former high-ranking U.S. Department of Justice official to represent them in their case against new laws intended to protect whales.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is appealing its case against the new rules to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The group said Tuesday it has hired Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general from 2004 to 2008, to represent it in the case.
The solicitor general supervises all Supreme Court litigation for the U.S., and Clement has argued dozens of cases in front of the high court. That’s where the lobstermen’s case could ultimately be headed, he said Tuesday.
The new fishing restrictions have pushed the industry to the brink of collapse, Clement said.
“You have administrative overreach. The implications are easy to understand,” he said. “It directly threatens really one of the most iconic American industries. Everyone who has ever enjoyed a lobster can appreciate this.”
The lobster fishermen sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, and in September a judge denied their request to stop the regulators from placing the new restrictions on fishing. The restrictions are designed to protect the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers less than 340 and is vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.
The fisheries service has declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association also said it planned to file court papers on Tuesday asking for its appeal to be expedited because of the jeopardy posed to the fishery by the new rules.
Environmental groups have long pushed for stronger protections for the right whales, which were devastated generations ago during the commercial whaling era. The groups have made their own case in court that the federal government should be doing more to protect the whales.
The American lobster fishery is based mostly in Maine, though lobsters also come to the docks elsewhere in New England and in New York and New Jersey. U.S. lobsters were worth a record figure of more than $900 million at the docks last year.
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