Khobragade Indicted on Fraud Charges

Today's post was shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com

Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday announced the indictment of the Indian official whose arrest last month set off protests in India and strained relations between the nations.

The charges against Devyani Khobragade, though, were delayed amid uncertainty about whether she had fled the country. The consular worker is accused of submitting false documents to get a work visa for a babysitter and housekeeper in her Manhattan home. She has denied all the charges.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, Manhattan prosecutors said that a federal grand jury had voted to return an indictment against the 39-year-old Ms. Khobragade, charging her with two counts — visa fraud and making false statements.

Prosecutors initially said Ms. Khobragade had left the U.S. on Thursday. But they later learned that she may not have gotten on her flight, according to a person familiar with the matter. Her whereabouts were not immediately clear.

The U.S. Marshal’s Office last month said Ms. Khobragade had been strip-searched after she was arrested and “placed in a cell with other female defendants” as part of standard procedure.

Anger over her treatment prompted demonstrations in India and led the Indian government to revoke diplomatic privileges for American officials and remove security barriers near the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

Attempting to calm the situation, Secretary of State John Kerry last month “expressed his regret, as well as his concern...

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Blogging Judge to Put Away the Keyboard

Today's post was shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf’s days as a blogger have come to an end. Judge Kopf’s blog “Hercules and the Umpire“, launched a little under a year ago, quickly made a splash in the legal world with its unusually candid mix of insights on the judicial process, legal news and personal reflections. On Wednesday, Mr. Kopf announced that he’s hanging up his pajamas and donning only a robe. His decision to quit blogging came a day after his site was featured in a The Wall Street Journal story about how more judges these days are taking to the Internet to pass judgment on policy and opine on trends. In a farewell post, the Nebraska jurist said he was quitting on his own volition. “I am not quitting because of ethics concerns. Such problems are real, but vastly overblown. A thoughtful judge has about the same chance of violating the Code of Conduct when writing a book, giving a speech, authoring a law review article or writing a blog post,” Judge Kopf wrote. “No one has given me the slightest trouble about expressing myself here.” He also said that although he’s “truly worn out,” he’s not quitting for health reasons either. “I have written all that I want to write and then some. It is that simple. My decision is final,” writes the judge. As WSJ’s Joe Palazzolo’s wrote, Judge Kopf’s cerebral commentary — sometimes marked by an almost confessional tone — raised...

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Jurist Prudence? Candid Judges Speak Out

Judges typically confine their opinions to their rulings. But 2013 was a year of exceptions. In Nebraska, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf in February launched Hercules and the umpire, a blog that offers a mix of insights on the judicial process, legal news, personal reflections and wisdom. One nugget of advice to young judges: "It's not your job to save the world. Do law, leave justice to Clint Eastwood." In his latest book, "Reflections on Judging," Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago pleads "guilty" to upholding a voter-identification law "now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression." The passage, picked up by several media outlets, was widely viewed as a mea culpa—a rare instance of a judge saying he got it wrong. Judges have long been voluble, spirited and even poetic in their rulings. But in the digital age, they also have taken to the media and the Internet to pass judgment on policy and opine on trends. In the process, the outspoken are butting up against the view held by some that sitting judges shouldn't be seen or heard outside of court. And there is the risk that litigants could try to push certain judges off cases because something they said publicly gave a hint of bias. "The advice I was given over and over again was to keep your head down," said Nancy Gertner, a law professor at Harvard University and a former federal district judge in Massachusetts who has...

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BP claims investigation finds attorney took $40K kickback in exchange for expediting nearly $8M claim

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

The results of a two-month long investigation into allegations of fraud within the 2010 oil spill settlement program have revealed an alleged kickback scheme enacted by a claims attorney. Lionel Sutton, a former senior attorney within the Court Supervised Settlement Program, or CSSP, is accused of taking a $40,000 referral fee from the Andry Lerner Law Firm and attempted to more quickly resolve a claim worth $7,908,460. The New Orleans firm, which bills itself as “BP Oil Spill Lawyers” on the firm website, is accused of using Sutton’s position within the claims center to make the acceptance of the claim in question faster and easier. Freeh The investigation was headed by ex-FBI Director Louis B. Freeh who was asked to be a special investigator on the case by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in early July after claims administrator Patrick Juneau revealed that an internal investigation into the CSSP showed potential conflicts of interest. The $7.9 million claim in question was originally a case handled by Christine Reitano, Sutton’s wife, who shortly after receiving the case became an employee of the claims administration office. Subsequent to her appointment Sutton is alleged to have referred the case to the Andry Lerner Law Firm for a referral fee to be paid to Crown LLC, a water reclamation company he owned and in which Andry Lerner partner Glen Lerner had invested $1 million. Freeh stated in the report that...

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