‘Border Kids’ Noted In AP’s Top 2014 Stories

AP photo used in Tampa Bay Times report on 12/22/14 shows "Young detainees sleep in a holding cell on June 18, 2014, at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville,Texas."

AP photo used in Tampa Bay Times report on 12/22/14 shows “Young detainees sleep in a holding cell on June 18, 2014, at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville,Texas.”

The unaccompanied Central American minors seeking refuge in the United States was a key event as “immigration” was a Top 10 story in 2014, according to the Associated Press annual survey of U.S. editors and news directors. The wire service said “police killing of unarmed blacks” was the top story and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was second.

On immigration, the AP says that “… frustrated by an impasse in Congress, President Obama took executive actions in November to curb deportations for many immigrants residing in the U.S. illegally. GOP leaders in the House and Senate pledged efforts to block the president’s moves. Prospects for reform legislation were dimmed earlier in the year by the influx of unaccompanied Central American minors arriving at the U.S. border, causing shelter overloads and case backlogs.” Immigration courts are civil justice proceedings managed by the Justice Department. Judges in the system have called for an overhaul, including making the courts independent of law enforcement.
See the AP story list for 2014 here, via the Tampa Bay Tribune.

Fla. Seeking Ways To Meet Civil Needs

A huge segment of society make too much money to qualify for legal aid, but not enough to hire an attorney, says one member of a Florida panel hoping to find solutions to that problem. The 27-member panel was created in November by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga via an administrative order.

The Palm Beach Post reports that Greg Coleman, president of The Florida Bar and a partner in the West Palm Beach firm Critton Luttier Coleman, said he expects the members to educate business leaders on the need to expand financing. “We have a broken system right now with legal aid having severely reduced funding and a void in the court system in terms of access to justice by middle-income Americans who make too much money to qualify for legal aid but cannot afford a lawyer,” Coleman said. “These are people who are living paycheck to paycheck.”

BASF Case Focused On Concealing Evidence

The world’s largest chemical maker and a prominent law firm have lost another court appeal in a class action lawsuit accusing them of concealing and destroying evidence in a batch of asbestos litigation. The federal Third Circuit has declined to “rehear” a September decision that, in effect, re-opened the case. Businessweek reports that the company was “… ordered to face claims it fraudulently hid evidence that its talc products contained asbestos as it sought to scuttle thousands of personal-injury lawsuits.” The company in question was actually acquired by BASF and that business unit mined talc that was used in everything from wallboard to children’s balloons.

Image as reported in the 9/4/14 Wall Street Journal article "Appeals Court Breathes New Life Into Fraud Case Involving BASF, Cahill Gordon"

Image as reported in the 9/4/14 Wall Street Journal article “Appeals Court Breathes New Life Into Fraud Case Involving BASF, Cahill Gordon”

Writing in The American Lawyer (a subscription site) Susan Beck reports that “… BASF, its asbestos litigation has morphed from being a negligible nuisance into an expensive, embarrassing problem. The company stresses that it inherited this situation from Engelhard, and has gone to great efforts to find out what happened. For Cahill, the litigation is also remarkable. Legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers of New York University School of Law says it’s not unheard-of for a law firm to be sued for fraud, noting that several were sued in the wake of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. ‘What is rare,’ he says, ‘is for a case like this to target such a prominent law firm.’”

Beck also notes that thousands of cases might be re-opened based on the evidence. The Wall Street Journal also offers background for free.

Immigration Courts Face Obama Actions

President Obama’s executive actions on immigration will impact the civil courts system, but it’s hard to know how soon that will happen – or how much the impact will be. Southern California public radio station KPCC is reporting it as “promising news” for immigration judges “… who have long sought more resources for their busy courtrooms, says Bruce Einhorn, a former immigration judge who served in the LA courts for more than 15 years.”:
As reported in SCPR, "A judge hears the cases of immigrant teens in Los Angeles."

As reported in SCPR, “A judge hears the cases of immigrant teens in Los Angeles.”

The KPCC reports says  that a typical judge in Los Angeles has about 2,500 cases on their docket, which means an average case takes more than two years to reach a decision, but that could change with Obama’s action. Einhorn, said it will take time to see the effects on the ground. One group that will likely not find relief are the thousands of child migrant cases that are working their way through the courts. As Take Two has been covering on the program, more than 7,000 children are being heard in Los Angeles alone. Since they arrived in the country within the past five years, they probably will not qualify under the new rules from Obama.

Read and listen to the report here: Obama’s actions could affect thousands at LA’s immigration courts.