NVP MIAMI

Missing money, misused money and healthcare fraud put three South Florida attorneys on the most recent Florida Bar discipline report and out of the legal business for a while. The Miami-Dade and Broward attorneys most recently disciplined by the state Supreme Court, in alphabetical order: ▪  A December emergency suspension order yanked the license of Coral Gables attorney Francisco Aguero (St. Thomas Law School, admitted to the Bar in 2000) until further notice. The Bar said it pursued t…
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A panel of Utah lawmakers approved a Republican senator’s plan Monday to create a process for transgender people to legally change their gender designation through the courts, though not without some disagreement. The LGBT rights group Equality Utah said they’re concerned about some revisions in the bill, including a section that requires a person to live in state to make the change. “That’s unconstitutional, you cannot deny out-of-state residents a benefit,” said Cliff Rosky, a member of Equal…
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For five years, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority insisted it was not at fault for the botched open road tolling system that began in 2010, a debacle the authority claims cost it millions in potential revenues. Instead, it blamed its contractor, saying Electronic Transactions Consultants Corp. misled MDX about its abilities and intentionally underbid the contract to design, develop, install and operate the toll enforcement system. ETC sued MDX in 2012 for breach of contract and bad faith, cla…
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In the immediate aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, there was a fevered pitch to ban bump stocks, the device that allowed the shooter’s semi-automatic rifles to mimic the rapid fire of machine guns. With that push stalled at the federal level, a handful of states and some cities are moving ahead with bans of their own. Massachusetts and New Jersey — two states at the time led by Republican governors — as well as the cities of Denver and Columbia, South Carolina…
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A British judge is scheduled to rule Tuesday on Julian Assange’s bid to force Britain to drop a warrant for his arrest, a development that would remove a substantial legal hurdle to his leaving the Ecuadorean Embassy in London that has been his refuge for more than five years. The legal issues surrounding the WikiLeaks founder’s case are complex: ___ WHAT IS BEING DECIDED TUESDAY? Assange’s legal team argued in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Jan. 26 that a U.K. arrest warrant for Assange sho…
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Lawsuits against the state of Missouri cost taxpayers at least $23 million last year, according to a new report from Attorney General Josh Hawley. A year-end report from Hawley, a Republican, showed that 16 of the 45 major payouts were related to employee discrimination, including six from cases involving workers at the Missouri Department of Corrections, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported . The report found the state paid out nearly $8.1 million in claims for employment discrimination and ha…
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Legal arguments, aside, the details of New Miami’s speed cameras were grosser than normal, as the town of 2,500 signed a contract with Optotraffic, a Maryland firm that supplied the cameras, which gave the company 40 percent of the fines from the cameras, leaving New Miami with the rest. “Since the …
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A Reno couple used a little-known law to take possession of an abandoned home in an older, upscale part of town where similar brick, Tudor-style homes are selling for more than $400,000. Vickie and Jeff Francovich paid $6,500 in delinquent property taxes on a home in Reno’s Newlands Heights Historic District and started fixing up the home to move in, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported . The cost of the repairs and taxes was more than the house was worth when they found it in 2012, Vickie Francov…
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A woman who told police she was held inside a Miami club against her will, and that there were up to a dozen others still inside, set off a five-hour standoff Monday afternoon in which streets were cordoned off, schools were placed on lockdown and snipers readied on rooftops. In the end, no weapons were found, there were no hostages and police said only three people were ever inside Joseph’s Restaurant in Little Havana. Police continued to interview the trio into Monday evening about possible…
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Now that a judge has struck down Florida’s archaic system of restoring the right to vote to convicted felons, the real legal battle begins with a big unanswered question. What’s the solution? In a landmark decision, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that Florida’s Jim Crow-era vote restoration system violates the United States Constitution. Florida is one of three states, along with Iowa and Kentucky, that permanently strip convicted felons of their civil rights, including th…
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Oregon’s top federal prosecutor said Friday the state has a “formidable” problem with marijuana overproduction that winds up on the black market and that he wants to work with state and local leaders and the pot industry to do something about it. U.S. Attorney Billy Williams convened the unprecedented summit of influential federal law enforcement representatives, state officials and marijuana industry scions after Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew an Obama administration memo that had guided states with legalized weed on how to avoid federal scrutiny. The meeting included representatives from 13 other U.S. attorney’s offices, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. U.S. attorneys from California, Washington, Colorado, Idaho, Alaska and Montana attended in person. Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, told guests that Williams has assured members of her administration that “lawful Oregon businesses remain stakeholders in this conversation and not targets of law enforcement.” The marijuana industry has been watching federal prosecutors in states with legalized weed like Oregon closely since Sessions rescinded the so-called Cole memo. U.S. attorneys in states where marijuana is legal under state law now face the delicate question of how to do their jobs and hew to the federal ban. Williams sought to calm fears among pot growers, but said the market has a problem that must be addressed. Everyone needs a “bottom-line answer” on how much excess marijuana is being produced and how much of it winds up on the black market, he said. Williams last month wrote a guest column in a newspaper in which he said the surplus attracts criminal networks and generates money laundering, drug violence and draws down water supplies in rural communities. “Here’s what I know in terms of the landscape here in Oregon, and that is, we have an identifiable and formidable marijuana overproduction and diversion problem,” he said Friday. There is general agreement that marijuana from Oregon does wind up in other states where it isn’t legal. Still, it’s hard to say if pot smuggling has gotten worse in Oregon — where illicit pot farmers were thriving long before recreational legalization — or how much of the marijuana leaving the state filters out from the legal side. Williams has previously said law enforcement in 16 other states have reported seizing marijuana from Oregon and postal agents have intercepted more than 2,600 pounds of pot in outbound packages and over $1.2 million in associated cash. Advocates dismiss the idea that legalization has caused a spike in black markets sales. It’s just that now, because it’s legal, it’s much easier to track it back, they said. “When I moved to Oregon in 1979, cannabis was a billion-dollar crop then, so the notion that this is somehow caused by legalization or by the medical program is something that’s misplaced,” said Leland Berger, an attorney who specializes in marijuana cases. Oregon did not cap the number of recreational pot producers, virtually guaranteeing an overproduction problem, said Seth Crawford, a former Oregon State University professor who’s an expert on marijuana economics and cannabis policy. He estimated Oregon growers produce up to three times the amount of marijuana that the state can absorb legally each year. “If you were an investor and you had just dropped $4 million into a (marijuana) grow and you had thousands of pounds of flower that was ready to go but you had nowhere to sell it … if you want any of your money back, the only thing you can do is sell it on the black market,” he said. “It was a system designed for failure.” Oregon voters approved the sale of recreational marijuana in 2014, and it became legal the following year. The state has allowed medical marijuana since 1998. It now has about 900 licensed recreational growers, with more than 1,100 licenses awaiting approval. Another roughly 25,600 growers in the state produce cannabis for medical marijuana patients. More than 500 retailers are licensed to sell recreational weed, with nearly 250 applications pending.
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The top election official in Delaware is pledging to update voter registration forms amid complaints that the state’s documents violate federal law. Campaign Legal Center is a Washington-based voter advocacy group. It says federal voter registration forms used in Delaware contain outdated information about the eligibility of felons to vote in state elections. Delaware Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove says the advocacy group is correct. She tells the News Journal of Wilmington that “we will …
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The Latest on a marijuana summit convened by U.S. Attorney Billy Williams in Oregon (all times local): 11 a.m. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown says the top federal prosecutor in Oregon has assured her that he will not target legal marijuana business in the state. Brown made the remarks Friday at a summit convened by U.S. Attorney Billy Williams on how to address a surplus of marijuana that’s winding up on the black market. Williams announced the unprecedented meeting of nearly 80 federal, state, local a…
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Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens does not have to provide the state attorney general with records related to his social media accounts such as private messages and names of blocked users. The Kansas City Star reports that the office of Attorney General Josh Hawley said in a letter this week that the governor’s Twitter and Facebook accounts are not public records. Both Greitens and Hawley are Republicans. The Star also reported that Hawley’s office on Thursday announced it found no open records viola…
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The most contentious piece of President Donald Trump’s new proposal to protect the so-called Dreamers has nothing to do with them. It’s the plan’s potential impact on legal immigration that sparked fierce Democratic opposition Friday and appeared to sink chances for a bipartisan deal in Congress. The proposal outlined Thursday by the White House would end much family-based immigration and the visa lottery program, moves that some experts estimate could cut legal immigration into the United Stat…
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For 13 months, the University of Miami doctor and medical professor and a team of staffers have been exchanging used needles for clean ones as part of a five-year pilot program in Miami-Dade County to cut down on the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and other blood-borne diseases among drug users. Each syringe is more than just pennies: It’s one less opportunity to spread disease and one less chance to injure someone who might come across discarded needles in the street, Tookes says. It also means on…
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They say that you can get by in Miami even if you don’t speak English, but you can’t get by without Spanish. Not all Miami residents like that linguistic imbalance. Some don’t talk about their discontent, some whisper it and a few say it loud. That third group may include a young UPS Store employee in Kendall, which has a good-sized Hispanic population. He is seen in a video recorded as he launched a xenophobic attack on a client who wanted a refund for a package she claimed was never del…
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David Beckham can finally see the goal in Miami, and his Major League Soccer team is about to be born. The soccer icon and his group of partners announced plans for a news conference Monday, saying they will make “an important announcement on the future of soccer in Miami.” Beckham is ready to draw his first Miami crowd, too: The event at a downtown arts center will be open to fans. MLS, which will stream the event live on its website, said they were participating in what will be “a special ann…
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