Attorney and non-profit founder Julia Olson calls appeals court ruling on lawsuit filed by 21 young people ‘tragic and unjust’

A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.

Continue reading...

Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, says his team is determined to retry case against the disgraced movie mogul

Harvey Weinstein will be retried in New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said on Wednesday, a week after the state’s highest court threw out his 2020 rape conviction.

Weinstein arrived at a Manhattan courthouse in the afternoon, his first appearance since the decision by the appeals court last week.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Continue reading...

Deal would resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging company’s baby powder causes ovarian cancer

Johnson & Johnson is moving forward with a $6.475bn proposed settlement of tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that its baby powder and other talc products contain asbestos and cause ovarian cancer.

The deal would allow it to resolve the lawsuits through a third bankruptcy filing of a subsidiary company. It will begin a three-month voting period in hopes of reaching consensus on a settlement of all current and future ovarian cancer claims.

Continue reading...

Ex-movie mogul is at New York City department of correction for tests, his lawyer said, and will be transferred to Rikers Island

The disgraced former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized in New York City for a series of tests, his lawyer said.

Weinstein’s hospitalization comes after the New York court of appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction on Thursday. According to the court’s ruling, the judge who oversaw the watershed case during the peak of the #MeToo era prejudiced Weinstein with “egregious” improper rulings and was mistaken in allowing women whose accusations were not part of the case to testify against him.

Continue reading...

Singer’s attorney says agreement gives his client the ‘freedom’ that ‘she desired’

Britney Spears and her estranged father have agreed to settle a legal dispute that continued between them even though it had been more than two years since a court had terminated the conservatorship that put him in control of the US pop star’s life.

Terms of the settlement between the singer of chart-topping hit Womanizer and Jamie Spears weren’t disclosed in statements that their attorneys distributed to media outlets on Friday.

Continue reading...

#MeToo’s real legacy may not be ending predators’ impunity so much as highlighting the tenacity of that impunity

Usually, rape isn’t reported. When it is reported, it is often not charged. And when it is charged, it rarely leads to a conviction. These facts shape both our cultural understanding of sexual violence and women’s sense of their own embodied lives, clarifying something many of us already know – that while sexual violence is technically illegal and officially abhorred, it is also tolerated in practice, with actual arrests and convictions being so rare that most sexual violence is de facto decriminalized.

Only occasionally does a notable rape conviction come to pass; when it does, its very rarity highlights this dissonance, making plain the gulf between how rape is officially talked about and how it is usually treated. Now, that gulf has come to the fore again, because on Thursday one of the most high-profile rape convictions in American history was overturned.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Continue reading...

Singer had appealed 2022 conviction by a Chicago jury stating Illinois’ shorter statute of limitations applied to his case

The singer R Kelly was correctly sentenced to 20 years in prison on child sexual abuse convictions in Chicago, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

Jurors in 2022 convicted the Grammy award-winning R&B singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, on three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex.

Continue reading...

Ex-National Enquirer publisher was instrumental in coordinating payments to quash negative stories of Trump during 2016 election

Former tabloid publisher David Pecker is taking the witness stand on Friday, his fourth day this week, in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial.

Pecker was instrumental in coordinating three hush-money payments that were paid during the 2016 election to quash negative stories about Trump. Pecker has testified that American Media Inc (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer, paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman who said Trump had a child out of wedlock. Another $150,000 was paid to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump in 2006.

Continue reading...

Oral arguments over former president’s claim of immunity seem to have left Trump happier than the justice department

“Well,” said one reporter to another as they left the supreme court chamber, sometime after noon on Thursday. “Looks like we’re getting a king.”

Notwithstanding a certain mordant hyperbole on a momentous day in American history, the sentiment seemed within bounds.

Continue reading...