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"THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING"
--Burke

Friday, January 22, 2010

Honest services law must go - - Epstein Becker & Green ( "New Jersey waterways and rivers in the northwestern portion of the state that have been contaminated with metals")

Honest services law must go
The Supreme Court should declare it unconstitutional rather than try to rewrite

it.http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202438103655&Honest_services_law_must_go&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1
Hervé Gouraige

January 18, 2010

"...In an unusual move, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari petitions in three separate honest services cases: U.S. v. Black, 530 F.3d 596 (7th Cir. 2008); U.S. v. Weyhrauch, 548 F.3d 1237 (9th Cir. 2008); and U.S. v. Skilling, 554 F.3d 529 (5th Cir. 2009). Two of those cases (Black and Weyhrauch) have been argued, and Skilling is to be argued in the spring. In the Skilling case, Jeffrey Skilling, the former president of Enron Corp., has clearly requested that the Court hold the statute unconstitutional because it is too vague to provide notice of what conduct is deemed potentially criminal."

Hervé Gouraige is a member in the Newark, N.J., and New York offices of Epstein Becker & Green and co-group leader of the firms' national litigation practice.
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"Over the last several months, federal and state environmental regulatory agencies have devoted substantial regulatory attention to New Jersey waterways and rivers in the northwestern portion of the state that have been contaminated with metals, declaring some of them to be federal Superfund sites. In light of these events, the judicial determination that the metals contamination on the southern edge of the property was solely due to our adversaries’ prior disposal activity was timely. The Opinion is perhaps the first trial court decision to apply the apportionment principles articulated in the Supreme Court's May 2009 decision in Burlington Northern.   

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