National Roundup

Pennsylvania
Court blocks audit over grants to counsel pregnant women

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A state court isn’t allowing Pennsylvania’s fiscal watchdog to examine how a nonprofit grant recipient spent money it got by charging a fee to contractors working on the grant to counsel pregnant women about alternatives to abortion.

Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer wrote in Monday’s decision that an audit is allowable if it’s necessary to determine whether the money from the fee is being used in line with the grant agreement.
But Jubelirer notes that the Harrisburg-based agency, Real Alternatives, already said that it isn’t using the money in accordance with the grant agreement, and Real Alternatives argues it isn’t required to.

The court didn’t decide whether the money from the 3 percent fee Real Alternatives charges to contractors should be considered public or private, or whether the fee is permissible.

Arkansas
Federal appeals panel upholds ex-judge’s bribery conviction

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel has upheld the bribery conviction and 10-year prison sentence for a former Arkansas judge who admitted to reducing a jury award against a nursing home operator in exchange for campaign contributions.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld the conviction Monday of former circuit judge Michael Maggio, who accepted thousands in campaign donations from the nursing home operator before reducing a jury’s $5.2 million award to $1 million in a negligence lawsuit. Maggio tried unsuccessfully last year to withdraw his guilty plea. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but had been allowed to remain free pending his appeal.

Maggio’s attorneys had argued he should have been allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and that his sentence was unreasonable.


Kansas
Federal court rejects ex-AG’s lawsuit against Kansas court

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal appeals court is refusing to revive a former Kansas attorney general’s lawsuit against the state Supreme Court over its indefinite suspension of his state law license.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Monday against ex-Attorney General Phill Kline.

The anti-abortion Republican was disciplined over allegations of misconduct arising from investigations of abortion providers as attorney general from 2003 through 2006 and Johnson County district attorney in 2007 and 2008.

Kline has strongly denied wrongdoing.

A federal judge dismissed Kline’s case last year and said lower federal courts can’t take up the case because only the U.S. Supreme Court can review state supreme court decisions.

The federal appeals panel agreed.

The nation’s highest court refused in 2014 to consider Kline’s case.

North Carolina
Hospital settles suit over urine test billing

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A Charlotte hospital system has agreed to settle a lawsuit over improper billing for urine tests.

U.S. Attorney Jill Rose told local media that Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte has agreed to pay $6.5 million to settle a lawsuit over billing practices brought by former lab director Mark McGuire.

Rose said prosecutors found the hospital had used the wrong billing code for urine drug tests to get higher payments than the hospital should have received.

McGuire said the hospital improperly coded the tests between 2011 and 2015. The hospital received about $80 per test more than it should have. He said he tried to warn hospital officials about the improper coding.

McGuire will get about $1.4 million under the whistleblower lawsuit settlement.

The hospital said it cooperated in the investigation.

New Mexico
Judge: Prison ban on breast-feeding unconstitutional

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A Santa Fe judge has ruled a Corrections Department policy banning mothers incarcerated in New Mexico state prisons from breast-feeding their infants violates the state constitution.

State District Judge David Thomson issued the ruling in a case brought by Monique Hidalgo, a prison inmate who has been fighting for the right to breast-feed her 5-week-old daughter, Isabella.

Hidalgo filed a lawsuit about two weeks ago against the Department of Corrections, its officials and two guards seeking permission to feed her daughter on weekends when the child’s father brings her to visits.

The ruling could affect generations of incarcerated mothers and their babies in New Mexico.

Thompson says the case is an important issue ripe for consideration for an appeal in front of the state’s highest court.

New Hampshire
Court: Drug company can’t object to state’s outside counsel

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The New Hampshire Supreme Court has cleared away one obstacle to the state’s investigation into marketing practices by large pharmaceutical companies.

The attorney general’s office subpoenaed five companies nearly two years ago demanding they turn over millions of pages of internal marketing materials and other information. The goal was to see if the companies have been deceptively marketing opioid drugs, many of which get diverted and contribute to the state’s addiction and overdose crisis.

Last year, the companies successfully argued that the state shouldn’t be allowed to hire outside help to sift through the paperwork. A judge denied the state’s motion to enforce the subpoenas and granted the companies’ request to cancel the attorney general’s contract with outside counsel.

The state Supreme Court, however, reversed those decisions this week and sent the case back to the lower court. In its ruling the Supreme Court said the companies had no standing to challenge a government contract to which they were not a party. The companies had argued that rules regarding whether a person or company has standing only pertain to those initiating lawsuits, not those merely resisting claims against them. But the court disagreed, saying the companies were seeking judicial relief — the cancellation of the contract — and therefore must show they have standing to do so.

The court also found that the companies did not have standing to argue that the attorney general’s office violated the state’s ethics code.