Court Digest

Wisconsin
Settlement sends $650,000 to workers at shuttered plant
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — About 130 former workers at window and door manufacturer in Merrill are receiving payments from a $650,000 settlement with the company reached after the Wisconsin Department of Justice sued.

The lawsuit filed in February alleged that Semling-Menke Company, Inc., failed to provide employees with the required 60-days notice it was ceasing business operations. The company shut down on Dec. 31, 2019.

“With this resolution, substantial payments are being made to workers who lost their jobs when the business closed,” Attorney General Kaul said Thursday in announcing the settlement.

Eligible employees will receive checks of varying amounts from the $650,000 settlement, depending on wage calculations conducted by the state Department of Workforce Development. The company mailed checks to eligible employees earlier this month, the justice department said.

New York
Restauranteurs sue NYC to block proof of vaccination rules
NEW YORK (AP) — A group of New York City restaurants asked a judge this week to block the city’s latest effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, calling the city’s mandate that customers show proof of vaccination “arbitrary, irrational, unscientific and unlawful.”

The group argued that the new rules would severely harm their businesses and livelihood.

The city’s proof-of-vaccination edict went into effect Tuesday and  requires anyone dining indoors at restaurants, going to museums, attending concerts, working out at a gym or entering many indoor public venues show proof that they have been inoculated against COVID-19.

The group of restauranteurs that filed the lawsuit in Richmond County, which encompasses Staten Island, said restaurants and other establishments included in the city’s vaccine mandate were unfairly targeted because many other places such as grocery stores, hair salons, churches, schools and office buildings were excluded from the mandate.

“This vaccine mandate is arbitrary and capricious due to the fact that it targets certain establishments but not others with no rational whatsoever,” the lawsuit states.

Mayor Bill de Blasio first announced the new rules on Aug. 3. He said enforcement won’t begin until Sept. 13 in order to give businesses more time to prepare and to give people an opportunity to get vaccinated before they would become excluded from partaking in many aspects of public life.

The delta variant has caused infections and hospitalizations to surge in recent weeks, as public health officials across the country urge the unvaccinated to get a shot in the arm to help control the virus.

But some have resisted getting vaccinated, saying they are uncertain about its efficacy and safety despite assurances by public health officials that the vaccines are safe and effective. Others dislike government mandates. The city’s latest data shows more than 5.2 million of its 8.8 million residents have gotten at least one shot of a vaccine.

During his virtual press briefing on Wednesday, de Blasio said he had “tremendous confidence that we’re in a very strong legal position,” regarding the new rules.

The mayor said the global pandemic, particularly because of the fast-spreading delta variant, has prompted the city to take more urgent and aggressive measures.

“We know we must get more people vaccinated and strategically focusing on the ways to get more people vaccinated,” he said, adding that he was “absolutely certain” that the vaccine mandate “is a way we will achieve those goals, do it in a smart way, a fair way – based on the data and the science.”

The industry group, NYC Hospitality Alliance, has said it supported the city’s new measures to prevent harsher restrictions that could cause many restaurants and bars to go out of business permanently.

Still, the restaurant group that filed the lawsuit, asserted the new rules go too far and said it carved out few exceptions, particularly for those who cannot or should not get a vaccine.


Florida
Daughter of commissioner accused of COVID PPP fraud
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The daughter of a South Florida commissioner who is running for Congress is facing federal charges for receiving a $300,000 loan from the Paycheck Protection Program to pay employees who did not exist at a consulting firm.

Damara Holness, 28, was charged Tuesday with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and was released on bond following a first appearance hearing Wednesday. She is the daughter of Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness.

According to an indictment, Damara Holness lied on her coronavirus relief loan application, and sent fraudulent payroll tax forms to cover 18 employees at Holness Consulting Inc. in Plantation to justify the money. The state had no record of the employees.

The loan was approved in July 2020 and, the indictment said, she spent time creating a paper trail to make it look as if the company was spending the loan money on legitimate expenses.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Holness then began issuing checks to people who agreed to help — for a fee — with the fraud. They were directed to endorse the checks and return the money to her, according to the indictments.
Officials said she kept $1,000 of the remaining amount for herself from each check.

Dale Holness told the South Florida SunSentinel on Wednesday that he and his daughter have been estranged for many years.

“I have always offered guidance and counsel to my daughter Damara to do what is right,” he said. “I have no details as to how she conducted her business or what she did with her business entities.”

Dale Holness said his daughter had no access to his real estate business or office since 2018 and said she did not have his permission to use his office address or to “conduct business on behalf of the Holness family name nor myself,” the newspaper reported.

“If she has done wrong, I hope she learns from this and uses this as a lesson to better conduct her life in the future,” he said.


Mississippi
Judge steps away from lawsuit over killing by ex-officer
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge in Mississippi has recused himself from presiding over a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who was shot and killed by an Oxford police officer while she slept.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers, who lives in Oxford, wrote in an order filed last week that he is stepping away from the case because he is “personally acquainted with some of the parties and witnesses and potential parties and witnesses,” including people in the city administration and the police department, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

Because other federal judges in Oxford would have similar issues, the case was reassigned to Senior Judge Glen H. Davidson, a senior status judge from Tupelo, who normally hears cases in the Aberdeen court location.

Relatives of Dominique Clayton filed the wrongful death lawsuit Aug. 5 against the city of Oxford, Police Chief Jeff McCutchen and former officer Matthew Kinne, who was on patrol when 32-year-old Clayton was killed in 2019 in her home. Kinne  is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to a murder charge last month.

The suit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money, contends Kinne, 40, was working in his capacity as an Oxford police officer when he pulled up to Clayton’s home in a police car to conduct a welfare check and shot her in the head as she slept. Clayton’s 8-year-old son found her body, and Kinne was arrested the day after the body was found.

Kinne was fired within days. Clayton’s relatives say the two had been having a sexual relationship, but Kinne was married.

Clayton’s family previously asked the city for $5 million in damages because of the shooting, but the city didn’t pay.


North Carolina
House OKs raising minimum age for  juvenile court to 8
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The minimum age in which a child could be prosecuted in North Carolina’s juvenile courts would rise from 6 to 8 in legislation approved by the House on Wednesday.

The age threshold change, contained in a broader juvenile justice bill largely recommended by an advisory panel and approved overwhelmingly by the House, would remove North Carolina as the state with the lowest age  for juvenile adjudication set by law in the country.

There have been attempts this year to raise the minimum age to 10. But several lawmakers were concerned that 8- or 9-year-olds accused of the most violent or serious felonies could only receive up to nine months of counseling for their crimes.

“We can keep jurisdiction over them longer in juvenile court,” said Rep. Sarah Stevens, a Surry County Republican. She mentioned cases involving children as old as 9 who were accused of assault, forcible rape and arson. “We need to get them help and until we can otherwise (change) the system we need to ensure that they stay under our courts’ jurisdiction.”

The updated measure also states that 8- or 9-year-olds who had been previously declared delinquent would also return to court if they commit any felony, misdemeanor or infraction.

Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham County Democrat and former District Court judge who heard juvenile cases, had filed her own bill that would raise the age of juvenile jurisdiction to 10.

She unsuccessfully proposed a floor amendment that would have brought the minimum age to 10, saying it’s what experts on the advisory panel recommended and groups across the political spectrum support. Many panel members are appointed by legislative leaders.

Morey said third- and fourth-graders don’t understand court proceedings. The youths also would receive other assessments, social services and other assistance.

“They are impulsive. Their intellect is not fully informed,” Morey said while debating her amendment that was defeated in a 42-57 vote. “Do not start them off with a delinquency history.”

Billy Lassiter, deputy secretary for juvenile justice within the Department of Public Safety, told House committee members earlier Wednesday the new language was worked on with the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys.

If the updated bill had already been law, Lassiter said, only 21 of the nearly 1,150 youths under 10 who were subjects of juvenile complaints during the three fiscal years from 2016 to 2019 still would have been subject to a complaint. And all but five of those youths would have been taken out of the system.

“We can live with this because I think it saves so many more kids,” Lassiter said. “We met in the middle. This is a compromise and I think it’s a good deal for us to move forward with.”

The full bill, approved by a vote of 101-1 now returns to the Senate for consideration.

The 6-year-old minimum of delinquency jurisdiction began in 1979 during a period when tough-on-crime legislation was common.

Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C., have no age specification, according to a Department of Public Safety report in March. Connecticut, Maryland and New York set the minimum age at 7.

Youths adjudicated in North Carolina juvenile court can receive probation, or when at least 10 can be sent to a youth development center.

Ohio
Judge denies request to move Andre Hill police killing trial
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Extensive publicity over last year’s fatal shooting of Andre Hill by a Columbus police officer won’t prevent the now-fired officer from receiving a fair trial in central Ohio, a judge ruled Wednesday in denying a request to move the trial.

Hill, 47, who was Black, was fatally shot by ex-officer Adam Coy, who is white, on Dec. 22 as Hill emerged from a garage holding up a cellphone.

Defense attorney Mark Collins argued in a June court filing that extensive local and national publicity about the killing — including news coverage, posts on social media and billboards around Columbus — will make it impossible to assemble an impartial jury for Coy in Franklin County.

Assistant Ohio Attorney General Anthony Pierson opposed the request, contending that there was no reason to believe that people elsewhere were less likely to have read about the case than were Franklin County residents.

Franklin County Judge Stephen McIntosh agreed, writing in his three-page ruling, “Therefore, where can the case be tried where some media scrutiny does not exist?”

Coy has pleaded not guilty to murder and reckless homicide charges. His trial is scheduled for Oct. 4.

In May, the city reached a $10 million settlement, the largest in Columbus history, with the family of Hill.