Category: Attorney

A former Connecticut lawyer who practiced in Stamford pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud stemming from an embezzlement scheme, according to federal authorities.

William McCullough, 62, now of Westerly, Rhode Island, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty this week before US District Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport, according to federal authorities.

Authorities, citing court documents and statements made in court, said that, before he resigned from the Connecticut bar in 2019, McCullough operated a law practice in Stamford for several years and during that time worked on clients’ real estate transactions, receiving funds from clients that he knew he was required to deposit funds in a Lawyers’ Trust Account and use them “in accordance with his duties to each client.”

The Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee audited McCullough’s IOLTA Account in 2018 and found that “he had failed to maintain required documents for several years. The audit revealed that more than $1.27 million was due to clients, but the IOLTA Account held less than $600,000,” federal authorities said in a statement. “A subsequent criminal investigation revealed that McCullough defrauded clients by using funds in his IOLTA Account to cover funds owed to others, and for

When Judge Edward Davila sentenced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to more than 11 years in prison last week, he ordered that she surrender for imprisonment April 27. But legal experts say Holmes could remain free well past that date.

After Davila sentenced Holmes, 38, on four counts of felony fraud, one of her lawyers in the courtroom told her her legal team planned to file a “motion for bail pending appeal” that would allow her to stay out of custody while she appeals the jury’s verdict.

If Davila grants that request — or if he denies it but Holmes gets the appeals court to approve it — she could significantly delay her imprisonment.

“It could be a year from now, it could be 15 months from now,” said Bay Area criminal defense lawyer David Cohen.

If Holmes’ appeal fails — and successes are rare — she may end up in a minimum-security women’s prison camp in Texas, if federal prison authorities follow a recommendation from Davila.

Holmes was convicted in January on four counts of defrauding investors in her now-defunct Palo Alto blood-testing startup out of more than $144 million. She is pregnant and the mother of a 15-month-old son,

Author: Melis Mevsimler – Ada Lovelace Institute

As the first pandemic of the algorithmic age, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the use of data and artificial intelligence for public health. Governments across the globe saw potential opportunities and benefits in using digital technologies to control the spread of the virus. The result was the development and deployment of novel pandemic technologies.  

As we enter the third year of the pandemic, it is time to investigate whether these technologies have been useful in limiting the spread of COVID-19. This is important retrospectively, but also – and arguably more importantly – because technologies for future pandemics and public health crises will be built on the technical infrastructure, legislation and regulations developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contact tracing apps are one of these novel technologies. Installed on an individual’s smartphone, they allow users to report if they are infectious with COVID-19 and record theirinfection status. Using Bluetooth technology, they notify people who have come into close contact with infected individuals  

Manual contact tracing is a well-established public health measure. Contact tracing teams work with infected individuals to recall

CLIFTON, Va. — (AP) — Robert F. Horan Jr., who secured a murder conviction of DC sniper Lee Boyd Malvo during his four-decade tenure as the top prosecutor in Virginia’s largest county, died on Friday at his home. He was 90.

The cause of Horan’s death at his home in Clifton, Virginia, wasn’t immediately determined, but he had been in hospice care, his wife, Monica Horan, said on Sunday.

Horan served as Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney for 40 years before retiring in 2007. He continued going into the county prosecutor’s office for years after his retirement because he loved practicing law and being a public servant, his wife said.

“He thought the community deserved to have someone who was looking after their interests, as well as the victim’s interests,” Monica Horan said. “And he felt that people who did evil things deserved to pay for the evil things they did.”

Malvo was 17 when he and John Allen Muhammad shot and killed 10 people in the Washington area over a three-week span in October 2002. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a jury convicted him of capital murder but declined to impose the death penalty. Muhammad

By Dominic Chopping

STOCKHOLM–Ericsson AB said Friday it has reached a multiyear, global patent license agreement with Apple Inc., ending a yearlong legal battle over the use of Ericsson’s technology in products such as iPhones.

Ericsson shares moved higher on the news, rising 4% on the day, having traded slightly lower for most of the session.

Apple first licensed Ericsson’s patents in 2008 when it released the first iPhone. When that deal expired, a 2015 complaint by Ericsson against Apple led to another global cross-license deal between the companies, but those licenses expired after talks to renew the deal failed at the end of 2021.

Since then, the two companies have filed lawsuits against each other in several countries, all of which will now be dropped.

Ericsson had argued that following the expiration of the previous agreement, Apple was using their technology without a license and that the 5G licensing rate it had offered Apple was fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory. Apple then counter sued, claiming the Swedish company was using “strong-arm tactics” to renew patents.

Fallouts in the telecom industry aren’t uncommon, as so much technology is shared in communication equipment, and these most recent lawsuits are the latest in

States Challenge the Constitutionality of the American Rescue Plan

Edward Plaut

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is a major legislative accomplishment of the Biden Administration. The $1.9 trillion bill provides an array of policies responding to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic downturn, including carve outs for stimulus checks, funding vaccination distribution, and child tax credits.^[1] Included is the Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund (CSFRF), a nearly $190 billion fund meant to assist State governments to “mitigate the fiscal effects” of the pandemic.^[2] The CSFRF gives recipients broad discretion in how to use the money, allowing states to apply the aid toward public health measures, business aid, government services, infrastructure and more.^[3]

However, the funding comes with strings attached. States must certify that they will comply with the spending rules outlined in subsection (c) of the act, which notably requires that states not use their funding “to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue of such State or territory resulting from a change in law, regulation, or administrative interpretation… that reduces any tax….”^[4] This limitation, referred to as the Tax Mandate, was designed to ensure that States would not use

UPDATED, 1:05 PM: The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has postponed its hearing planned for September 28 as Hurricane Ian bears down on Florida. The panel said that a new date will be announced soon.

PREVIOUSLY on September 22: The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol tweeted that it will hold its next hearing at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday, September 28.

It will be the panel’s first hearing since the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8.

PREVIOUSLY on September 15: January 6th Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. said this week that the House committee is looking at resuming its hearings on Wednesday, September 28.

“That’s the goal at this point,” he told reporters Monday of the date.

“We’re looking at the process of being able to look at the report … as well as closing the loop on any potential witnesses,” Thompson continued. It would be the first such gathering since the panel concluded its summer sessions on July 25.

WATCH: Jan. 6 Cmte. Chairman Bennie Thompson says the committee’s goal is to hold the next hearing

In this post, Alan McDonald, Senior Associate in the Disputes team at CMS, previews the decision awaited from the UK Supreme Court in the Reference by the Lord Advocate in relation to the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill. The case will be heard on 11 and 12 October 2022. CMS will run a live blog of the oral arguments.

The Scottish Government (“SG”) intends to hold another referendum on whether Scotland should become an independent country before the end of the current term of the Scottish Parliament. The stated intention is to hold this vote on 19 October 2023. The question of whether there should be a second referendum on this issue is the subject of much political debate and contention.

The legal issue at the centre of this debate is whether the Scottish Parliament can legislate to allow a referendum on Scottish independence to take place, without the consent of the UK Parliament. Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998 (“SA”) contains a list of matters that are reserved to the UK Parliament. These are commonly referred to as ‘reserved matters’. The Scottish Parliament, as a devolved legislature, can legislate for all areas not listed as reserved matters.

Prior to

Going to law school wasn’t exactly top of mind for Yellowknife’s Amelia Harman when she was in high school. 

“It was not something I considered, to be honest, because I didn’t think it was something I was capable of achieving,” she told CBC’s Loren McGinnis, host of The Trailbreaker.

During her undergrad, Amelia, who is Chipewyan Dene and North Slave Métis, switched her major a few times, and ended up taking a few years off in between studies. It was during that time off when she began to realize what she hoped to do.

“I knew I wanted to kind of do something with purpose and kind of improve the … prevailing discourse for Indigenous peoples in Canada, and also act as a role model for young Indigenous peoples, including young Indigenous females,” she said.

This June, she graduated from the University of Calgary with a law degree, to add to her master’s degree in public policy.

Harman was among 78 Indigenous graduates from the university’s classes of 2021 and