Posts tagged trial
Ex-leaders of Jacksonville teachers union plead innocent in fraud case; March trial possible
January 21, 2025 // The women were accused in the indictment of each selling back to the union more than $1.2 million worth of vacation time "they had not accrued and did not earn” between 2013 and 2022 as well as signing bonus checks for each other that weren’t shown to the 6,500-member union’s board.
Jury Selected in New John Dockerty Trial
April 18, 2024 // A jury has been selected in the third trial of former Philadelphia labor leader, John Dockerty. In December, Dockerty and a former union president were found guilty of corruption and embezzlement after stealing over $600,000 from the electrical workers union. “The Inquirer” reports that this trial is based on “conspiracy and extortion” charges.
Prosecutors’ star witness in New York corruption trials wins new sentencing
July 27, 2023 // Hellerstein, in denying Rechnitz's request for recusal in 2020, acknowledged that he had been close friends with Kaplan's father and had known Kaplan since he was born. Hellerstein said that when Kaplan asked for advice about the Platinum case, he had agreed to talk about it because he "felt that I should consider his request as if it were made by my son." Nonetheless, he said Kaplan did not have enough of a connection to Rechnitz's case to warrant recusal. The 2nd Circuit said that was a mistake. "Not only did the district judge have a close, near-paternal relationship with Kaplan, he also advised Kaplan on how to proceed in his pending criminal case arising from the Platinum fraud," the panel wrote. "The judge's relationship with Kaplan was sufficiently close, and Kaplan's case was sufficiently related to Rechnitz's case, that a reasonable person would have questioned the district court's impartiality."
Was the LAUSD strike illegal? That’s up to a judge to decide
March 29, 2023 // There are two types of strikes that can be declared: economic and unfair labor practice, said PERB General Counsel Felix De La Torre. An economic strike requires that union leaders first exhaust all avenues of negotiation. This requires declaring that negotiations have reached an impasse, enlisting the support of an independent mediator and carrying out fact finding research. While SEIU Local 99 completed the first two of those steps, it did not finish the third. An unfair labor practice strike, on the other hand, can be declared at any time. This is the type of strike that SEIU Local 99 declared after filing over a dozen unfair labor practice charges with PERB against the district. These charges include alleged surveillance of union members, retaliation against members, withholding of information and interference in union activities.
LA developer is first to go on trial in City Hall corruption scandal
June 15, 2022 // Creed LA, in essence a coalition of labor unions, typically brings these kind of challenges to force developers into hiring union labor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cassie Palmer told the jurors in her opening statement Tuesday. To avoid having their projects tied up for years in litigation, developers can negotiate a labor agreement with the unions that can cost them millions of dollars, Palmer said. George Esparza, Justin Kim, Andrew Civetti, EDVARD PETTERSSON