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Real estate website Zillow soars in IPO debut
Stock Market News |
2011/07/20 09:29
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Shares of real estate website Zillow have more than doubled in their trading debut Wednesday. It's the latest Internet company to climb sharply in its first day of trading following strong openings from jobs networking site LinkedIn, music service Pandora and Russian search engine Yandex -- although Pandora is almost unchanged from its first-day close, and Yandex trades lower than it did on the end of its first day. Zillow, founded in 2004, provides online listings for more than 100 million homes for sale and rent. The portal's "Zestimate" helps estimate property values. Investors are bidding up Zillow Inc. stock, even though the Seattle company has never posted an annual profit. Zillow priced shares for $20 per share late Tuesday, $2 more than the top of the range it had predicted Friday. In midday trading Wednesday, Zillow had risen to $38.80 after trading as high as $60 earlier in the session. That means that the value of the company has dropped from more than $1.6 billion to about $1 billion since trading began. Including a private stock sale of 275,000 shares, Zillow raised $74.7 million. It has no specific plans for the funds, saying only that it will use them for general corporate purposes. The stock is trading under the symbol "Z" on the Nasdaq exchange. |
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Court reverses conviction on online Obama threat
Court Watch |
2011/07/20 09:28
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man who posted Internet messages threatening Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.
A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Walter Bagdasarian's violent and racist screeds against Obama were "repugnant" but not criminal. The court also said it was obvious the San Diego man wasn't planning to attack the candidate and that the postings were protected by Bagdasarian's free speech rights.
Bagdasarian was convicted in 2009 of two felony counts of threatening a major presidential candidate.
Bagdasarian posted several messages to a Yahoo Finance message board in October 2008, including one that called Obama a racial epithet and another that said "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon" — a reference to a .50 caliber gun.
A retired Air Force officer forwarded the postings to the Secret Service. Yahoo provided Bagdasarian's subscriber information to investigators, who raided his house and seized six guns and a hard drive containing an email with similar sentiments.
Bagdasarian admitted posting the messages, but said he was drunk and joking.
He waived his right to a jury trial. District Judge Marilyn L. Huff found him guilty and sentenced him to 60-days in a half-way home.
But the appeals panel said no "reasonable person" could have taken seriously Bagdasarian's posts.
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Fresno DA charges woman after deadly bus crash
Court Watch |
2011/07/20 09:27
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A woman accused of providing alcohol to a teenage driver who caused a deadly Greyhound bus crash has been charged with a misdemeanor, officials said Tuesday.
Michelle Kay Cole, 22, was charged with purchasing an alcoholic beverage for a person under 21 resulting in death, Fresno County District Attorney Elizabeth Egan said at a news conference.
Cole was cited Monday but not arrested, Egan said. She could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.
A California Highway Patrol report placed sole blame for the crash on 18-year-old Sylvia Garay. Investigators said she was drunk when her SUV hit a concrete barrier and overturned on Highway 99 on July 22, 2010.
The oncoming bus, carrying 31 passengers on a route from Los Angeles to Sacramento, struck the SUV, skidded into a concrete center divider, then tumbled down a 15-foot embankment and plowed into a eucalyptus tree shortly after 2 a.m. a few miles from downtown Fresno.
Garay, her two passengers and three people on the bus were killed. Authorities say Garay had a blood alcohol level of .11 when she died. The legal limit is .08.
The CHP report said the bus driver had no way to avoid the SUV, which was left without lights when it overturned.
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Paralegal accused of stealing from law firm
Court News |
2011/07/20 09:27
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Authorities say a South Florida paralegal stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her Fort Lauderdale law firm.
Miami-Dade officials on Tuesday charged 53-year-old Brenda Wilcott-Kelly with more than 80 felonies, including grand theft and forging documents. Records show she's also took money from a lawyer who was on his deathbed.
Employees of Hermelee & Geffin were in court Tuesday as Judge Dennis Murphy set Wilcott-Kelly's bond at $116,000.
Defense attorney Morgan Cronin said his client is innocent.
According to the arrest affidavit, Wilcott-Kelly took $82,472 from the firm to pay off her husband's credit cards. She is also accused of stealing $31,050 from lawyer Steven A. Schultz, while he was in the hospital. Schultz leased space from the firm.
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France, Germany in last-ditch crisis talks
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/20 01:30
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The eurozone's economic powers are struggling to agree on a new debt crisis plan to present at an emergency EU summit, with Germany downplaying calls from France and Brussels for a big announcement that could boost market confidence and contain the turmoil. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was flying to Berlin on Wednesday afternoon in an apparent last-minute bid to strike a deal with Chancellor Angela Merkel on some kind of new aid package for Greece. The stakes are high. Markets have been extremely volatile over the past weeks on fears the crisis might spread to larger countries like Italy. The International Monetary Fund warned that leaders must do more to keep debt troubles from poisoning the entire continent's economy. Germany and France will discuss "all the options on the table and agree, if possible, on a joint position," said Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert. Germany is optimistic that Thursday's summit will agree on "a good solution that will move us forward," he added. But he reiterated Merkel's stance that the talks will not yield a "spectacular solution" that fixes Greece's problems quickly, but will be merely a stepping stone in a longer process. Merkel had said there would be no decision to restructure Greece's debt or create eurobonds that link debt across countries. |
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Investment Fraud Litigation |
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Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
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The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
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