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State Supreme Court rules on illegal taxes
Headline Legal News |
2011/08/01 09:00
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The state Supreme Court made it easier this week for California taxpayers to seek refunds from cities and counties, ruling that a claim of an illegal local tax can be pursued as a class action on behalf of everyone who was overcharged.
The unanimous decision Monday in a Los Angeles case overturned lower-court rulings requiring local taxpayers to file individual refund claims.
In a class action, a representative can win damages that are distributed to an entire group of people affected by the same unlawful action. Class-action status often determines whether a tax can be effectively challenged, said Paul Heidenreich, a lawyer for consumer organizations in the case.
"When only one person can sue at a time, there's little incentive to do so" with small amounts at stake, he said.
The ruling may not affect San Francisco, however. Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith said the city has ordinances that set rules for tax refund claims and prohibit class actions. He said the court allowed class-wide suits only when a city or county has no laws of its own regulating tax refunds.
Francis Gregorek, lawyer for the plaintiff in the Los Angeles case, said a future ruling may be needed to determine whether a city can shield itself from class actions.
Class actions have become a hotly contested legal battleground. The U.S. Supreme Court restricted their use in two California cases earlier this year, refusing to allow as many as 1.5 million women to sue Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as a group over pay and promotion practices, and rejecting class-wide arbitration of a cell phone customer's overcharge claim against AT&T.
Gregorek's client, Estuardo Ardon, sued Los Angeles in 2006, claiming that a city telephone tax was illegal because it was linked to a federal excise tax that had been ruled invalid. Gregorek said the suit seeks millions of dollars in refunds for all phone customers in the city and has led to challenges against similar taxes in other communities.
The case has remained on hold while state courts determined whether Ardon can represent other customers. An appellate court said he could sue only as an individual, citing the state Supreme Court's 1992 ruling that rejected class-action status for a challenge to the state's taxes on vehicles bought by Californians in other states.
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Calif Supreme Court rules on illegal local taxes
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/26 09:11
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Ruling in a Los Angeles case, the California Supreme Court has ruled taxpayers can file class-action claims when seeking refunds from cities and counties for illegal local taxes.
Monday's unanimous ruling overturns lower-court rulings requiring taxpayers to file individual refund claims.
In class action claims, an individual can win damages for an entire group of people affected by the same unlawful action.
The San Francisco Chronicle says Estuardo Ardon sued the city of Los Angeles in 2006, claiming a city telephone tax was illegal because it was linked to a federal excise tax that had been ruled invalid. The suit seeks millions of dollars in refunds for all phone customers in the city.
But the case has remained on hold while state courts determined whether Ardon can represent a group.
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NJ court rules against son in Plain estate dispute
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/26 09:05
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A New Jersey court has ruled against the son of Belva Plain in a dispute over the late author's estate.
John Plain had claimed his mother, the bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and sisters had schemed to cut him out of her will.
Attorneys for Belva Plain's estate argued that her son had signed an agreement in the 1990s vowing not to contest her will.
Friday's decision in state Superior Court in Essex County dismissed John Plain's claim. Plain's lawyer said he was reviewing the decision.
Belva Plain began writing her novels after raising her children and becoming a grandmother. When she died in her sleep last fall at her home in New Jersey at age 95, more than 28 million copies of her books were in print.
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Class action over L.A. telephone tax may proceed, court rules
Headline Legal News |
2011/07/26 01:11
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A class action lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles for a refund of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in telephone taxes may proceed as a result of a unanimous ruling Monday by the California Supreme Court.
The ruling, written by Justice Ming W. Chin, upheld the right of citizens to bring class actions against municipal governments for collection of allegedly illegal taxes.
The decision will affect similar lawsuits against Los Angeles County, Long Beach and Chula Vista, lawyers in the case said. The suits claim that the governments have illegally taxed telephone users. The tax appears on phone bills.
The case against L.A. was filed in 2006. The city argued that the taxpayers should have filed individual claims for refunds before bringing a class action and won in the trial court and the appeals court.
As a result of Monday's ruling, "It's possible we will consider bringing actions against other jurisdictions," said Frank Gregorek, who argued the case for the taxpayer. The class that would recover funds would include all residents who paid the taxes.
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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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