NEWS
May 22, 2012 | By Amy S. Rosenberg, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
MAYS LANDING, N.J. - "Both?" Double murder suspect Antoinette Pelzer expressed surprise and swallowed hard in a court appearance Tuesday afternoon after learning that both the Canadian women she allegedly stabbed with a 12-inch butcher knife in an attack Monday in the tourism district of Atlantic City had died. According to charges read by Superior Court Judge Michael Donio, who set bail at $1.5 million for Pelzer, the older of the two victims, an 80-year-old, intervened as Pelzer attacked the younger, who was 47 and believed to be the older woman's daughter.
NEWS
May 20, 2012 | By Paula Reed Ward and Angela Couloumbis, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU
PITTSBURGH - State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, stripped of her duties, vowed to fight the criminal charges filed against her Friday and said she had no plans to quit Pennsylvania's highest court. "My faith will see me through this," Melvin said outside the Municipal Court Building. She denied what she called "these politically motivated charges. " The charges brought by Allegheny County prosecutors involve use of taxpayer-paid staff for political campaigning - and are rooted in evidence that emerged in the case against Melvin's sister, State Sen. Jane Orie, convicted in March of similar charges.
BUSINESS
May 17, 2012 | By David Sell, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Johnson & Johnson's courtroom fights over Risperdal resume in Philadelphia on Wednesday, when Commonwealth Court judges are scheduled to hear an appeal of decisions to dismiss Pennsylvania's 2008 lawsuit that alleged the company fraudulently profited from sales of the antipsychotic drug through the Medicaid program. While Pennsylvania's case did go to trial in Philadelphia, it did not get far. In 2010, a Philadelphia judge threw out the lawsuit, which sought to show that J&J had tricked the state into paying millions more for the drug than it should have.
NEWS
May 15, 2012 | By Joelle Farrell, INQUIRER Trenton Bureau
TRENTON — Democratic lawmakers want to divert some nonviolent offenders into drug treatment rather than prison, a notion Gov. Christie made one of his priorities this year. But two bills winding their way through the Senate and Assembly would use a two-county pilot program to test Christie's belief that forcing people into drug treatment can work. Christie wants to make participation in drug court, a program that keeps drug-addicted offenders out of jail and in treatment, mandatory.
NEWS
May 15, 2012 | By Michael Hinkelman, Daily News Staff Writer
Three people from South Jersey were to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court in Camden in connection with a $2.6 million time share mortgage fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey said. Ashley Lacerda, 32, of Egg Harbor Township, Francis Santore, 52, of Northfield and Brian Corley, 27, of Egg Harbor, were among 16 defendants charged on April 17 with a variety of offenses, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Authorities said Lacerda, Santore and Corley worked for The Vacation Ownership Group and that the investigation revealed that from at least March 2009 to September 1, 2011, the defendants, often using false identities, telephoned owners of time-share vacation properties purchased through Flagship Resort Development, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Inc. and other time-share developers.
NEWS
May 13, 2012 | By David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers
LYNCHBURG, Va. - Mitt Romney, needing badly to stir momentum among skeptical evangelical Christians vital to his presidential hopes, told a polite audience Saturday at Liberty University, an influential Christian school, that he shared and deeply respected their values. "People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology," said Romney, whose Mormon religion has been criticized in some evangelical circles.
NEWS
May 11, 2012 | Mark Fazlollah
Commonwealth Court has ordered former Philadelphia Housing Authority Executive Director Carl R. Greene to pay a $1,653 fine to the state Ethics Commission and to file missing reports on his income and expenses. In March, the ethics panel filed suit, seeking to enforce its fine and order that the reports from 2004 to 2009 be filed. In an order filed Wednesday, Judge J. Wesley Oler Jr. ruled that Greene submit the missing reports and pay the fine within 30 days. Greene had failed to meet the commission's repeated requests that he file the reports.
BUSINESS
May 10, 2012 | By Chris Mondics, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Robert Mongeluzzi, the Philadelphia plaintiff's lawyer representing families of two Hungarian tourists killed in the duck-boat accident, is known both for his surgically precise trial technique and for the hundreds of millions of dollars he has won in verdicts and settlements for clients. Mongeluzzi is a founding partner of his firm, Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesky P.C., of Center City, and chairs its workplace-accident and product-liability practice groups. His trial trademarks: preparing meticulously and putting complex issues of legal negligence into simple, emotionally accessible language that jurors can relate to. "He is able to be very diplomatic, but he is also very aggressive when it comes to causes that he believes in," said Steven G. Wigrizer, a plaintiff's lawyer with the firm of Wapner Newman Wigrizer Brecher & Miller who has known Mongeluzzi for decades.
NEWS
May 10, 2012 | By Dan Hardy, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Chester Upland School District officials, in federal court Wednesday hoping to receive assurances that they will have enough money to educate 700 special-education students this fall, painted a grim picture of the district's finances. District officials told U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson that Chester Upland will end up the year owing charter schools, vendors, and special-education providers about $29 million that it cannot pay. The district, they said, will receive only $17 million to $18 million this school year from the state.