United States: New York Attorney General Announces Plan To "Unlock The Full Potential" Of Not-For-Profit Organizations is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/165806/Charities+Non-Profits/New+York+Attorney+General+Announces+Plan+To+Unlock+The+Full+Potential+Of+NotForProfit+Organizations

The move is the latest effort to stiffen court foreclosure procedures. In at least 19 states that have such court programs, efforts to settle foreclosure cases have often met with obstacles, including what some judges have found to be bad-faith negotiations by lenders.

The New York plan includes an unusual agreement by four banks to send representatives to court who can approve loan modifications. Mortgage settlement conferences have often been paralyzed by repeated requests for information and the absence of anyone with authority.

“It is an important step forward” because it increases the involvement of judges with the power to punish defiant or disorganized lenders, said Geoff Walsh, an expert on foreclosure policy at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

The new program is to start in Queens this spring and then expand around the city and to nearby suburbs, court officials said. The officials said that under the program, judges would take over the running of some settlement conferences from court attorneys, who lack the power to impose punishments. State law requires that bank representatives “be fully authorized to dispose of the case,” but enforcement of that requirement has been sporadic.

The officials said the plan would include court supervision of the collection of required documents to try to avoid delays and would seek to shorten the time some foreclosure cases linger in the courts to several months from up to two years.

Courts would also work to assure that homeowners who cannot afford lawyers are represented, though some lawyers who handle such cases questioned whether that goal was realistic.

If it is successful, the plan would be expanded across the state next year, said Judge Judy Harris Kluger, the chief of policy and planning for the New York courts. She said that a critical step was obtaining the agreement of the four banks, Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, to more fully participate in the settlement efforts.

“Everybody is in agreement that something has to change that gets the players to the table,” Judge Kluger said.

She said that officials believed that their plan could be expanded statewide and that it was a logical next step after aggressive steps over the last few years had not brought the desired results.

“I don’t think anybody was prepared for the volume and for the difficulty of getting the right person” authorized by the banks to attend mortgage settlement talks, Judge Kluger added.

Some homeowners’ lawyers said they welcomed the plan because thousands of settlement conferences had seemed nearly futile.

“We’re very encouraged by this idea, because one of the real problems at the conferences has been the lack of anyone meaningful to talk to on the lender side,” said Jacob Inwald, the director of foreclosure-prevention litigation at Legal Services NYC, which represents poor people.

But other lawyers questioned the court officials’ plan to provide lawyers for homeowners. The lawyers noted that, after years in which the government provided millions of dollars for legal representation for struggling homeowners, some of New York’s legal programs are now planning to lay off lawyers and housing counselors who specialize in foreclosure prevention.

They noted that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s budget did not provide financing for the programs to replace federal funding that ended. Asked about that decision, Mr. Cuomo’s office did not respond directly. But it said in a statement that “another source of funding” for lawyers could be New York’s $136 million share of the recently negotiated $26 billion mortgage settlement with big banks, which is to be controlled by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman.

Mr. Schneiderman said in a separate statement that he planned to use a significant portion of the money for homeowners’ lawyers and housing counselors. A Cuomo administration official said negotiations with the Legislature were likely to find money for the legal agencies in the meantime.

But Mr. Inwald, the foreclosure-prevention specialist, said he was baffled by the governor’s response because the mortgage-settlement money was many months from being available.

As a result, he said, the new court program could face difficulty. “It’s going to be a lot less effective,” Mr. Inwald said, “if there’s nobody to represent homeowners in the process.”

New York Courts to Hasten Foreclosure-Prevention Efforts, Now Often Paralyzed is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/nyregion/new-york-courts-to-intensify-efforts-to-prevent-foreclosures.html

New York, NY (PRWEB) February 22, 2012

A crane cable snapped at the 4 World Trade Center construction site on Thursday morning, according to The New York Times (2/16/2012). As a result, steel construction beams plummeted 40 stories from the crane, which was perched atop the building and crushed a truck.

“This was clearly a serious New York construction accident, and it is very fortunate no-one was injured,” said David Perecman, the former head New York construction accident lawyer for the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and a lecturer on construction accident law.

The crane had just lifted the load of beams out of the same truck, said The New York Times.

No one was injured in the downtown New York construction accident, not even the truck driver. One worker was evaluated at the scene but refused medical attention, reported The New York Times.

According to The Wall Street Journal (2/17/2012), the steel that fell weighed nearly 20 tons.

“This incident provides a reminder of the importance of ensuring compliance with the highest possible standards of construction site safety, as well as the need to do everything possible to minimize the risk of such construction accidents in New York,” construction accident lawyer David Perecman said.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupation Safety Health Administration (OSHA) has reported in the past (10/9/2008) that rigging failure accounts for 4% of crane deaths every year

Out of 4,070 worker fatalities in private industry in 2010, one-fifth were in construction, according to U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The expert New York construction accident lawyers at The Perecman Firm have worked with many injured construction workers and their families to preserve their rights to financial compensation for lost wages, medical bills, future lost wages, disability and more.

If you have been injured or lost a loved one in a New York construction accident or crane accident, please contact the New York construction accident lawyers at The Perecman Firm at http://www.perecman.com.

About David Perecman and The Perecman Firm, PLLC:

For the past 30 years, the New York construction accident, medical malpractice, auto accident and civil rights violation lawyers at The Perecman Firm, PLLC have handled all types of New York construction accident cases including scaffold accidents and crane accidents. David Perecman, founder of the Firm, has been recognized for his achievements as an Honoree in the National Law Journal’s Hall of Fame, in New York Magazine’s “The Best Lawyers in America” and The New York Times Magazine “New York Super Lawyers, Metro Edition” for the years 2007-2010. The prestigious U.S. News World Report ranks The Perecman Firm among the top 20 personal injury firms in New York City for 2011-2012.

The Firm has recovered millions of dollars for its clients. Among the more

recent victories, Mr. Perecman won a $15 million verdict** for a construction

accident, a $5.35 million dollar verdict*** for an automobile accident, and a

$40 million dollar structured settlement for medical malpractice****.

The Perecman Firm serves Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, Westchester, Upstate NY, Morris County, and Rockland County.

**later settled while on appeal for $7.940 million    

*** later settled for $3.5 million

**** total potential payout

“Lawyer Advertising”

“Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.”

###

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebNYconstructionaccident/constructionaccidentlaw/prweb9211968.htm

New York Construction Accident Lawyer from The Perecman Firm Comments on Crane … is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://www.timesunion.com/business/press-releases/article/New-York-Construction-Accident-Lawyer-from-The-3348783.php

Reuters

4:56 p.m. CST, February 22, 2012

Prosecutor, Goldman overreached: programmer’s lawyer is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-aleynikov-goldmantre81l26e-20120222,0,4976150.story

ALBANY, N.Y. — A New York court decision has bolstered a movement among towns determined to prevent hydraulic fracturing for natural gas within their borders.

A state Supreme Court justice on Tuesday upheld the Town of Dryden’s 2011 ban on gas drilling. Denver-based Anschutz Exploration Corporation had argued state law trumped the ban. An appeal of the trial-level court ruling is expected.

More than 50 New York communities have enacted gas-drilling bans. Attorney Helen Slottje (SLOT’-jee), who helps draft such laws, says the ruling should embolden towns considering bans.

Similar ordinances enacted by several West Virginia communities were overturned in court last year. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett recently signed legislation limiting municipalities’ ability to ban drilling.

New York has had a moratorium on drilling permits since 2008 while it drafts new regulations.

—Copyright 2012 Associated Press

NY court decision bolsters anti-fracking movement is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://online.wsj.com/article/APf9893d30d5e0454fb0d020143e5816d0.html

Strauss-Kahn, whose IMF job and prospects of becoming next French president ended in May after his arrest in New York on now-dropped sex assault charges, will have to meet with a judge for further questioning, a court said, without giving a date.

That could open the door to a formal investigation being opened against him in the case, which centers on allegations that a prostitution ring organized by business acquaintances of Strauss-Kahn supplied clients of Lille’s luxury Carlton Hotel.

“He answered all the questions,” said his lawyer, Frederique Beaulieu. “The fact that he was able to leave is a good thing, it’s normal that he can go free if he’s answered all the questions.”

Newspaper JDD reported on its website the meeting would take place on March 28.

Police want to establish whether the now-jobless Strauss-Kahn knew that women at parties he attended in Lille, Paris and Washington were prostitutes.

His lawyer has said he had no reason to think the women were prostitutes, noting it was not always easy to tell the difference between a “classy lady” and a prostitute when they were naked.

Investigators can either drop all pursuit of Strauss-Kahn or formally put him under investigation.

He could be investigated on suspicion of complicity in a pimping operation or of having benefited from misappropriated company funds if he knowingly attended sessions with prostitutes that company executives he knew paid for using expense accounts.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, made no comment as he arrived by car for questioning early on Tuesday at Lille police station.

CREDIBILITY CONCERNS

He quit his globe-trotting job at the head of the International Monetary Fund after he was accused of trying to rape a New York chambermaid.

U.S. prosecutors dropped the criminal charges against him because of concerns about the credibility of the plaintiff.

On his return home in September, French public prosecutors shelved a separate sex assault complaint by a French writer on the grounds she had filed her grievance almost a decade after the event and too late under the statute of limitations.

Then the Lille affair surfaced, with relentless and at times salacious media leaks further soiling his reputation.

Denouncing what they called a media lynching, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said they would sue several publications and demanded in October that he be summoned by Lille investigators so that he could explain himself.

One issue intriguing U.S. jurists is whether any visits that escort girls paid Strauss-Kahn while he was living in the United States might expose him to pursuit under a U.S. law that prohibits transporting people across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.

“If it’s shown he had prostitutes come to America and cross state lines in America, he is potentially opening himself to charges under American law,” said Christophe Mesnooh, a Paris-based Franco-American lawyer who has no business involvement in the inquiry.

However, other legal experts said prosecutors tended to resort to the U.S. law in question, the Mann Act, against suppliers and organizers of prostitution enterprises, rather than clients.

“It would be exceedingly rare for anyone who was just a customer to be roped into a federal prostitution prosecution,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor Columbia Law School in New York.

(Reporting by Pierre Savary in Lille, Brian Love and John Irish in Paris, Joseph Ax in New York; Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Strauss-Kahn released after night in French cell is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/strauss-kahn-faces-more-questions-french-prostitution-probe-074605432.html

The move is the latest effort to stiffen court foreclosure procedures. In at least 19 states that have such court programs, efforts to settle foreclosure cases have often met with obstacles, including what some judges have found to be bad-faith negotiations by lenders.

The New York plan includes an unusual agreement by four banks to send representatives to court who can approve loan modifications. New York’s mortgage settlement conferences have often been paralyzed by repeated requests for information and the absence of anyone with authority from the banks.

“It is an important step forward” because it increases the involvement of judges with the power to punish defiant or disorganized lenders, said Geoff Walsh, an expert on foreclosure policy at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

The new program is to start in Queens this spring and then expand around the city and to nearby suburbs, court officials said. The officials said that under the program, judges would take over the running of some settlement conferences from court attorneys, who lack the power to impose punishments. State law requires that bank representatives “be fully authorized to dispose of the case,” but enforcement of that requirement has been sporadic.

The officials said the plan would also include court supervision of the collection of the required documents to try to avoid delays and would seek to shorten the time some foreclosure cases linger in the courts to several months from as long as two years.

In addition, courts would work to assure that homeowners who cannot afford lawyers are represented, though some lawyers who handle such cases questioned whether that goal was realistic.

If it is successful, the plan would be expanded across the state next year, said Judge Judy Harris Kluger, the chief of policy and planning for the New York courts. She said that a critical step was obtaining the agreement of the four banks, Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, to more fully participate in the settlement efforts.

“Everybody is in agreement that something has to change that gets the players to the table,” Judge Kluger said.

She said that officials believed that their plan could be expanded statewide and that it was a logical next step after aggressive steps over the last few years had not brought the desired results.

“I don’t think anybody was prepared for the volume and for the difficulty of getting the right person who was authorized” by the banks to mortgage settlement talks, Judge Kluger added.

Some lawyers for homeowners said the plan was welcome because thousands of settlement conferences had seemed nearly futile.

“We’re very encouraged by this idea, because one of the real problems at the conferences has been the lack of anyone meaningful to talk to on the lender side,” said Jacob Inwald, the director of foreclosure-prevention litigation at Legal Services NYC, which represents poor people in the city.

But other lawyers questioned the court officials’ plan to provide lawyers for homeowners. The lawyers noted that, after years in which the government provided millions of dollars for legal representation for struggling homeowners, some of New York’s legal programs are now planning to lay off lawyers and housing counselors who specialize in foreclosure prevention.

They noted that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s budget did not provide financing for the programs to replace federal funding that ended. Asked about that decision, Mr. Cuomo’s office did not respond directly. But it said in a statement that “another source of funding” for lawyers could be New York’s $136 million share of the recently negotiated $26 billion mortgage settlement with big banks, which is to be controlled by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman.

Mr. Schneiderman said in a separate statement that he planned to use a significant portion of the money for homeowners’ lawyers and housing counselors. A Cuomo administration official said negotiations with the Legislature were likely to find money for the legal agencies in the meantime.

But Mr. Inwald, the foreclosure-prevention specialist, said he was baffled by the governor’s response because the mortgage-settlement money was many months from being available.

As a result, he said, the new court program could face difficulty. “It’s going to be a lot less effective,” Mr. Inwald said, “if there’s nobody to represent homeowners in the process.”

New York Courts to Intensify Efforts to Prevent Foreclosures is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/nyregion/new-york-courts-to-intensify-efforts-to-prevent-foreclosures.html?src=mv&ref=nyregion

YONKERS – State Assembly candidate Shelley Mayer has won the backing of two women’s organizations and separately, expects to receive nods from the city’s major police and fire unions tomorrow.

Her campaign announced today that NARAL Pro-Choice New York and Eleanor’s Legacy have both endorsed the Democrat for the 93rd Assembly District seat vacated Dec. 31 by now-Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano.

Throwing their support behind the former state assistant attorney general at an 11 a.m. press event tomorrow at 53 Shonnard Place will be: The Yonkers Fire Local 628, Yonkers Uniformed Fire Officers Association, the Yonkers Police Captains, Lieutenants and Sergeants Association, and the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association.

Mayer is running unopposed in the March 20 special election.

“Shelley Mayer has demonstrated her commitment to advancing women’s health and reproductive rights,” said Andrea Miller, President, NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “She has been a long-time advocate for New York’s women and families, particularly during her time at the New York State Attorney General’s office. This year, more than ever, it is critical that we have a progressive voice in Albany to protect the rights of all New Yorkers. We are proud to endorse Shelley Mayer for the 93rd Assembly District.”

Eleanor’s Legacy said it “is proud to endorse Shelley Mayer for the New York State Assembly. Throughout her career, Shelley has built a reputation for being a champion for civil rights and a fighter for the rights women. Since 2010, seven pro-choice Democratic women have left the State Legislature. New York State has slipped to 34th in the nation in terms of representation of women in elected office. At a time when women’s rights are under constant threat, this is a dangerous trend.  But on March 20th, the voters of the 93rd Assembly District have a chance to stand up for women and to vote for Shelley Mayer, a proven progressive advocate for Yonkers.”

“I am honored to have the strong support of two incredible organizations committed to advancing the needs and interests of women. We must continue to break barriers and increase representation not only in government, but across the spectrum. In the State Assembly, I will continue to fight for equal access to opportunity and protection for women. Democracy is about equality for all and I am proud to represent our shared values,” said Shelley Mayer.

According to her campaign:

Mayer has spent her life fighting for women’s rights. During her twelve years as an Assistant Attorney General, Shelley worked in the Civil Rights Bureau where she handled numerous workplace discrimination cases and won justice for women. In addition, she serves as a member of the Aquehung Women’s Democratic Club, Yonkers YWCA, Westchester Women’s Bar Association, and the Westchester Women’s Agenda. Currently, she works as the Senior Counsel at the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School.

Mayer was born and raised in Yonkers, and has spent her career as an advocate for New Yorkers. Shelley currently works as the Senior Counsel at the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School, where she handles health care and labor law enforcement issues. From 2007 until early 2011, Shelley worked as Chief Counsel to the New York State Senate Democrats. For over seven years, she was Vice President of Government and Community Affairs at Continuum Health Partners, one of New York City’s largest teaching hospital systems.

 From 1982 to 1994, Shelley was an Assistant Attorney General in the office of New York Attorney General Bob Abrams. She served in the Civil Rights Bureau, as Chief of the Westchester Regional Office, as the legislative liaison for the Attorney General and ultimately as a senior advisor to the Attorney General. As an Assistant Attorney General, Shelley fought to protect civil rights for New Yorkers and sought justice for women who were unfairly discriminated against in the workplace.

Shelley received a JD from SUNY Buffalo School of Law in 1979 and a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA in 1975.

Shelley has been actively involved in the Yonkers community, serving as a member of the Aquehung Women’s Democratic Club, Yonkers NAACP, Yonkers YWCA, Westchester Women’s Bar Association, and Westchester Women’s Agenda.  Shelley also serves as the 5th Ward District Leader and 4th VP for the Yonkers Democratic City Committee, and as a board member of the Jewish Council of Yonkers/ Westchester Community Partners. She also served on the Board of the Yonkers Public Library.

Shelley lives in Yonkers with her husband of 32 years, Lee Smith, in the same house she grew up in.  Shelley and Lee have three adult children—Aaron, Julia, and Arth.

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Mayer announces new endorsements is a post from: New York Lawyers And Attorneys

Article source: http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2012/02/21/mayer-announces-new-endorsements/