NAACP challenges SC in test of legal practice limits, another Obama appointee to resign early, Archegos founder must face fraud charges, and more ??
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A South Carolina civil rights organization is challenging rules that it says would block it from training volunteers who are not lawyers to give limited legal advice to tenants facing eviction in the state.
The South Carolina State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)?sued?the state's attorney general in federal court in Charleston, arguing that applying South Carolina's unauthorized practice of law rules to its planned program would violate speech and association rights protected by the First Amendment.
The group is asking the court to bar the state from enforcing the rules against its efforts to give ''free, accurate and limited legal advice'' to help low-income South Carolinians, the lawsuit said.
The program would train and certify ''advocates'' to offer limited advice that has been vetted by housing lawyers, it said. The volunteers would help advise tenants on whether and how they should request a hearing on an eviction action and identify possible defenses.
A federal judge in New Jersey has announced plans to resign in September, becoming the latest appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama to leave the bench early before reaching retirement age.
U.S. District Judge John Vazquez, 52, disclosed his plans in a notice posted on the?judiciary's vacancies website, becoming the sixth Obama-appointed judge since August to resign or announce plans to do so before hitting age 65.
The judges' departures are unlikely to tilt the courts ideologically, since Democratic President Joe Biden can nominate their successors. Experts say financial factors might explain why some judges choose to leave lifetime positions early.
''That late-40s to early-50s range is around when some people's kids reach college age, and the reality of paying college tuition kicks in,'' said John Collins, a law professor at George Washington University.
The reasons for Vasquez's resignation were not immediately clear. He had been a partner at the law firm Critchley, Kinum & Vazquez prior to the Senate confirming him to a position as a district court judge in January 2016.
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A U.S. judge denied Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang's effort to dismiss an indictment accusing him of fraud in the collapse of his once-$36 billion firm.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan rejected arguments that the 11-count indictment should be tossed because prosecutors deceived Hwang into cooperating with their probe and because Hwang's trading activity had been lawful.
Long before?his arrest?last April,?Hwang said federal prosecutors had viewed him?as the mastermind of a vast market manipulation scheme, and induced him during several interviews and meetings over six months to divulge his defense strategy.
But the judge said prosecutorial misconduct could justify a dismissal only if it substantially influenced the grand jury's decision to indict or there was 'grave doubt' that there was no such influence.
A key prosecution witness whose testimony helped convict Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes of fraud sued Walt Disney over a recent Hulu miniseries that he says defamed him by portraying him as corrupt.
Adam Rosendorff, a former Theranos lab director, objected in a New York state court filing to a fictional character who held the same job in ''The Dropout,'' which starred Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, chronicling her rise and fall at the blood-testing startup.
According to Rosendorff, the portrayal has had a ''devastating effect'' on his reputation and career as a physician because media and even acquaintances have concluded that Roessler was based on him.
''At the time of the trial, (Rosendorff) was considered a heroic whistle-blower, a witness who was instrumental in the jury’s verdict convicting Holmes. Now he has been falsely portrayed as a perjurer, a criminal, and of being completely unfit to practice his profession,'' the filing said.
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