[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit [official website] on Friday dismissed [decision, PDF] a shareholder suit against government-sponsored lender Fannie Mae [corporate website] for alleged wrongdoing by the board of directors. Shareholders accused the board of failing to take appropriate steps in 2004 to prevent accounting violations, and also asserted that the board should not have approved $31 million in severance benefits for two officers who resigned as a result of the violations. Upholding the district court's decision [JURIST report], the DC Circuit held that it had the authority [US Code § 1723] to hear claims against Fannie Mae, but that the appellants were not excused from making demand on the board [FRCP Rule 23.1 text] prior to filing suit. Judge Kavanaugh commented, "The story of Fannie Mae told by these reports is disturbing." Later in the opinion, he wrote:

According to plaintiffs, the complaint alleges that the directors crossed that line by failing to adequately respond to several “red flags”: (1) a $200 million audit difference originating in 1998; (2) a whistleblower’s complaints that Fannie Mae was improperly manipulating earnings; (3) signs that Fannie Mae management was using improper hedge accounting practices; and (4) sister company Freddie Mac’s disclosure in 2003 that it had understated profits. We disagree that these allegations create a“substantial likelihood” of personal liability for the directors. On each claim, the Board or its relevant committee looked into the matter and relied on internal or external accounting experts and officials responsible for those matters. [citations omitted]

[JURIST] According to high-level supporters on Friday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf [official website; JURIST news archive] has affirmed his June vow [Dawn report] that he will neither step down nor go into exile, despite the recent pressure from opposition forces. Secretary General of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q [party website] party Mushahid Hussain said that Musharraf will fight against impeachment, with plans to portray himself as an honest leader in comparison to Pakistan People's Party (PPP) head Asif Ali Zardari [BBC profile] and Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) head Nawaz Sharif [JURIST news archive], both of whom have faced corruption accusations in the past. On Thursday, Pakistan's coalition government said that it would push to impeach Musharraf [JURIST report], a move that would require the endorsement of two-thirds of legislators in a joint session of parliament. The New York Times has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

PPP and coalition partner PML-N officials have disagreed [JURIST report] on how to limit or amend Musharraf's powers, with the PML-N generally favoring resignation or impeachment and the PPP favoring working with Musharraf to improve the country's political system. PPP leaders took a tougher stance in June, stating that Musharraf was only president by default and warning that if he did not step down, the parliament would impeach him [The News report]. The PML-N then called for Musharraf's impeachment [JURIST report] and released a "charge sheet" outlining misuse of presidential authority, including the dismissal of the country's superior court judges. Also in June, PML-N leader and former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif [JURIST news archive] called for Musharraf to be tried for treason [JURIST report], labeling him a traitor disloyal to Pakistan and saying he should be punished for the "damage" that he has done to the country in the years since he led a military coup [BBC backgrounder] and unseated Sharif in 1999.

[JURIST] An August 17 trial date has been set for five Sudanese men accused of killing John Granville, an aid worker affiliated with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [official website], Sudan's state media reported Friday. Following the January shooting of John Granville and his driver, a previously-unknown extremist group calling itself Ansar al-Tawhid [VOA report] claimed responsibility for the shootings. Granville was the first US diplomat killed in Sudan since the deaths of US Ambassador Cleo Noel and US Embassy staffer George Curtis Moore [Arlington Cemetery memorials] in 1973. Reuters has more.

Granville's death has been cited as an example of the increasing dangers faced by US diplomats abroad. In June, Zimbabwean police detained US and UK diplomatic envoys [JURIST report] for several hours at a roadblock Thursday, threatening them and beating one of their drivers, in what US Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee described as an "illegal action." US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the Zimbabwean government's actions had "flouted all international convention" [press briefing, video]. Zimbabwean officials said that the detention was for the convoy members' safety after they left a rally that had turned violent.

[JURIST] US District Judge James Robertson on Thursday ruled [opinion, PDF] in a 12-year class action lawsuit [plaintiffs website; JURIST news archive] concerning the US government's alleged mismanagement of trust funds for a group of some 500,000 Native Americans. Plaintiffs led by Eloise Cobell had argued that the federal government owed them $58 billion, representing its profits from land use violative of trust terms, but the government said that only $455.6 million was missing from the account. Robertson accepted the government's number, finding that the method used to calculate the $58 billion figure was inaccurate and that there was no evidence of active fraud by the US Department of the Interior [official website]:

My conclusions, after attempting to apply a suitably adjusted set of equitable principles to the facts of this case, are that plaintiffs have properly asserted a claim for restitution; that this Court has both the jurisdiction and the power to adjudicate that claim; and that the evidence supports an award in the amount of $455,600,000, a number that is within the range of the government's own admitted "uncertainty" about the amount necessary to restore the proper balance to the IIM trust. I have rejected the plaintiffs' claim of entitlement to an additional sum representing "benefit to the government."

[JURIST] The aerospace division of Honeywell International [corporate website] has agreed [settlement, PDF] to pay $5 million in fines and $1 million for a cleanup project for environmental violations at its Phoenix, Arizona facility, according to a Thursday release [PDF text] from Arizona officials. In the lawsuit [PDF text], the state had alleged that the Honeywell had committed 38 infractions of state environmental laws [statute materials], including the Arizona Water Quality Control Act, Arizona Hazardous Waste Disposal Act, and the Arizona Underground Storage Tank Act, over the past 30 years. In the joint release from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and Attorney General [official website], the state asserted that the company had improperly stored numerous hazardous materials and failed to report incidents of ground water contamination, but Honeywell maintains that it is not liable for the violations. AP has more. The Arizona Republic has local coverage.

In June, the US Department of Justice filed a complaint [PDF text; JURIST report] in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against Honeywell, alleging that the company knowingly sold more than 1,700 defective bulletproof vests to US law enforcement and military agencies during a five-year period. The DOJ also accused Honeywell of hiding knowledge that its patented Zylon [NASA backgrounder] fabric, which was used in the vests, would deteriorate over time, alleging that Honeywell pressured vests manufacturer Armor Holdings [corporate website] not to warn customers of this defect. Honeywell denied the allegations.

[JURIST] An Indian Supreme Court judge on Friday withdrew from hearing a judicial bribery case [IANS report] after lawyers accused the court of protecting corrupt judges. Justice B.N. Agrawal [official profile] said that he refused to consider unsubstantiated accusations against the court, adding that the behavior of the accusers, former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan [Rediff interview] and his son Prashant Bhushan [Outlook archive], was "contemptuous" toward the court. Two other high court justices declined to step down, and Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan [official profile] will decide how the case will proceed without Agrawal. The case at issue involves allegations that judges embezzled 70 million Rupees from the Ghaziabad district court treasury between 2001 and 2007. Calcutta News has more.

In April, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [official website] called for the establishment of special courts [JURIST report] to deal specifically with corruption charges. Balakrishnan later told reporters that Singh did not mean that the judiciary itself was corrupt, but rather that it has to deal with a large number of cases brought by the Central Bureau of Investigation [official website]. In response to questions about checks against possible judicial corruption, Balakrishnan told reporters that Supreme Court [official website] justices are required to submit an accounting of their assets when they assume their post and to amend that accounting when they acquire new property. He also said that because justice positions are constitutional rather than governmental, this asset list and some other information on the justices were not publicly available through India's Right to Information Act [RTI materials], but that the Indian Parliament [official website] did have the power to enact laws requiring more judicial accountability if they chose to.

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Thursday filed a lawsuit [materials; press release] challenging a so-called "sore loser" election law [SC Code Ann. § 7-11-10 text] in South Carolina. Under the law, a candidate that seeks a nomination from multiple parties will be banned from appearing on the ballot if any one of those parties rejects his candidacy. The ACLU is representing Eugene Platt [campaign website], a candidate for the state House who won the endorsement of the Green Party but not the Democratic Party. The South Carolina Election Commission [official website] blocked Platt from running as the Green Party candidate. The ACLU argues that the "sore loser" law violates the right to free association guaranteed by the First Amendment [text] of the US Constitution. The Post and Courier has local coverage. The Fort Mill Times has additional coverage.

In January, the ACLU of Michigan [advocacy website] filed a federal suit challenging a Michigan election law [JURIST report] that limited access to information on presidential primary voters to the Democratic and Republican parties. The complaint [text, PDF] alleged that Section 615c [text] of the Michigan Election Law [text] was unconstitutional because it excludes other smaller parties, as well as individuals, citizen groups and news media, from seeing lists of voter preferences and gives preference only to the two major parties in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Fourteenth Amendment [Cornell Law backgrounders]. In March, a federal judge struck down [JURIST report] the Michigan law.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website] on Thursday dismissed [opinion text] a claim brought by the mother of a special education student that her child's Fourth and Fourteenth amendment [text] rights were violated when he was given "timeouts." Jennifer Couture sued the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) [official website] and three individual school officials for placing her child, referred to as M.C. by the court, in a secluded room in order to control his behavior. M.C. suffers from severe mental and emotional health problems, and in 2002 he was placed in a special education program designed to control his repeated outbursts. The Court ruled that the district court erred in not granting qualified immunity to the three individual defendants:

Temporarily removing M.C., given the threat he often posed to the emotional, psychological, and physical safety of the students and teachers, was eminently reasonable...We therefore find that there was no Fourth Amendment violation here, and that the three individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on this claim.

The district court found that the timeouts were designed both to punish M.C., and to educate him. Under either rationale, there has been no constitutional violation...To determine what process is due, courts must balance: (1) the private interests that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of erroneous deprivation; and (3) the burden on the government from additional procedural requirements... We are reluctant to limit a teacher’s ability to manage her classroom by requiring her to give the student a “hearing” of some form.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit [official website] ruled [decision, PDF] Thursday that in a mixed-motive employment discrimination case, the plaintiff must show he or she objectively met minimum requirements for the job. The issue had not been addressed by other circuits, and came before the court in a lawsuit by former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) [official website] employee Wagih Makky, who alleged that he had been inappropriately placed on unpaid administrative leave because of his status as an Egyptian Muslim, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [statute text]. Makky had designed security protocols for TSA but was placed on unpaid administrative leave in 2005 after an administrative board had denied his renewal request for top secret security clearance [DSS backgrounder], a prerequisite for his position. The court held that because he lacked this necessary qualification, it could not address whether or not there was another, discriminatory reason for his dismissal:

Makky does not dispute that his position required him to have access to National Security Information. The lack of a security clearance in a position such as Makky’s is akin to the lack of a license in a position such as a medical doctor because without a security clearance Makky’s subjective qualifications are irrelevant. A security clearance is the minimum requirement needed to hold Makky’s position. Thus, as of January 2005, when Makky’s clearance was suspended, he was not qualified on the most basic level to perform his job.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] on Thursday affirmed [opinion text] the dismissal of a shareholder securities suit against Biogen Idec [corporate website], in which the class of plaintiffs accused directors of violating the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 [text] by intentionally misrepresenting the safety of its multiple-sclerosis drug, Tysabri [informational website], in order to sell their shares at high prices, resulting in proceeds in excess of $84 million. In affirming the district court's ruling that the plaintiffs did not plead facts giving rise to a strong inference of scienter in accordance with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 [text] the Court of Appeals held:

Here, we have already discounted the inferences of scienter from claims about failure to disclose the risk of non-PML opportunistic infections and of safety concerns with combination therapy. Even if defendants' statements were arguably misleading, plaintiffs have not sufficiently alleged that the statements were intentionally so; that is, that defendants had any reason to know their statements were misleading before February 18, 2005, the day of the meeting where the defendants first learned of the PML diagnoses. Thus, any insider trading which occurred during the class period until February 18, 2005 cannot be used to support a strong inference of scienter, since "[i]nsider trading cannot establish scienter on its own." [citations omitted]

[JURIST] Guantanamo Bay detainee Djamel Ameziane [advocacy profile, DOC] Wednesday filed a complaint [DOC text; press release] against the US with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) [governing statute; official website], alleging that he had been tortured, given inadequate medical treatment, and denied other basic rights. The complaint was filed on Ameziane's behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Justice and International Law [advocacy websites], and was the first to be brought by a detainee. The groups contend that Ameziane's treatment violates conditions of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man [materials] and that Ameziane has been denied timely review of his habeas corpus petition by the US, despite the US Supreme Court ruling [text; JURIST report] in Boumediene v. Bush, where it held that detainees have the right to bring such petitions. The advocacy groups stated:

Djamel Ameziane is a prisoner at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held virtually incommunicado, without charge or judicial review of his detention, for six and a half years. While arbitrarily and indefinitely detained by the United States at Guantánamo, Mr. Ameziane has been physically and psychologically tortured, denied medical care for health conditions resulting from his confinement, prevented from practicing his religion without interference and insult, and deprived of developing his private and family life. The stigma of Guantánamo will continue to impact his life long after he is released from the prison. These harms, as well as the denial of any effective legal recourse to seek accountability and reparations for the violations he has suffered, constitute violations of fundamental rights under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (“American Declaration”). The U.S. government, as a signatory to the Declaration, is obliged to respect these rights vis-à-vis Mr. Ameziane by virtue of holding him as its prisoner.