Michael Riccardi

September 08, 1999 | Law.com

A one-year jail sentence has been upheld in the case of a defendant who refused to sign a risk-assessment form under the New York version of Megan's Law. In what is apparently a case of first impression, an Appellate Term panel in the Second Department unanimously ruled that the statute requiring convicted sex offenders to report their whereabouts to law enforcement authorities does not run afoul of constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.

By Michael Riccardi

3 minute read

December 02, 2005 | The Legal Intelligencer

The state Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether alumni of the Milton Hershey School for dependent and at-risk children have standing to challenge a reform agreement between the state attorney general and the trust company running the school.

By Michael Riccardi

2 minute read

July 30, 1999 | Law.com

The country's largest specialty finance firm has agreed to limit the rates it charges New Yorkers who sell their right to receive structured settlements in exchange for a lump-sum payment, State AG Eliot Spitzer announced Thursday. The agreement, the first of its kind in the nation, also commits the J.G. Wentworth firm of Delaware to complying with the state's plain language law in drafting contracts. The agreement, Spitzer said, should serve as a template for conduct in the specialty finance industry.

By Michael Riccardi

4 minute read

July 08, 1999 | Law.com

A New York judge refused to certify a class action by persons who claim they contracted cancer as a result of smoking, saying that individual considerations "overwhelm" common questions in the case. The judge denied the motion to proceed as a class, holding that the case fails to satisfy civil procedure rules for class actions, i.e., the proposed case must present a predominance of common questions, and a class action must be a superior way to handle the parties' legal claims.

By Michael Riccardi

5 minute read

July 22, 1999 | Law.com

A dispute between a best-selling author and the Torah scholars who customized software enabling him to "decode" the first five books of the Bible will be decided under Israeli law, a Manhattan judge has ruled. Michael Drosnin, whose book The Bible Code has made best-seller lists in the United States and abroad, was sued by an Israeli company called Torah Soft Ltd. when he allegedly failed, as agreed, to mention the company in the first edition of the book.

By Michael Riccardi

4 minute read

May 26, 1999 | Law.com

A federal court jury took two hours last week to return a $2.7 million verdict against Kmart for an accident where a 76-year-old woman broke her hip as a stack of soda toppled and fell on her. The jury handed down its decision after a three-day trial before an Eastern District judge. Last year, Flavia Litrenta was shopping at a Pa. Kmart, leaving with her husband as a soda display standing at least eight feet tall fell down on her, says the plaintiffs lawyer.

By Michael Riccardi

3 minute read

September 17, 1999 | Law.com

A New York judge for the first time has certified a class action on behalf of persons with no disease but seeking medical monitoring because of their exposure to an alleged dangerous drug. Certification was granted to a class consisting of about one million New York consumers who took the diet drug cocktail known as fen-phen. The Manhattan Supreme Court justice became the eighth state court judge nationally to greenlight a claim seeking a medical monitoring program for former users of the diet drug.

By Michael Riccardi

3 minute read

August 31, 1999 | Law.com

A labor union is being pulled in as a defendant in a class-action age discrimination suit brought by some of its own members over a 1993 round of layoffs at the Great Neck, N.Y., headquarters of Unisys Corp. In a case of first impression in the Second Circuit, Eastern District Judge Arthur D. Spatt said last week that a labor union may be responsible for age discrimination when the employer carries out a discriminatory policy included in a negotiated contract.

By Michael Riccardi

3 minute read

August 04, 1999 | Law.com

For the second time in two weeks, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has limited the effect of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion allowing federal trial judges to rely on the "harmless error" doctrine to avoid overturning sentences because of a failure to notify the accused of appeal rights. The panel said the defendant's knowledge of the appeal right, gained from a separate, previous trial, did not make the failure to notify him harmless in a case where the sentence followed a guilty plea.

By Michael Riccardi

4 minute read

July 29, 1999 | Law.com

A Manhattan Supreme Court justice has dramatically downsized a lawsuit in which plaintiffs claimed that workers' compensation insurers and their trade organization engaged in an "industry-wide" conspiracy to artificially inflate premiums charged to policyholders. The decision by Justice Ira Gammerman leaves standing only causes of action for breach of contract against 12 insurance companies that actually wrote policies for the 17 plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

By Michael Riccardi

4 minute read