Garchitorena succumbs to brain tumor.
Byline: JOEL ATENCIO & EDMER PANESA Former Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Francis E. Garchitorena died of brain tumor at 8:45 p.m. last Friday at the Makati Medical Center. He was 67. He is survived by his wife, Victoria, former chief of the Presidential Management Staff, and...

Too little, too late: ineffective assistance of counsel, the duty to investigate, and pretrial discovery in criminal cases.
Where money is involved, all parties receive all relevant information from their adversaries upon request; but where individual liberty is at stake, such information can be either withheld by the prosecutor or parceled out at a time when it produces the least benefit to the accused. (1) ...

President Arroyo's personal sacrifice.
NOW that President Arroyo has decided to junk her presidential plan for 2004 - a personal sacrifice to put the government in shape - opportunist official rats will begin scampering away to abandon the administration ship knowing it will end its sail in one and a half years. No...

How Sandigan?s special court came to be.
THE matter repeatedly discussed in the media and elsewhere by the pro-Erap partisans as one of the causes of Erap?s disillusion at our judiciary today was publicly reiterated by former Erap?s PNP Chief, now opposition senator, Panfilo Lacson. He charged that the special court, created in Sandigan to try...

RTC denies motion for reconsideration.
In a two-page order issued by Judge Eugenio A. de la Cruz, the RTC ruled that there is no cogent reason for the trial court to reverse its earlier resolution that dismissed "for being moot and academic" the petition filed by the group of retired Col. Luvin S. Manay....

Jail term of 'drunk' driver quashed.
Byline: Kartikeya MUMBAI: A sessions court on Monday set aside a ten-day jail sentence in a case of drunken driving after the arrested motorist argued that the principles of natural justice had not been followed by the magistrate's court while passing the order. Shivdas Pillai...

Criminal law - First Circuit upholds constitutionality of juvenile convictions as predicate offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Criminal Law--First Circuit Upholds Constitutionality of Juvenile Convictions as Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act--United States v. Matthews, 498 F.3d 25 (1st Cir. 2007) The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is a recidivist statute that punishes repeated criminal behavior. (1) Specifically, the ACCA enhances the...

Low Cost Airline News - Europe.
Oct 15, 2007 Air Berlin Air Berlin will close some routes from its London Stansted hub next month, twice-daily service to Manchester, Glasgow International and Belfast City will be shut down. Air Berlin handles 1.2 million passengers annually at the airport, its second-largest hub outside Germany after Palma de...

Artery lacerated in angioplasty: verdict for defendants.
CASE ON POINT: Beerman v. Covenant Health Care-Cooper, No. 261978 (Mich. App. 12/19/2006) N.W.2d -MI ISSUE: Juries do not always return the verdicts we may expect. This is so whether such verdicts are for or against persons who are allegedly victims of medical malpractice. Courts often affirm...

Preparation of the trial lawyer for mediation.
The entire legal profession--lawyers, judges, law teachers--has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be 'healers of conflict.' For many claims, trials by adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle...