Hertz Rental Car Customers to Receive Refunds

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

Hertz Rental Customers to Receive Refunds of certain PlatePass fees and related charges incurred under proposed class action settlement

THIS NOTICE PROVIDES LIMITED INFORMATION ABOUT A CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT.
A settlement has been reached with The Hertz Corporation, American Traffic Solutions, Inc. and PlatePass LLC, in a class action titled Susan Doherty et al., v. The Hertz Corporation et al., Case No. 1:10-CV-00359-NLH-KMW (USDC, DNJ). Hertz car rental customers may be eligible for a cash benefit under the settlement if they rented a vehicle from Hertz between July 1, 2006 and March 31, 2010, used the PlatePass® electronic toll payment service and paid PlatePass service fees (f/k/a administrative fees).

The full Class Notice and a Claim Form can be found at the settlement website, www.HertzPlatePassSettlement.com, or a copy requested by calling toll-free 1-866-561-8706. Class members can submit a Claim online at www.HertzPlatePassSettlement.com or by mail. The Claim Deadline is November 21, 2013. A class member who desires to be represented by his own lawyer may hire one at his own expense and may enter an appearance with the Court.

CLASS MEMBERS WHO DO NOT WISH TO BE PART OF, OR WHO OBJECT TO, THIS SETTLEMENT, may exclude themselves or file an objection with the Court. To be excluded, class members must mail a Request for Exclusion so it is received no later than September 24, 2013, to: Hertz PlatePass Settlement Administrator, c/o Dahl Administration, P.O. Box 3615, Minneapolis, MN 55403-0615. If a class member does not submit a written Request for Exclusion, all of the Court's orders will apply to that person and that person will be bound by the Final Approval Order and Judgment in the class action, and that person will not be able to file, maintain or be part of any other lawsuit against the Defendants concerning the settled claims.

To object to the settlement, a class member must file an objection with the Court by no later than September 24, 2013. The Court, located at Mitchell H. Cohen Building & U.S. Courthouse, 4th & Cooper Streets, Camden, NJ 08101, will conduct a hearing on whether to approve the settlement and will determine what fees and expenses should be awarded to Class Counsel. The Final Approval Hearing is presently scheduled for October 15, 2013, but may be changed.

Go to.... www.HertzPlatePassSettlement.com

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Russia Grants Snowden 1-year Asylum to Live in Russia

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

Edward Snowden, the fugitive former U.S. security contractor, left the transit zone at Moscow’s international airport Thursday after Russian authorities granted him temporary asylum.

Anatoly Kucherena, an attorney for Snowden, said documents were issued Thursday allowing Snowden to live and work in Russia for up to one year while his application for permanent political asylum is pending. Snowden, 30, had been stranded in Russia’s Sheremetyevo Airport for more than five weeks.

“I have just seen him off. He has left for a secure location,” Kucherena told the state broadcaster Russia 24.

Kucherena described Snowden as “the most wanted man on the planet” and said he “needed time to adapt to Russian realities.”

In Washington, lawmakers reacted furiously to Russia’s action, warning of serious repercussions in U.S.-Russian relations.

Read More.... http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/snowden-leaves-moscow-airport-to-live-in-russia/2013/08/01/2f2d1aba-faa9-11e2-a369-d1954abcb7e3_story.html?hpid=z1

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Law Offices of Jonathan Franklin
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Cleveland Kidnapper Castro's Sentencing

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

"life without parole plus an additional 1,000 years"

A former school bus driver being sentenced Thursday for kidnapping three women and subjecting them to years of sexual and physical abuse left behind a letter that said "I'm a sexual predator," an FBI agent testified.

Prosecutors detailed Ariel Castro's assaults and law enforcement witnesses described the jury-rigged prison he built in his ramshackle home. With the possibility of the death penalty for a forced miscarriage taken off the table, Castro stands to get life in prison plus 1,000 years.

FBI agent Andrew Burke said Castro turned his house into a prison by creating a makeshift alarm system and chaining them inside bolted bedrooms.

Bedroom windows were boarded shut from the inside with heavy closet doors and doorknobs had been removed and replaced with multiple locks, he said. The house was divided in ways to make it more secure and to hide the existence of rooms, he said.

Burke also testified that Castro would occasionally pay his victims after raping them. But he then would require them to pay him if they wanted something special from the store.

A police officer who helped rescue the women said one was reluctant to come out of her room even when she saw the officers. They were scared even after they were taken out of the house and quickly began sharing details about the horrors they went through, saying that they had been starved and beaten.

Responding to questions from prosecutors, Cleveland police detective Andrew Harasimchuk said that the women all described a pattern of being physically, sexually and emotionally assaulted for years. He said all three women were abducted after Castro offered them a ride and that each was chained in his basement and sexually assaulted within a few hours of being kidnapped.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said in a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday that Castro, who fed his captives only one meal a day, "admits his disgusting and inhuman conduct" but "remains remorseless for his actions."

The memorandum described a diary kept by one of the women.
                        "The entries speak of forced sexual conduct, of being locked in a dark room, of anticipating the next session of abuse, of the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family, of being chained to a wall, of being held like a prisoner of war ... of being treated like an animal," it says.

The sentencing could take up to four hours, court officials said, with Castro, his attorneys, his victims and prosecution witnesses getting a chance to speak. The legal team representing the women's interests declined to comment on whether they would testify or send statements to the court.

Prosecutors used a model of the house where Castro, 53, imprisoned the women to present their case. They also showed photos taken from inside the disheveled home.

The women quickly escaped after Amanda Berry kicked out the door panel on May 6 and Castro was arrested within hours. The women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

Some horrific details of the women's ordeal had already emerged, including tales of being chained to poles in the basement or a bedroom heater or inside a van, with one woman forced to wear a motorcycle helmet while chained in the basement and, after she tried to escape, having a vacuum cord wrapped around her neck.

Castro repeatedly starved and beat one of the victims each time she was pregnant, forcing her to miscarry five times.

He forced the same woman on threat of death to safely deliver the child he fathered with another victim on Christmas Day 2006. The same day, prosecutors say, Castro raped the woman who helped deliver his daughter.

As part of his plea deal, Castro was to receive a sentence of life with no chance of parole for aggravated murder in the forced miscarriage. He would then receive 1,000 years for the kidnapping, rape, assault and other charges.

Sentenced to life without parole on charge - Castro argues with Judge about charges.  Ariel Casto to 10 years for each count of rape - sentencing still ongoing for remaining charges.  937 in all, including kidnapping, rape, assault and aggravated murder. 

See Video and Read More.... http://www.wsbtv.com/ap/ap/crime/sentencing-set-in-cleveland-kidnap-rape-case/nY9h8/

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SAG-AFTRA Moves to Partially Dismiss Ed Asner Foreign Levies Lawsuit

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

SAG-AFTRA filed a pair of motions Wednesday in federal court that, if granted, would reduce the scope of a pending lawsuit by Ed Asner and others but not shut down the litigation altogether. The motions allege that the case is a “rerun” of an earlier one and contains “florid and disconnected allegations” and material that is “prejudicial and not material or pertinent.”

If granted, the union’s motions would leave portions of the suit standing but would significantly reduce the dollar value of the litigation. “This is not the 'big' case that Plaintiffs portray,” says the motion to dismiss. “At most, it is a speculative claim by no more than 17 of the 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA that they may be owed a very small amount of money.”

The suit, which alleges improprieties in the union’s foreign levies and residuals programs, was filed in May but has essentially lain dormant since then. The union’s motions to dismiss and to strike are the first action in the case since then.'

The motion to dismiss has several parts. One asserts that the foreign royalty claims are essentially a repeat of allegations that were settled in 2010 in separate litigation brought by Leave it to Beaver’s Ken Osmond. That was a class-action suit whose settlement was binding on a vast number of performers – including, says SAG-AFTRA, all but three of the plaintiffs in the current suit. Those three opted out of the Osmond settlement.

“While it is generally a good thing when a theatrical or television production is rerun – indeed, such reruns generate the very income that is the subject of this litigation – the opposite is true in litigation,” says the motion to dismiss. “In the legal realm, bringing the same claim again after it was resolved, as plaintiffs have done here, is barred by res judicata.”

That Latin phrase is lawyer language that means that you can’t re-raise claims that were already resolved in another case. And, says the union’s motion, res judicata applies even where the earlier case was resolved in state court and the new one is in federal court. Also irrelevant, says the motion, is that the earlier case was resolved by a settlement rather than a trial.

If granted, this portion of the motion would leave the current litigation with three plaintiffs as to foreign royalties issues. However, all plaintiffs would apparently remain as to claims related to residuals, since that was not a subject of the Osmond case.

Another aspect of the motion to dismiss relates to the breadth of language in the complaint, which seeks relief in various places for all members and, in some places, for non-members as well. According to the motion, the plaintiffs have no standing to seek relief for anyone other than themselves. (The case is not pled as a class action.)

The complaint also has language that ranges back in time to 2002 and even earlier. Here, the motion to dismiss argues that the statutes of limitations partially bar the claims.

Read More....  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sag-aftra-moves-partially-dismiss-597351

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Big 'Kung Fu Panda' Lawsuit, A Win for DreamWorks

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

On the verge of a trial, artist Jayme Gordon suddenly withdraws his claim that his work was stolen to make the 2008 blockbuster.

The studio was staring at a potential trial later this year over artist Jayme Gordon's claim that DWA stole his work to create Kung Fu Panda, which grossed $630 million worldwide at the box office in 2008 and spawned a sequel. Unlike many other copyright plaintiffs, Gordon had the rare fortune of surviving a summary judgment motion in April, setting up the potentially big showdown in a Massachusetts federal court.

Tuesday, Gordon suddenly backed off. He agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice -- meaning it can't be brought again -- and, according to court documents, he will get no settlement money. The dismissal papers also make clear he got no compensation of any kind.

In the lawsuit, Gordon said he developed the "Kung Fu Panda property" in the 1990s and his work featured "a Kung Fu fighting giant panda who likes to eat; his companion, a rare small red panda who also is a Kung Fu fighter; and a Kung Fu fighting super group known as the 'Five Fists of Fury' that consists of a tiger, crane, mantis, monkey and a venomless snake."

Perhaps most impressive was his 2000 copyright registration and the side-by-side comparison that was offered in his complaint.

Gordon maintained that his work was original. For example, in a deposition in May 2012, he was asked whether he ever took elements from other people's cartoons.

"No, I wouldn't say I took elements, no," he responded.

"So … your works are all original and aren't based on any preexisting cartoons by anybody else?" the defendants' lawyer asked.

Gordon responded: "I grew up drawing a lot of different cartoon characters, so how I interpret things or something down the line, but no, no directly -- I didn't directly take elements from something, no, not that I was ever aware of."

But lawyers for DreamWorks believe they discovered otherwise. The team from Loeb & Loeb was about to submit a motion to dismiss the case based on uncovered evidence of a 1996 Disney coloring book they believe was obviously traced by Gordon. And they had their own side-by-side presentation ready.

Before the motion to dismiss could be filed, Gordon agreed to drop the case.

Source..... http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/dreamworks-animation-wins-big-kung-597254

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Breast Cancer, Parkinson’s, Autism, Alzheimer, Birth Defects, Now Linked to Glyphosate/Roundup Monsanto's GMO's per Scientists

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:  

Another credible study can be added to the list of research that shows how Monsanto’s glyphosate, otherwise known as ’roundup herbicide’ can be hazardous to human health. This time, its been linked to birth defects. Roundup, also known as Glyphosate is a herbicide used to kill weeds. It started to be used en mass by farmers when they realized they could spray it without killing their crops. Of course these are herbicide resistant genetically modified (GMO) crops that have been designed to be resistant to the herbicide.

A group of scientists put together a comprehensive review of existing data that shows how European regulators have known that Monsanto’s glyphosate causes a number of birth malformations since at least 2002. Regulators misled the public about glyphosate’s safety, and in Germany the Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety told the European Commission that there was no evidence to suggest that glyphosate causes birth defects(3).

This study was published by Earth Open Sources, which is an organization that uses open source collaboration to advance sustainable food production. The report was headed by Dr M. Antoniou, Head Gene Expression and Therapy Group, from the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at King’s College London School of Medicine, UK. Dr. Antoniou was joined by 6 other doctors who have a similar biography. The report provides a comprehensive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature documenting the serious health hazards posed by glyphosate and Roundup herbicide formulations. http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/Roundup-and-birth-defects/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5.pdf

Our examination of the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the current approval of glyphosate and Roundup is deeply flawed and unreliable. In this report, we examine the industry studies and regulatory documents that led to the approval of glyphosate. We show that industry and regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s and 1990s that glyphosate causes malformation – but that this information was not made public. We demonstrate how EU regulators reasoned their way from clear evidence of glyphosate’s teratogenicity in industry’s own studies to a conclusion that minimized these findings in the EU Commission’s final review report (3)(4).

Summary of Report
Multiple peer-reviewed scientific literature documenting serious health hazards posed by glyphosate
Industry (including Monsanto) has known since the 1980′s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses
Industry has known since 1993 that these effects could also occur at lower and mid doses
The German government has known since at least 1998 that glyphosate causes malformations
The EU Commission’s expert scientific review panel knew in 1999 that glyphosate causes malformations
The EU Commission has known since 2002 that glyphosate causes malformations. This was the year DG SANCO division published its final review report, laying out the basis for the current approval of glyphosate

More Evidence
The report mentioned above outlines an enormous amount of evidence to support the claim that glyphosate is hazardous to human health, but it’s never a bad idea to provide more. Multiple studies are making their way into the public domain that illustrate just how hazardous Monsanto’s glyphosate could possibly be.

Here is another study that shows Glyphosate can cause abnormalities. It was published in 2010 by the American Chemical Society, the research was conducted at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The direct effect of glyphosate on early mechanisms of morphogenesis in vertebrate embryos opens concerns about the clinical findings from human offspring in populations exposed to glyphosate in agricultural fields (5)

Not too long ago, a groundbreaking study revealed that Glyphosate is responsible for fuelling breast cancer by increasing the number of breast cancer cells through cell growth and cell division (1), you can read more about that here... http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/14/groundbreaking-study-links-monsantos-glyphosate-to-cancer/  It was also determined that Glyphosate can cause Autism, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease (2), you can read more about that here...  http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/05/10/new-study-links-monsantos-roundup-to-autism-parkinsons-and-alzheimers/  What might be more alarming in recent news is that the EPA raised its allowable concentration of Monsanto’s glyphosate on food crops. You can read more about that here... http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/19/epa-raises-allowable-concentrations-of-monsantos-glyphosate-on-food-crops/

Read More and See More Sources..... http://worldtruth.tv/scientists-link-monsantos-glyphosate-to-birth-defects/

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Zimmerman Gets Warning for Speeding in Dallas Texas

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

East of Dallas police stopped Zimmerman on Sunday as he drove west on U.S. 80, about 20 miles east of Dallas in Forney. A police dashcam video released Wednesday shows an officer interacting with Zimmerman and letting him go with a warning.

The officer, who was not identified, asks Zimmerman, "Where you headed this weekend?"

After an unintelligible response, the officer asks, "Nowhere in particular? Why you say that?"

"You didn't see my name?" Zimmerman replies.

"Nuh-uh," the officer says.

"What a coincidence!" the officer adds. "Are you clear of warrants and stuff?"

"Absolutely sir," Zimmerman says.

Zimmerman then says something else unintelligible and the officer responds, "Calm down man, you're good."

The officer then tells him, "I'm going to go back (to check his license), and why don't you slow down a little bit for me. We'll let you off with a warning."

After an unintelligible response from Zimmerman, the officer says, "Just take it easy. Go ahead and shut your glove compartment. Don't play with your firearm."

Although the officer's comments indicated Zimmerman had a gun, a weapon can't be seen and it's not clear that he had one. However, Zimmerman had a concealed weapons permit in Florida that would be also recognized under Texas law. The gun used in Martin's shooting remains in the custody of the federal government, which is looking into a possible civil rights case.

After returning Zimmerman's driver's license, the officer says, "All right, sir. Slow down." He wishes Zimmerman a safe trip.

The speed limit on that stretch of road is 60 mph, but police records do not show how fast Zimmerman was driving, City Manager Brian Brooks said. Police handled Zimmerman as they would have any other motorist in a comparable situation and gave him no special treatment, Brooks said.

The city manager repeatedly declined to identify the officer involved in the traffic stop.

"He obviously didn't expect to pull over George Zimmerman. I don't think he wants the notoriety," Brooks said.

Shawn Vincent, a spokesman for Zimmerman's legal team, said the attorneys had not been able to confirm the account of Zimmerman's road stop independently, but he said he had no reason not to believe the report.

"Anytime his life intersects with anyone now, somehow that's news," Vincent said. "How many people, when they get a warning, become a national headline?"

Vincent would not discuss what Zimmerman was doing in Texas or say anything about Zimmerman's current location, citing safety concerns.

See Video.... http://www.tmz.com/2013/07/31/george-zimmerman-speeding-traffic-stop-gun-firearm-texas/

Read More.... http://news.yahoo.com/george-zimmerman-stopped-speeding-texas-214203534.html;_ylt=Asj7yMpoyYVvBZz0vEgQrCAJVux_;_ylu=X3oDMTJhbmtrdHVxBG1pdANBVFQgMyBTdG9yeSBKdW1ib3Ryb24gSG9tZSBDYWNoZWQEcG9zAzM2BHNlYwNNZWRpYUF0dFdpZGdldHJvbkFzc2VtYmx5;_ylg=X3oDMTFkcW51ZGliBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3BtaA--;_ylv=3

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Law Offices of Jonathan Franklin
Open Evenings and Weekends this Summer
Call Us Now (310) 273-9600    
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