If you want to search for Blogs on your topic, do the same expect instead of click on news, hit the drop down arrow and pick Blogs.
Kind of Makes you want to Get your Local News from Out of State Sources.
Libby Claimants Lose Bid For WR Grace Documents
Bankruptcy Headlines
Law360, New York (January 27, 2009) --
Law360, New York (January 27, 2009) --
r
"The judge overseeing the factious W.R. Grace & Co. bankruptcy will not allow a group of asbestos injury claimants opposed to the reorganization plan access to millions of pages of confidential records, frustrating the group's hopes for special status among the mass of asbestos claimants.
r
On Monday, Judge Judith K. Fitzgerald of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware turned down the discovery bid, backing objections by the asbestos personal injury committee, plaintiffs’... "
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/159994.asp
WR Grace will Never give the Citizens of Libby Montana any kind of Justice. The Montana Legal System will NOT allow it. As my family lay dying, without hope, without even the ability to be mobile, W.R. Grace is allowed, by your Montana Justice System to keep this 30 year case open.
"The judge overseeing the factious W.R. Grace & Co. bankruptcy will not allow a group of asbestos injury claimants opposed to the reorganization plan access to millions of pages of confidential records, frustrating the group's hopes for special status among the mass of asbestos claimants.
r
On Monday, Judge Judith K. Fitzgerald of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware turned down the discovery bid, backing objections by the asbestos personal injury committee, plaintiffs’... "
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/159994.asp
WR Grace will Never give the Citizens of Libby Montana any kind of Justice. The Montana Legal System will NOT allow it. As my family lay dying, without hope, without even the ability to be mobile, W.R. Grace is allowed, by your Montana Justice System to keep this 30 year case open.
r
Montana Politics is watching your family die a slow painful death with no end in sight.
“People in Libby and at the dozens of processing sites across the country that handled the vermiculite ore continue to die. The survivors wonder whether Grace will ever be held accountable.”
There will never be justice, the Big Boys get paychecks while you suffer.
News sources Outside Montana say “For reasons still not understood by anyone but Molloy, the judge repeatedly went along with Grace and disallowed evidence, witnesses and legal premises that was the basis of the government case.”
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/159994.asp
Your Montana News System (Lee Enterprises newspapers) headlines
are Not the Whole Truth and Nothing But.
The Seattle Headlines Read
W.R. Grace gets another chance to delay, if not avoid, being tried for all the deaths in Libby, Mont. At times many of us feel like cartoonist Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown when Lucy grabs the football away just as Charlie is about to kick it, again and again and again.
Montana Politics is watching your family die a slow painful death with no end in sight.
“People in Libby and at the dozens of processing sites across the country that handled the vermiculite ore continue to die. The survivors wonder whether Grace will ever be held accountable.”
There will never be justice, the Big Boys get paychecks while you suffer.
News sources Outside Montana say “For reasons still not understood by anyone but Molloy, the judge repeatedly went along with Grace and disallowed evidence, witnesses and legal premises that was the basis of the government case.”
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/159994.asp
Your Montana News System (Lee Enterprises newspapers) headlines
are Not the Whole Truth and Nothing But.
The Seattle Headlines Read
W.R. Grace gets another chance to delay, if not avoid, being tried for all the deaths in Libby, Mont. At times many of us feel like cartoonist Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown when Lucy grabs the football away just as Charlie is about to kick it, again and again and again.
This is how people in and near Libby, Mont., felt when they learned that the federal judge in Missoula – the ringmaster of the circus that is the criminal trial of W.R. Grace and six of its surviving former and current top guns – gave the notorious worldwide chemical and building supply corporation yet one more chance to escape from a day in court.
That wasn't supposed to happen. In October, District Judge Donald Molloy heard the final pleas to avoid the trial from Grace's 33 very well-paid, dark-attired lawyers. Malloy shook his head, said the trial is happening, with jury selection beginning Feb. 19 and the trial finally starting the following Monday.
The road to justice in Montana began almost four years ago.
It was 2005, when two federal grand juries evaluated the government's evidence of criminal wrongdoing and called for Grace to be charged with a variety of criminal charges. Among them was that Grace knowingly endangered the lives of thousands of people by concealing the hazard from the dust released by mining the asbestos-tainted vermiculite ore from nearby Zonolite Mountain.
For reasons still not understood by anyone but Molloy, the judge repeatedly went along with Grace and disallowed evidence, witnesses and legal premises that was the basis of the government case.
Grace even argued that the asbestos contaminating its ore from Libby wasn't dangerous, in response to which several Libby survivors offered a tour of the graves of the 400 or more men and women who died painful deaths after exposure to the company's "safe" asbestos.
Grace also disputes elaborate studies done by the government's top health detectives that showed that thousands more had been sickened by the asbestos exposure.
In a very gutsy and unusual step, the government appealed Molloy's decisions, one after another and, in the most crucial matters, the appellate court overturned Molloy and allowed the evidence and witnesses to be used.
The corporation continued to fight, but in June, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Grace's arguments and tossed the matter back into Molloy's hands. His October ruling brought cheers in Libby.
But now, rather than being assured the largest environmental criminal trial in U.S. history will begin next month, the handful of government prosecutors assigned to the case find themselves again arguing science before Molloy.
The three-day legal sparring match is called a Daubert hearing. That has been used repeatedly by corporations to keep crucial evidence, including their own science showing the danger of its products, from being presented to juries.
Meanwhile, people in Libby and at the dozens of processing sites across the country that handled the vermiculite ore continue to die. The survivors wonder whether Grace will ever be held accountable.
Forbes News Says
Molloy said at the time that the "widespread, inflammatory pretrial publicity" claimed by the defendants had occurred years earlier and its impact had dissipated.
Testimony in the Grace trial is expected to begin Monday; and Molloy has ruled that people from Libby on the federal prosecutors' list of defendants will not be allowed in court except to testify, on the theory that hearing the testimony of others might improperly influence some witnesses.
Molloy also raised eyebrows when he ruled earlier that "there are no crime victims identifiable" in the federal case against Grace.
Go to the Link Below to Read the Full Article
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/18/ap6068516.html
Bench watchers say Montana federal judge continues to issue orders that will stifle the government's case aganst W.R. Grace.
UPDATE
About 840 people have made the effort to comment on my story Monday on U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's ruling that victims of alleged criminal actions by W.R. Grace cannot testify and observe the nation's largest environmental criminal trial ever.
His Honor says that people from Libby, Mont., who are sick, lost a loved one or had their homes destroyed because of the asbestos that spewed from a now-closed W.R. Grace vermiculite mine are not victims of crime and cannot observe and participate in the trial which begins next week.
About 99 percent of those comments felt that the judge was wrong. Very, very wrong, most said, in words not fit for a family blog.
Gayla Benefield sputtered angrily for two days before she calmed down enough to share her opinion on Molloy's action.
"Our lives have been shortened, our loved ones have died and yet we still need to 'prove' that a crime has been committed against us! This is outrageous and an insult to the hundreds killed and the thousands who are diagnosed with this disease as a result of being collateral damage to a greedy company," says Benefield, who claims that more than 40 members of her extended family have been sickened or killed from exposure to the asbestos in the ore from Grace's operation.Most of those commenting accused Molloy of a litany of sins. Extreme bias on behalf of Grace was among the mildest. Many said nothing else could or should be expected from a judge appointed for life by George Bush. In the spirit of accuracy, however, I must advise that it was President Clinton that brought Molloy to the federal bench.
Click Below for Full Article and Source.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/secretingredients/archives/162164.asp
The Western News in Libby Montana Said
W.R. Grace's federal trial date draws closerPosted:
Tuesday, Feb 03, 2009 - 03:15:00 pm MST
The Western News
Eighty northwest Montanans were mailed summons letters last week as potential jurors in a criminal case against W.R. Grace & Co. and six former and current executives.The U.S. District Court in Missoula will begin jury selection Feb. 19 in Missoula. Twelve jurors and a yet-to-be determined number of alternates will be chosen to arbitrate on a complex criminal case that is estimated to last for months.
The Western News
Eighty northwest Montanans were mailed summons letters last week as potential jurors in a criminal case against W.R. Grace & Co. and six former and current executives.The U.S. District Court in Missoula will begin jury selection Feb. 19 in Missoula. Twelve jurors and a yet-to-be determined number of alternates will be chosen to arbitrate on a complex criminal case that is estimated to last for months.
r
More than 30 defense attorneys – nine representing W.R. Grace and the others representing individual defendants – will try to disprove that the company knowingly endangered Libby-area residents by exposing them to asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from its mine.
In the four years since a grand jury indicted W.R. Grace on charges of conspiracy, violating the Clean Air Act and obstruction, the case made its way from U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy to the U.S. Supreme Court and back to Molloy.Before the trial begins, Molloy will rule on the admissibility of scientific studies and expert witnesses that the defense stated in last month’s two-day evidentiary hearing should be suppressed.
In the four years since a grand jury indicted W.R. Grace on charges of conspiracy, violating the Clean Air Act and obstruction, the case made its way from U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy to the U.S. Supreme Court and back to Molloy.Before the trial begins, Molloy will rule on the admissibility of scientific studies and expert witnesses that the defense stated in last month’s two-day evidentiary hearing should be suppressed.
r
In 2006 Molloy ruled in favor of the defense on several essential issues, throwing out the “knowing endangerment” portion of the conspiracy charge, excluding government asbestos testing based on a discrepancy in the Clean Air Act’s definition of “asbestos,” and allowing defendants to present a case of being in compliance with Clean Air Act “visible emissions” standards. The prosecution took the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned many of Molloy’s decisions and restored vital elements of the prosecutor’s arguments.
r
The defense appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the Ninth Circuit’s decisions and handed the case back to Molloy.W.R. Grace and individual defendants were indicted by a grand jury in early 2005 for allegedly concealing asbestos-related health risks, possibly known as early as 1976, and lying to government officials when the contamination was discovered in 1999.
http://www.thewesternnews.com/articles/2009/02/03/news/doc4988bf6178b6e710127677.txt
http://www.thewesternnews.com/articles/2009/02/03/news/doc4988bf6178b6e710127677.txt
