Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can't bring their own legal actions against those blamed for Maui's catastrophic 2023 wildfire, allowing a $4 billion settlement that was on that the verge of collapse to proceed. Other steps remain in finalizing the deal between thousands of people who lodged lawsuits and various defendants, including Hawaiian Electric Company. The massive inferno that was the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century decimated the historic town of Lahaina, killing more than 100 people, destroying thousands of properties and causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damage. Soon afterward, attorneys began lodging hundreds of lawsuits. A settlement was announced last summer, but insurance companies held out, insisting that they should have the right to go after the defendants separately to recoup money paid out to policyholders. Monday's ruling resolves a key roadblock to finalizing the deal and sends the case back to a Maui judge to determ
President Donald Trump will need the Supreme Court, with three justices he appointed, to enable the most aggressive of the many actions he has taken in just the first few weeks of his second White House term. But even a conservative majority with a robust view of presidential power might balk at some of what the president wants to do. The court gave Trump major victories last year that helped clear away potential obstacles to his reelection, postponing his criminal trial in Washington, D.C., then affording immunity from prosecution for official actions. But Trump's first term was marked by significant defeats as well as some wins at the court. "It will be an extraordinary test for the Roberts Court whether it's willing to stand up for constitutional principles it has long embraced, said Michael Waldman, the president of New York University's Brennan Center and the author of a book that is critical of the court. Some of the things we have seen are so blatantly unconstitutional tha
Donald Trump criticised the current US immigration policy, stating that unqualified individuals and their children were benefiting from a system that was never meant for them
Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, is wanted in India for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks
The Supreme Court has revived a requirement that owners of millions of small businesses register with an arm of the Treasury Department charged with fighting money laundering and other financial crimes. The justices granted an emergency plea made by the Justice Department in the waning days of the Biden administration to allow enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act, enacted in 2021 to crack down on the illicit use of anonymous shell companies. Owners and part-owners of an estimated 32.6 million small businesses must register personal information with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. The information includes photo IDs and home addresses. It's unclear whether the Trump administration will devote much effort to enforcing the registration requirement, which has been opposed by Republican-led states and lawmakers, as well as conservative and business interest groups. The registration requirement was blocked by a federal judge in Texas, who ruled that ..
Mr Trump has sought to give a reprieve to the Chinese-owned TikTok, the popular video-sharing app, which had been banned from the US, a ban upheld by the Supreme Court
On Jan 18, TikTok went dark for users across the US just days after the Supreme Court ruled that it would uphold a law forcing ByteDance to either sell its American platform by Jan 19 or be banned
TikTok said it will have to go dark this weekend unless the outgoing Biden administration assures the company it won't enforce a shutdown of the popular app after the Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning the app unless it's sold by its China-based parent company. The Supreme Court in its ruling held that the risk to national security posed by TikTok's ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States. The decision came against the backdrop of unusual political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed that he could negotiate a solution, and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has signalled it won't enforce the law which was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support beginning Sunday, his final full day in office. TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identifie
The US Supreme Court is ruling on the constitutionality of a law signed by President Joe Biden mandates TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and sell to a US-based entity
The Justice Department can publicly release special counsel Jack Smith's investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump's 2020 election interference case, a federal judge said on Monday in the latest ruling in a court dispute over the highly anticipated document days before Trump is set to reclaim the White House. But a temporary injunction barring the immediate release of the report remains in effect until Tuesday, and it's unlikely US District Judge Aileen Cannon's order will be the last word on the matter. Defence lawyers may seek to challenge it all the way up to the Supreme Court. Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, had earlier temporarily blocked the department from releasing the entire report on Smith's investigations into Trump that led to two separate criminal cases. Cannon's latest order on Monday cleared the way for the release of the volume detailing Smith's case that accused Trump, a Republican, of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe .
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning January 19 unless the popular social media programme is sold by its China-based parent company. Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech, either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States. Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified as the main concern in the case TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations. If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to go dark on January 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President-elect Donald Trump's bid to delay his sentencing in his hush money case in New York. The court's order clears the way for Judge Juan M. Merchan to impose a sentence Friday on Trump, who was convicted in what prosecutors called an attempt to cover up a USD 130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels. Trump has denied any liaison with Daniels or any wrongdoing. Merchan has said he will not give Trump jail time, fines or probation. But Trump's attorneys have argued that evidence used in the Manhattan trial violated last summer's Supreme Court ruling giving Trump broad immunity from prosecution over acts he took as president. At the least, they have said, the sentencing should be delayed while their appeals play out to avoid distracting Trump during the presidential transition. Prosecutors pushed back, saying there's no reason for the court to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a state case now. Trump's ...
The dispute comes at a time of growing trade tensions between the world's two biggest economies after President Joe Biden's administration placed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry
Barring Supreme Court intervention, the ban will kick in Jan. 19, the day before Trump is inaugurated
TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia pending a review by the US Supreme Court
At issue was whether the plaintiffs cleared the heightened legal bar for bringing private securities fraud suits set under a 1995 federal law called the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act that
Trump has sought to have criminal cases against him thrown out in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in July that former presidents are immune for some official actions taken while in office
Noel Francisco, who served as US solicitor general during Republican President-elect Donald Trump's first administration, will represent TikTok along with his partner Hashim Mooppan at law firm Jones
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to settle a years-long legal dispute over whether Palestinian authorities can be sued in US courts by Americans killed or wounded in terrorism attacks in the Middle East. The federal appeals court in New York has repeatedly ruled in favour of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority, despite Congress' efforts to allow the victims' lawsuits to be heard. That court's latest decision, last year, struck down a law enacted in 2019 specifically to allow the lawsuits to move forward. The Supreme Court typically takes on cases in which lower courts have invalidated federal laws. The question for the justices is whether the 2019 law is unconstitutional, as the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals found, because it denies fair legal process to the PLO and PA. The case probably will be argued in the spring. Both the victims and the Biden administration had urged the high court to step in. The attacks occurred in the early 2000s, killing 3
Case involves the non-delegation doctrine, a legal concept that embraces the view that Congress cannot delegate the legislative powers given to it under the Constitution to other entities