Judge sides with cabbies in taxi dispute

  NEW YORK -- A judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to expand taxi service to New York City's outer boroughs.

Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order Friday barring the Taxi and Limousine Commission from proceeding with the plan. The proposal called for the city to sell 18,000 of a new kind of permit that lets livery cabs pick up passengers who hail them in upper Manhattan and the four other boroughs.

The plan also authorized the city to sell 2,000 new medallions.

Cabbies say their costly taxi medallions would be worthless if they lost exclusive rights to street hails. Bloomberg pushed the law through the state legislature after negotiations stalled in city council.

Medallion owners and taxi lenders filed three separate lawsuits alleging the law was unconstitutional.

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Judge rules maid's suit against Strauss-Kahn can proceed

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, is arraigned Monday, May 16, 2011, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. ( (AP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand, Pool))

  JENNIFER PELTZNEW YORK -- A hotel maid's sexual assault lawsuit against Dominique Strauss-Kahn can go forward to trial, a judge ruled Tuesday, rebuffing the former International Monetary Fund leader's diplomatic-immunity claim.

Bronx state Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon's ruling kept alive the civil case that emerged from a May 2011 hotel-room encounter that also spurred now-dismissed criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn, then a French presidential hopeful. The episode was the first in a series of allegations about his sexual conduct that sank his political career.

The housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, 33, said Strauss-Kahn, 63, tried to rape her when she arrived to clean his Manhattan hotel suite. Strauss-Kahn has denied doing anything violent during the encounter.

Prosecutors dropped related criminal charges last summer, saying they had developed doubts about her trustworthiness because she had lied about her background and her actions right after the alleged attack. She has insisted she told the truth about what happened in the encounter itself.

McKeon invoked an American sports metaphor in striking down the French diplomat's argument that he is immune from the lawsuit.

"Mr. Strauss-Kahn throws (legally speaking, that is) his own version of a 'Hail Mary' pass by asserting that once he was arrested and confined to a New York home as a condition of bail" he was covered by a treaty allowing departing diplomats reasonable time to leave the country before their immunity expires, even though he already had resigned his IMF post, McKeon wrote.

Strauss-Kahn didn't assert immunity from the criminal prosecution, and he resigned his IMF job days after his arrest. The lawsuit was filed about three months later.

That "may seem like an unfair result to some, but it's the result the law compels," Strauss-Kahn attorney lawyer Amit P. Mehta said at a hearing in March.

They pointed to a 1947 United Nations agreement that afforded the privilege to heads of "specialized agencies," including the International Monetary Fund. Although the United States didn't sign that agreement, Strauss-Kahn's attorneys said it has gained such broad acceptance elsewhere that it has become what's known as "customary international law."

But Diallo's lawyers said the immunity claim is off base. They stressed that the U.S. didn't join in the 1947 agreement, and that an IMF spokesman said shortly after Strauss-Kahn's arrest that he didn't have immunity because he was on personal business during his encounter with Diallo. Strauss-Kahn was visiting his daughter in New York.

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn thinks he's above the law," one of Diallo's lawyers, Kenneth P. Thompson, said after the March hearing.

McKeon's decision to allow the case to proceed was first reported by The New York Post.

Diallo's lawyers issued a statement calling the ruling "well-reasoned and articulate."

"We have said all along that Strauss Kahn's desperate plea for immunity was a tactic designed to delay these proceedings and we now look forward to holding him accountable for the brutal sexual assault that he committed," they wrote.

Strauss-Kahn's attorneys had no immediate comment on the ruling.

The Associated Press generally doesn't name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Diallo has done.

After Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York, a French writer came forward to say Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during a 2003 interview. Paris prosecutors said that accusation was too old to try, but French authorities have pursued an unrelated allegation that he was involved in a hotel prostitution ring including prominent city figures and police in Lille.

In March, he was handed preliminary charges, which mean authorities have reason to believe a crime was committed but allow more time for investigation.

His French lawyer said the married Strauss-Kahn engaged in "libertine" acts but did nothing legally wrong and is being unfairly targeted for his extramarital sex life.

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Judge declares mistrial in Roger Clemens case

  By NEDRA PICKLER and JESSE J. HOLLANDWASHINGTON -- The judge declared a mistrial Thursday in baseball star Roger Clemens' perjury trial after prosecutors showed to jurors evidence that he had ruled would be out of bounds in the case.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Clemens could not be assured a fair trial after prosecutors showed jurors evidence against his orders in the second day of testimony.

Walton scheduled a Sept. 2 hearing to determine whether to hold a new trial. He told jurors he was sorry to have wasted their time and spent so much taxpayer money, only to call off the case.

"There are rules that we play by and those rules are designed to make sure both sides receive a fair trial," Walton told the jury, saying such ground rules are critically important when a person's liberty is at stake.

He said that because prosecutors broke his rules, "the ability with Mr. Clemens with this jury to get a fair trial with this jury would be very difficult if not impossible."

Prosecutors suggested the problem could be fixed with an instruction to the jury to disregard the evidence, but Walton seemed skeptical. He said he could never know what impact the evidence would have during the jury's deliberations "when we've got a man's liberty at interest."

"I don't see how I un-ring the bell," he said.

Walton interrupted the prosecution's playing of a video from Clemens' 2008 testimony before Congress and had the jury removed from the courtroom. Clemens is accused of lying during that testimony when he said he never used performance-enhancing drugs during his 24-season career in the Major Leagues.

One of the chief pieces of evidence against Clemens is testimony from his former teammate and close friend, Andy Pettitte, who says Clemens told him in 1999 or 2000 that he used human growth hormone.

Clemens has said that Pettitte misheard him. Pettitte also also says he told his wife, Laura, about the conversation the same day it happened.

Prosecutors had wanted to call Laura Pettitte as a witness to back up her husband's account, but Walton had said he wasn't inclined to have her testify since she didn't speak directly to Clemens.

Walton was angered that in the video prosecutors showed the jury, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., referred to Pettitte's conversation with his wife.

"I think that a first-year law student would know that you can't bolster the credibility of one witness with clearly inadmissible evidence," Walton said.

He said it was the second time that prosecutors had gone against his orders - the other being an incident that happened during opening arguments Wednesday when assistant U.S. attorney Steven Durham said that Pettite and two other of Clemens' New York teammates, Chuck Knoblauch and Mike Stanton, had used human growth hormone.

Walton said in pre-trial hearings that such testimony could lead jurors to consider Clemens guilty by association. Clemens' defense attorney objected when Durham made the statement and Walton told jurors to disregard Durham's comments about other players.

There was no objection from Clemens' team during the Laura Pettitte reference, but the judge stopped the proceedings, called attorneys up to the bench and spoke to them privately for several minutes. Hardin pointed out during that time, the video remained frozen on the screen in front of jurors with a transcript of what was being said on the bottom.

Cummings had been quoting from Laura Pettitte's affidavit to the committee. "I, Laura Pettitte, do depose and state, in 1999 or 2000, Andy told me had a conversation wth Roger Clemens in which Roger admitted to him using human growth hormones," the text on the screen read.

The judge eventually told the jurors to leave while he discussed the issue with attorneys in open court.

"Government counsel should have been more cautious," Walton said, raising his voice and noting that the case has already cost a lot of taxpayer money. He then left the courtroom and said he would go consult with a colleague on what to do.

(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Get more Sports »

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