Posted on February 27, 2015 in White Collar Crimes

With incidents like the Enron scandal and the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme gaining such notoriety in recent years, white collar crime has become a much more public topic. In fact, white collar crime currently makes up almost 10 percent of the federal docket, according to Department of Justice Statistics, as reported by Fortune Magazine. This measurement is particularly important because of the intense role that the federal government plays in prosecuting white collar crime. Although many of the practices that comprise white collar crime are illegal under Connecticut law as well, the majority of the prosecutions in Connecticut are federal in nature. These white collar prosecutions can cover a variety of different unique crimes, including fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, and money laundering.

Fraud

Fraud is one of the most common types of white collar crime prosecuted because the term is an umbrella for a variety of different types of offenses. In general, fraud is a crime that entails a person deceiving someone else for pecuniary gain. One common example of this is a Ponzi scheme, which involves a person defrauding investors by reporting inflated returns to encourage continued investment, while spending the money the investors provide rather than actually investing it.

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 Posted on February 21, 2015 in Personal Injury

With warmer weather now on the horizon in Connecticut, many people may be considering remodeling their homes or making additions. This can be a busy time of year for contractors, so they should take this opportunity to make sure that their insurance is up to date. Many people think that homeowners' insurance will cover injuries to contractors, but that is not usually the case.

Contractor injuries are outside the normal risk profile that homeowners' insurance deals with. Consequently, they are subject to a policy exclusion, meaning that there is a specific clause in the insurance policy that exempts them from coverage. The only time there may be an exception to this is if the homeowner's negligence was the direct cause of the contractor's injury. As such, contractors working in homes should take care to make sure that they are properly covered by other insurance policies, especially since Occupational Safety and Health Administration statistics highlight the unique dangers faced in the construction industry.

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 Posted on February 14, 2015 in Criminal Law

Connecticut criminal law has a variety of different goals. In a narrow sense, it exists to punish offenders and to deter people from committing crimes. However, the law also has a more positive purpose; in fact, one of the most important goals of the criminal law system is rehabilitation. Yet, ordinary criminal law punishments like prison or fines are notoriously bad at preventing recidivism. In order to deal with this, the Connecticut legislature introduced a set pretrial diversion programs. These programs are available to some less serious offenders, who can complete the rehabilitative programs and see their charges dismissed.

There are a variety of pretrial diversion programs available in Connecticut, including Accelerated Rehabilitation (AR), the Pretrial Drug Education Program, the Connecticut Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission Diversionary Program (CADAC), the Family Violence Education Program, and the Alcohol Education Program.

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 Posted on February 05, 2015 in Personal Injury

Traffic accidents can be confusing and stressful. Accidents impose many tangible costs on those involved, such as medical bills and repair costs. Additionally, they require the parties to the accident to deal with legal structures with which they may not be familiar, such as giving statements to the police and entering into settlement negotiations with insurance companies. However, there are over 100,000 traffic accidents in Connecticut every year, according to a report by the Connecticut Department of Transportation, so it is important for people to know what to avoid saying after a traffic accident in the event that a wreck takes place.

Talking to Police

Immediately after the accident the police will likely seek statements from both of the parties to the accidents as well as possible witnesses nearby. People involved in an accident need to know what to avoid saying when asked for this statement. One of the most important things to avoid is lying. Statements to the police are only one of many pieces of evidence available. If other evidence contradicts a false statement to the police, then that can damage the plaintiff's credibility with the court.

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 Posted on January 31, 2015 in Personal Injury

Personal injury and other tort lawsuits allow injured victims to hold defendants responsible for their negligence when it causes someone harm. One of the key phases of any personal injury litigation is the damages calculation, which is where the court determines what harms the plaintiff suffered, and how much compensation they are owed.

It is important to remember that the legal system in Connecticut wants to perfectly compensate the plaintiff for all of the harm that the defendant's negligence caused. In order to do this, Connecticut law recognizes a wide variety of damages. Plaintiffs may seek "special compensatory damages" to cover specific harms such as medical bills, and they may also seek "general compensatory damages" to cover their pain and suffering. Additionally, juries in Connecticut are allowed to award "punitive damages," extra damages designed to punish defendants.

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 Posted on January 16, 2015 in Drug Charges

Ever since the War on Drugs began in the 1980s, drug crimes have been some of the most commonly prosecuted offenses across the country. Even low level drug crimes like simple possession can come with severe penalties, and they can become even more serious for drug crimes like distribution of a controlled substance. Understanding both of these crimes and their penalties is important for people charged with a drug crime in Connecticut.

To fully understand these crimes, it is important to understand the distinction between an illegal drug and a controlled substance. Illegal drugs are drugs such as cocaine and heroin, which are illegal to possess under any circumstances. A controlled substance includes illegal drugs, but it also includes prescription medications like Oxycontin and Vicodin. Prescription medications are legal to possess if prescribed by a doctor’s and dispensed by a pharmacist, but the unauthorized possession, giving to someone else, or sale of them is illegal.

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 Posted on January 07, 2015 in White Collar Crimes

White collar crime is a broad term that has always been difficult to define. According to the FBI, there are two major ways of defining what white collar crime is. First, it can be defined by the offender. Under this definition, white collar crimes are those committed by people who are wealthy or high up in the social strata, or by people whose jobs place them in positions of trust. Second, it can be defined by the types of offense, probably the more common of the two definitions. Under this view of white collar crime, it is an economic offense, a nonviolent crime, usually some sort of theft or fraud.

Examples of White Collar Crime

Examples of white collar crime run the gamut from tax evasion to securities fraud to embezzlement. Some of these are punished by both state and federal law, while others are almost exclusively prosecuted by federal agencies. A good example of the first type is embezzlement. Connecticut law criminalizes embezzlement as a type of larceny.

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 Posted on December 26, 2014 in Personal Injury

Emergency vehicles like fire trucks, ambulances, and police cruisers exist to protect the public and keep people safe, but they themselves can often be a danger to society. Connecticut law gives emergency vehicles a considerable amount of freedom to violate traffic laws when they are responding to an emergency.

Emergency vehicles have a special law § 14-283 that allows them to disobey most traffic laws provided that they are using their lights and sirens and are responding to an actual emergency. This freedom means that injured victims cannot point to traffic law violations as evidence of negligence the way they normally could. Traffic accidents involving these sorts of vehicles present special issues because it can be more difficult to prove that the driver of the emergency vehicle was operating it negligently.

Ambulance Services and Traffic Accidents

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 Posted on December 20, 2014 in Personal Injury

Even seemingly minor car accidents can lead to serious medical problems if they go untreated. Accident victims often face a variety of unfamiliar medical terms that can make the whole examination and treatment process more confusing. However, it is important that patients pursue such examination and treatment promptly.

This speed is important because of a legal doctrine known as a statute of limitations. Statutes of limitations are laws that place time limits on people's ability to bring lawsuits for harms that they have suffered. Connecticut's statute of limitations for injury in a car accident is unusually short. Victims only have two years from the time when they discover or should have discovered their injury before courts bar them from recovering damages for their injuries. This makes it especially important for people to understand their injuries, so that they can bring them to an attorney.

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 Posted on December 15, 2014 in Sex Crimes

Child pornography has become more prevalent since the advent of the internet and the proliferation of cameras. Consequently, law enforcement at both the state and federal levels have begun cracking down on people who possess child pornography. This has created a patchwork of federal and local laws that people are subject to. However, it is still important for people to understand this complex patchwork since the penalties for violating it can be incredibly severe.

State Law

Connecticut law on the possession of child pornography criminalizes knowingly possessing some amount of images of child pornography, which is defined as video or images depicting someone under the age of 16 engaging in sexually explicit conduct. The penalties for the crime depend on the amount of images a person has in their possession. Fewer than 20 images is a Class D felony punishable by five years in prison, with a one year mandatory minimum sentence. Possession of between 20 and 50 images is a Class C felony punishable by at most 20 years in prison, with a two year mandatory minimum sentence. More than 50 images brings it up to a Class B felony, and increases the mandatory minimum sentence to five years. However, the state law does make some reductions in severity if the person who possesses the images is a minor because of the prevalence of teenagers with cell phone cameras.

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