Search Results for: railroads

The US Supreme Court on Monday denied a seaman the right to punitive damages for an unseaworthiness claim. Christopher Batterton was a deckhand for The Dutra Group on various vessels. Batterton’s hand was permanently damaged when a hatch blew open and crushed it due to a buildup of pressurized air below deck. Batterton sued The [...]

The State of California and California High-Speed Rail Authority filed a complaint Tuesday against the US Department of Transportation (DOT) for de-obligating nearly $1 billion previously allocated to a high-speed rail project in the California Central Valley. According to the complaint, California has been pursuing a high-speed rail plan since 1993 to link Los Angeles [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a railroad’s payment to an employee for lost wages due to an on-the-job injury is taxable “compensation” under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act (RRTA). In BNSF Railway Company v. Loos, the justices ruled 7-2 in favor of the Railway Company. BNSF asserted that their payment of lost wages to employee, Michael [...]

Maria Ressa, Philippine journalist and known critic of the country’s president was arrested Wednesday on charges of cyber libel for her work as CEO and executive editor for Philippines-based news site Rappler, drawing criticism from rights groups. Rappler has been critical in its coverage of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose administration has alarmed human rights [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in two cases: the first concerning alternative methods of capital punishment for an inmate suffering from a rare illness, and the second concerning employment taxes under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act (RRTA). The first, Bucklew v. Precythe, asks the court to consider whether a Missouri death row [...]

The Supreme Court declined Monday to review a 2016 case brought by various broadband service providers challenging Federal Communications Commission (FCC) net neutrality protections from the Obama era. The present case comes from the FCC of the Obama Administration issued the 2015 Open Internet Order, which reclassified broadband providers to be “common carriers” obligated to [...]

In April and October, President Trump proclaimed his intention to send National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border as an anti-illegal immigration measure. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection reported apprehensions of people entering the U.S. illegally at the Southern border jumped by 37 percent from February to March 2018, by 203 percent [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Thursday that employee stock options given to railroad workers were not taxable under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act of 1937 because employee stock options are not money. Under the act, only “compensation” was taxed, in order to exclude the food and lodging that railroads typically provided employees in [...]

Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) introduced a bill on Thursday “to protect transportation personnel and passengers from sexual assault and harassment.” The bill, known as the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act, would require that commercial airlines, railroads, ships, certain bus lines and other forms of “covered entities” have formal sexual assault and harassment [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday added two cases, BNSF Railway Company v. Loos and Air and Liquid Systems Corp. v. Devries , to its docket for next term. In BNSF Railway Company, the central issue to be decided is whether BNSF’s court-ordered payments to Loos for time lost from work is subject to employment [...]