Legal Writes

Yale Settles Fertility Pain Case

by | Sep 9, 2024 5:27 pm | Comments (13)

Laura Glesby photo

Soryorelis Henry, with husband Darcus: "I felt so alone."

Yale has reached a settlement with 93 fertility clinic patients who received saline instead of fentanyl during excruciating and often traumatizing procedures.

One of those patients, Soryorelis Henry, found herself screaming and crying” in agony during an egg retrieval that was supposed to be pain-free — and heard the cries of other patients undergoing the same procedure from the waiting room. 

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From Can Collector To Bomb Suspect

by | Sep 5, 2024 11:40 am | Comments (22)

Thomas Breen photo

At the scene of Friday's bomb squad investigation.

A 22-year-old man who regularly returns bottles for cash at Stop & Shop was picking up empty cans on Orange Street when he found three metal canisters. 

He decided to throw those objects away after noticing how rusty they were — an action that ended up snarling downtown traffic for hours, having City Hall evacuated, activating the city police’s bomb squad, and leading to his arrest on three felony and two misdemeanor charges.

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Restaurant's Liquor Permit Suspended After Shooting

by | Sep 4, 2024 11:07 am | Comments (22)

Ronak Gandhi file photo

NOA on Crown St. According to downtown's top cop, "This establishment poses an immediate danger to its customers, the commercial businesses that it adjoins, pedestrians, and vehicular traffic."

Thomas Breen photo

Liquor permit suspension sign now up at NOA.

The state has suspended a Crown Street Thai restaurant’s liquor permit after an early Saturday morning shooting — following a stabbing last year and numerous complaints over the past two years — led investigators to believe that the business is being run in a manner that imperils public safety.”

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Yale Arrestees Seek To Dismiss Charges

by | Aug 30, 2024 3:33 pm | Comments (14)

Yash Roy file photo

Yale police arrest a student protester in the morning of April 22.

Thomas Breen file photo

The first night of the Beinecke Plaza encampment, on April 19.

More than 40 Yale student protesters who were arrested en masse at a pro-Palestinian encampment in Beinecke Plaza last semester are calling for a state judge to throw out their criminal trespassing charges on the grounds that they weren’t all properly notified before Yale police started making arrests.

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City Hall Evacuated Amid Bomb Squad Probe

by | Aug 30, 2024 1:09 pm | Comments (10)

Thomas Breen photo

City spokesperson Lenny Speiller talks with police as they re-open Elm and Orange streets soon after 12 p.m.

City police shut down two busy downtown blocks and evacuated City Hall and 200 Orange St. as they investigated — and rendered safe — three suspicious, and ultimately empty, canisters that had been placed near those municipal government buildings early Friday morning by a man who is now in police custody.

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Yale Protests Resume Along With Classes

by | Aug 28, 2024 2:37 pm | Comments (24)

Laura Glesby Photo

Student-led protests resume as the semester starts up.

Over 100 Yale students and allies marked the first day of classes by calling for a Free, Free Palestine” on the steps of the Elm Street courthouse — as 14 students arrested on campus for protesting last spring returned to the courtroom to call for their misdemeanor trespassing charges to be dismissed.

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War's Shadow, & The Story Behind A Lie

by | Aug 21, 2024 1:29 pm | Comments (2)

Federal court filing

An excerpt from Kamash's sentencing memo, illustrated by a traumatic image of the violence that beset the part of Iraq he lived in during the Iraq War.

Mohamed Kamash was born in February of 1991 as American bombs fell upon his home town of Tal Afar, in northern Iraq. The six-week aerial bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Storm killed thousands of Iraqi civilians, and, unable to risk a hospital visit in what would be its final days, Kamash’s mother gave birth to her son at home.

Those details of a life upended by war and migration from the very start emerged in recently filed federal court papers in a yearslong case that has now reached its conclusion. They also put in painful biographical context a refugee’s decision to lie under oath in an effort to distance himself from his past, and try to stay in his adopted new home.

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Jury Sides With Teacher, Orders City To Pay $1.1M

by | Aug 13, 2024 5:48 pm | Comments (65)

Contributed photo

Jessica Light (right): Feeling "vindicated" by jury's verdict.

(Updated) A federal jury has awarded former Worthington Hooker elementary school teacher Jessica Light $1.1 million in damages after finding that the school’s principal defamed and retaliated against her for publicly raising concerns about the safety of returning to in-person learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Retreat Foreclosure Case Comes To Court

by | Aug 12, 2024 9:36 am | Comments (1)

Thomas Breen photo

Retreat affiliate attorney Richard Weinstein: "You have a receiver in place. If he wants to throw out perishables, obviously, he can throw out perishables."

(Updated) An abandoned drug rehab center on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard feels a bit like the rapture,” a foreclosure-pursuing attorney said in state court on Friday. 

There’s rotting food in the kitchen. There are utility-turn off notices lying around. And there’s now more than $300,000 in back property taxes due.

It’s as if people just picked up one day and left,” the attorney said — even though the addiction treatment center has been closed for a month and a half.

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Warrant: Cameras Captured Midday Murder

by | Aug 9, 2024 9:21 am | Comments (2)

Thomas Breen photo

Isael Arroyo, Y'madelis Arroyo, Jay'na Estrada, and Yesenia Arroyo mourn their father's death, and commend police for arresting his alleged shooter.

Murder victim Peter "PJ" Arroyo.

A man dressed all in black walked west on Wolcott Street, pulled a gun out of his waistband, and fired shot after shot after shot — killing 42-year-old New Havener Peter Arroyo, whom police believe was not the shooter’s intended victim. 

That fatal gunfire took place in broad daylight in Fair Haven on a Monday afternoon in May, in full view of a number of witnesses and — crucially, for the police investigation to follow — in full view of surveillance cameras.

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Stolen Cop Car Crashed Into Church

by | Aug 7, 2024 10:42 am | Comments (21)

Dashboard video sound begins at 0:29. “Get your gun out!” shouts the driver to the cop. “Shoot!”

Open the door,” a 49-year-old man shouted at a police officer sitting in the passenger side of a parked cruiser on Congress Avenue. 

The man said he was being followed. He told the officer to get out of the car.

The officer unlocked the vehicle, tried to radio for help, and the man got in — and started driving.

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If You're Drunk, This Car Will Know

by | Aug 6, 2024 3:27 pm | Comments (30)

Thomas Breen photo

Blumenthal: Not drunk, ready to drive.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal sat in the driver’s seat of an electric Ford Mustang and breathed.

A monitor behind the steering wheel flashed green — indicating that his blood alcohol content (BAC) was below the state’s legal limit of .08, and therefore he was all clear to drive. 

If the car’s sensor had detected too high of a BAC, the monitor would have flashed red, and Blumenthal wouldn’t have been able to get the car to move.

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Foreclosure Suit: Closed Drug Rehab Center Left Open To Trespassers

by | Aug 5, 2024 3:10 pm | Comments (9)

Thomas Breen file photo

Retreat's now-closed 915 Ella T. Grasso location.

Patient records, narcotics, and piles of mail allegedly remained inside a drug rehab center on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard a month after the facility abruptly closed — and were all accessible to anyone able to push through the shuttered complex’s back door.

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Elicker, Smart Testify In Pay-Bump Trial

by | Aug 2, 2024 1:42 pm | Comments (8)

Thomas Breen photo

Mayor Elicker on the witness stand: City labor relations office handles this stuff.

City Clerk Smart: I signed the amendment.

Can the Board of Alders grant raises to unionized employees through the city budget process without those pay bumps also being ratified by collective bargaining agreements? Or do union contracts have the final word on how much covered municipal workers are paid?

Those questions sit at the center of a bench trial that began Friday morning in a fifth-floor courtroom at the state courthouse at 235 Church St.

The trial marks the latest legal entanglement between the legislative and executive branches of city government, raising questions about who has the power to provide money to which city workers, and why.

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"New Sheriff" Chris Alvarado Is In (Fair Haven) Town

by | Aug 2, 2024 1:06 pm | Comments (9)

Allan Appel Photo

The new neighborhood top cop Thursday evening with Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith.

Fifteen-year NHPD veteran Sgt. Chris Alvarado has already seen the estimated 5 percent or so percent of Fair Haven that is troubled by drug dealing and serious crime. As the newly arrived district manager, he’s excited to be discovering the rest.

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