Boston Accident Injury Lawyer Blog

Boston commercial and personal injury trial Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, takes a look at Caribbean based Millenium Bank, the latest banking Ponzi Scheme to have bilked U.S. and other investors seeking big returns on their investment monies.

On March 25, 2009 the United States Securities Exchange Commission commenced a civil action in United States District Court in Northern Texas against the The Millennium Bank, and it principals, alleging violations of the securities laws of the U.S. According to most recent information from  the SEC, it appears that there are now over 1000 investors who placed at in excess of  $100 million dollars in the bank and its affiliates, hoping to secure high interest rate CDs, rates at two to three times that of the highest rates available in the U.S.

Information is now emerging that Millennium nurtured customers with an internet marketing plan targeted at individuals shopping for the best returns on term Certificates of Deposit. One was www.Bankrate.com, which is a website widely used by investors to determine the prevailing rates for investment and mortgage products in the U.S. Millennium regularly ran banner ads on this site. Victims also report that google "sponsored ads" regularly appeared when the Google seach engine was employed in searches for "high interest CDs"

According to the SEC complaint, Millennium Bank also ran advertisements of its high-yield no-risk CDs in print magazines and their Internet counterparts, including The Wealth Collection, Wealth Management Agenda and Haute Living. For instance, Millennium ran a promotional article in the March 2008 edition of The Wealth Collection, a bi-annual magazine that touts the latest in "luxury lifestyle trends, investment opportunities and wealth management".

Continue reading "Millennium Bank Fraud: Perpetrators Aggressively Used Internet and Print Media to Advertise High Interest CDs: Should publishers have known something was amiss?" »

Boston Personal Injury Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, analyzes a recent Appeals Court decision pertaining to double penalties under the Worken's Compensation Act.

The case involves a store employee who suffered serious personal injuries after falling through a trap door in the floor of a floral shop, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has reversed a decision by the Department of Industrial Accidents reviewing board that awarded an employee double compensation (under Mass. G.L. c. 152, § 28), finding that the employee's injury was due to the serious and wilful misconduct of the employer. The Appeals Court determined that the record did not support a finding that the employer's conduct rose to the level of a wanton and reckless disregard for safety.

The employee was working at a floral shop on Valentines day in 1991 when she fell into a trap-door floor opening, which covered a set of stairs leading down to the cellar. She fell into the hole sustaining serious personal injuries. The floor door measured approximately eight feet by three feet, and qualified as a "floor opening", which made it subject to the state and federal regulations, and certain mandatory safeguards.

The employer was not aware of the regulations, and instead relied on its own warning system of orange safety cones and chains to warn and protect the employees. However, the system was only used sporadically, and was not in place on the day of the accident. There was also some evidence that there may have been insufficient floor space in the area of the trap door due to the placement of a table for completed work orders. There was also evidence that because it was Valentine's day, the work pace in the store was much heavier than normal.

Continue reading "Employee's Personal Injuries After Fall through Open Trap Door in Floral Shop does not Warrant Double Compensation, Says Appeals Court " »

Boston commercial and personal injury trial Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, takes a look at Caribbean based Millenium Bank, the latest banking Ponzi Scheme to have bilked U.S. and other investors seeking big returns on their investment monies.

The Millenium Bank and United Bank of Switzerland have been marketing and offering highly attractive CD rates for several years now, advertising in glossy high end magazines as well as online, and it now appears that those interest rates that seemed too good to be true indeed were.

On March 25, 2009 the Securities Exchange Commission commenced a an emergency action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas seeking to enjoin Millenium and its affiliates from carrying on any future business and taking steps to recover assets of the companies and the principals who ran them, who were located in California and North Carolina.

The SEC Complaint alleges that Defendants William J. Wise, 58, of Raleigh, North Carolina and the Caribbean, and Kristi M. Hoegel, 34, of Napa, California, orchestrated the scheme through companies they control, including co-defendants Millennium Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, its Geneva, Switzerland-based parent, United Trust of Switzerland S.A., and its U.S.-based affiliates, UT of S, LLC and Millennium Financial Group.

Continue reading "Millennium Bank Ponzi Scheme - Offshore High Interest CD's seemed too Good to be True and Were, Says SEC " »

Boston Accident Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, is investigating potential claims on behalf of individuals who were victims of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. Those who had direct investments in Bernard L. Madoff Securities, LLC are limited to the remedies offered in the bankruptcy proceeding now pending in New York. Claims for reimbursement of monies actually invested in the fund up to $500,000 can be recovered through the Securities Investment Protection Corporation ("SIPC"). However, there is an absolute filing deadline of July 2, 2009. 

For those who did not invest directly with Madoff, there may be other potential remedies and sources of recovery available. Civil actions have been commenced against so called "feeder funds", who filtered investment to Madoff in exchange for lucrative management fees. Such suits are now pending in state court in Connecticut, Florida, California and Arizona. The list of Defendants includes Tremont Capital Management, Inc., Fairfield Greenwich Group and Boston based Cohmad. Securities Corporation. The principals of these feeder funds have been sued as well and efforts are being made to tie up assets in the event of an eventual recovery.

 

In essence, the suits allege that these hedge funds failed to perform any meaningful investigation, due diligence or oversight of the Madoff fund, which reported consistent double digit gains year after year, notwithstanding questions about the trading strategies allegedly employed or the fact that Madoff enforced a veil of secrecy over his actual trading activity. In fact, it appears that there was no such strategy whatsoever.

 

The accounting firms who perform regular audits of these feeder funds have not been spared, having also been named as defendants in these civil actions. It appears that this is just the beginning and the dragnet will widen in an attempt to uncover insurance monies, which might be available to aid in the recovery of the millions in lost investments.

Several states have also joined in, filing administrative or other proceedings on behalf of defrauded citizens. In particular, the Massahusetts Secretary of State has filed administrative proceedings against Cohmad Securities and Fairfield Greenwich Group, its principals and affiliates. The attorney general of New York has also filed an action against J. Ezra Merkin and his Ascot Funds, alleging that he also clandestinely invested client funds with Madoff, while purporting to be trading on their behalf himself.

Continue reading "Boston Attorney Investigates Potential Actions on Behalf of Madoff Victims" »

This is Part Two of a two part Blogpost where Boston Personal Injury Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, reviews and analyzes a recent First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, in which an insurer sought a declaration that there was no coverage for an personal injuries as the result of an accident involving a contract worker who severed his arm in a wool picking machine. The worker had sued the Massachusetts recycling company where he had been working for a number of months. (Click here to view Part One)

PART TWO :  THE COURT ANALYZES DISTINCTION BETWEEN "LEASED WORKER" AND "TEMPORARY WORKER" IN POLICY TO DETERMINE COVERAGE

Having reviewed the underlying facts of the case, the Court went on to analyze the express language of the insurance policy, attempting to discern whether the lower court had correctly determined that the the worker's contract was indefinite and therefore not temporary, which was its basis for ruling that there was no coverage for the accident.

In the policy a leased worker was defined as a person leased to you by a labor leasing firm under an agreement between you and the labor leasing firm, to perform duties related to the conduct of your business. A temporary worker was defined as a person who is furnished to you to substitute for a permanent "employee" on leave or to meet seasonal or short-term workload conditions.

The question then for the Court of Appeals was whether Torres was a "leased worker," and thus excluded from coverage; or a "temporary worker," thus obligating Scottsdale to provide a defense and coverage in Torres's lawsuit. The district court had determined that Torres was not a temporary worker on the basis that the term "short term" worker, though not defined in the policy, suggested a brief and relatively finite period of time.

Based on deposition testimony of CTC's president that Torres was to stay at CTC "for as long as he was needed", and a Venturi manager's testimony that Torres was assigned to CTC "indefinitely," the lower court determined  that "indefinite" and "short-term" were mutually exclusive, that Torres' stay with CTC was indefinite and that he was therefore not a "temporary worker". Therefore his claim was not covered under the policy.

Continue reading "Personal Injuries Suffered by Contract Worker May be Recoverable from Manufacturing Company where he Worked" »

In this two part Blogpost, Boston Accident Lawyer, Keith L. Miller, reviews and analyzes a First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision, which considers insurance coverage issues for an accident involving a man whose arm was severed in a wool picking machine, while engaged as a contract worker for a Western Massachusetts recycling company.

PART ONE :  PERSONAL INJURIES FROM CONTRACT WORKER'S SEVERED ARM MAY NOT BE COVERED BY INSURANCE

On August 23, 2004, Raul Torres suffered serious personal injuries when his arm was severed in a wool picking machine while working at Carrabassett Trading Company  "CTC") in North Oxford, Massachusetts. CTC is a recycling company, which collects and recycles waste fiber from textile mills, bales up the material and sells them to other manufacturers. 

Torres was not an employee of CTC. Rather, his services were provided to CTC by his employer, Venturi Staffing Company, Inc ("Venturi"). Because CTC has an inconsistent demand for its products, it hires such contract workers to supplement its permanent staff of five. Torres filed suit against CTC in Massahusetts state court.

CTC's insurer filed a federal court action seeking a declaration that there was no coverage for the injuries due to "employer" exceptions in the company's liability policy. The Court reversed a district court ruling in favor of the insurer, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Continue reading "Boston Personal Injury Attorney Reviews U.S. Court of Appeals Analysis of Insurance Coverage for "Leased" Worker's Severed Arm" »

(This Boston Accident and Injury Lawyer Blogpost is the Last in a Three Part Analysis of a Recent U.S. Appeals Court Ruling involving defamation, public officials and the news media Click here to view Part One and Click Here to view Part Two)

PART THREE : THE COURT RULES ON THE DEFAMATORY BROADCAST

As stated previously, under Maine common law, a plaintiff alleging defamation must show a false and defamatory statement published without privilege to a third party resulting in harm to the plaintiff.

In the lower court proceeding, the defendants had contended that the various statements made on the show and attributed to Levesque either were not defamatory or, because Levesque had stipulated that he was a public official, it could not be shown that they were made with actual malice. The district court held that the statements were protected on multiple grounds. It found the "hate crime" comments substantially true and mention of the "anti-ham response plan" protected as "rhetorical hyperbole".

However, the lower court determined that the ham sandwich and the "ham is not a toy" comments were materially false, reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning, and highly offensive. Yet the court believed that Levesque had failed to demonstrate that the defendants had acted with constitutional malice when they made the defamatory comments.

The Court of Appeals agreed, finding that most, but not all of the statements attributed to the Plaintiff were largely true, although laced with "imaginative expression" or "rhetorical hyperbole", which it concluded were protected speech.

Continue reading "No Recovery for Personal Injuries where Court Sees Defamation but No Malice" »