MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.

Staff at the Lincoln County Justice Center in Troy will soon be scouring the facility looking for hand-written ledgers more than a decade old. At the behest of a federal lawsuit, they’ll be looking for records detailing payments the county plucked from cash bonds and applied to criminal defendants’ incarceration costs. In the federal suit, a potential class of criminal defendants alleges that long-held practice, which also crops up in Warren County and possibly other counties, amounts to “unlawful taking.”

Missouri teachers can Facebook without worry. A Cole County judge has put off until February 2012 the effective date of a law that prohibited private online communication between teachers and students.

Tagged with: Facebook social media

Missouri’s 44,000 public school teachers amount to a fraction of Facebook’s 750 million users, but a new law affecting teachers’ online activities might awaken the legal ire of the social media giant. That’s the opinion of the attorney representing the Missouri State Teacher’s Association in a legal challenge to SB54.

A couple has filed a potential class action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase alleging the New York-based lender intentionally misled and delayed Missouri home-owners seeking loan modifications.

Tagged with: HAMP HARP John Driscoll JPMorgan Chase Sharon Hayes Thomas Hayes

A new joint legislative committee will spend the rest of the year parsing the impact of two court decisions that have caused considerable strife for St. Louis County school districts. The committee likely won’t hold hearings or take substantive action on the issue until after a scheduled Sept. 26 trial date in the higher-profile case of the two decisions, said a Senate spokeswoman.

University of Missouri School of Law Dean Larry Dessem told family and friends in July that he will step down from his leadership post at the school after the end of the school year, which starts Aug. 22.

Neil Turner, a 28-year-old from Fairdealing, Mo., was arrested by conservation agents in 2009 on accusations of illegal “deer-dogging,” or using dogs to hunt deer, in the Mark Twain National Forest.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in for the Missouri Supreme Court this week, creating new caselaw about the definition of “collapse” in property insurance policies. In the past, Missouri appellate courts — but never the Supreme Court — have endorsed a narrow definition, interpreting “collapse” as a completely flattened structure or one reduced to rubble.

As the lead smelter’s gray smokestack towers above her, Brenda Browning walks toward a grassy hollow next to the low-slung Herculaneum City Hall building. A paved driveway leads to nowhere. Two white clothesline posts stand absently nearby.

Tagged with: Doe Run

When Richard Scherrer stepped down as Armstrong Teasdale’s managing partner in 2007, the firm didn’t honor his nine-year leadership with a pocket watch or plaque.

In part by creating email notifications about local sex offenders, Missouri’s sex offender registry is now considered up to snuff by the standards of the U.S. Department of Justice.