Lawsuit Begets Reforms: A District of Columbia task force assessing the city's emergency response capabilities after the slaying of a New York Times reporter in 2006 on Thursday recommended better leadership, cross-training and evaluations, the WaPo reports. It did not advocate -- as was once suggested -- that the D.C Fire and Emergency Medical Services be split into two agencies. The task force was born out of a legal settlement between the city and David Rosenbaum's relatives, who agreed to put aside a $20 million lawsuit in exchange. Rosenbaum, 63, was mugged after going for an evening stroll in January 2006. Emergency responders misdiagnosed him as drunk, and he died two days later. A subsequent investigation revealed he had been hit in the head with a pipe. Here's the WaPo's 2006 lawsuit story.
Campus Shooter Sought: Delaware State University in Dover is under lock-down mode this morning and classes have been suspended after a shooting left two students wounded, CNN reports. The male student is listed in stable condition while his female counterpart is in serious condition. The shooting occurred about 1 a.m. near Memorial Hall and comes five months after the Virginia Tech University tragedy, in which a gunman fatally shot 32 people before killing himself.
O.J.'s Counsel: O.J. Simpson's celebrity status and brushes with the law have elevated the career of a once-unknown Miami criminal defense attorney. TIME has this exclusive profile of New Jersey native Yale Galanter. "He was a nobody until he represented O.J. on a case that never should have gone to trial," says one Miami-based prosecutor of Galanter and Simpson's road-rage trial in 2001.
More Trouble for NY Firm: When it rains, it pours. The feds on Thursday indicted Melvyn Weiss, the co-founder of Milberg Weiss, in connection with allegations that the firm made $250 million the last 25 years by employings paid plaintiffs on call in class-action suits, the NYT reports. Weiss, 72, faces charges of conspiracy, racketeering, obstruction of justice and lying to a federal grand jury. Yesterday, the Department of Justice also announced former partner Steven Schulman has agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge and cooperate while Weiss' ex-associate, William Lerach, pleaded guilty to a similar charge earlier this week. Court records show investigators relied on the testimony of yet another former partner, David Bershad, to bolster their case against Weiss.
Fraud and Waste: Department of Defense officials on Thursday disclosed that they are investigating $6 billion in contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the AP reports via CNN. Thomas Gimble, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general, told members of the House Armed Services Committee there are 225 investigators considering criminal misconduct allegations as a result of 90 investigations and 29 audits. Gimble and others attribute the impropriety to a handful of "bad apples".
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