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Court strikes down DOJ policy on payment of workers' legal fees.

Article Excerpt
In a decision cheered by groups as different as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Bond Market Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, a district judge has ruled that a Department of Justice (DOJ) policy that pressures companies to stop paying their employees' legal fees during a criminal investigation is unconstitutional.

In a strongly worded opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York concluded that the DOJ had violated the plaintiffs' rights to substantive due process. "The determination of guilt or innocence must be made fairly--not in a proceeding in which the government has obtained an unfair advantage long before the trial has even begun," Kaplan wrote. (U.S.v. Stein, 435 F. Supp. 2d 330 (S.D.N.Y. 2006).)

The DOJ policy in question goes back to...

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