By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy's virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threatened with a knife to give them up.

The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy's possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service.

Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of "virtual goods" — and whether stealing them is real-world theft.

The suspect's lawyer had argued the amulet and mask "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value."

But the Netherlands' highest court said the virtual objects had an intrinsic value to the 13-year-old gamer because of "the time and energy he invested" in winning them while playing the game.

The court did not release the offender's name, only his year of birth — 1992. It said he and another youth beat and kicked the boy and threatened him with a knife until he logged into RuneScape and dropped the objects in 2007.

One of the thieves, who was also playing the game, was then able to pick up the items, making them his virtual property. Both were convicted by a lower court in 2009, but only one of them had appealed to the Supreme Court.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A British court has banned a man from driving for a year after he was caught traveling with four children in the trunk of his car.

Britain's Press Association news agency said Thursday that police found a total of 11 people in Zoltan Lakatos' Audi A4 when they stopped him in the English city of Leicester last year.

One passenger was in the driver's seat, three adults and two children were squeezed into the back, and officers discovered four more children in the trunk.

The news agency says Lakatos was convicted of endangering his passengers and of driving without insurance earlier this week at Leicester Magistrates' Court. He also was fined 1,325 pounds (about $2,080).

The agency said the 38-year-old was not in court for the ruling.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

The Philippine House of Representatives impeached the Supreme Court chief justice Monday over alleged corruption and favoritism toward the country's former president, now under hospital arrest for alleged election fraud.

A majority of the 284 members of the powerful House signed the resolution to impeach Chief Justice Renato Corona, who will now be tried by the Senate in an impeachment tribunal. Corona, who became the only known Supreme Court chief to be impeached in Philippine history, vowed to fight back.

Among its allegations, the impeachment complaint accuses the Corona-led court of ruling improperly in ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's favor when she sought to leave the country last month before she was arrested.

The surprise move is the latest twist in the Philippine political drama pitting Arroyo against her popular, reformist successor Benigno Aquino III, who has blamed her for a decade of corruption scandals that eroded public trust in government and held back foreign investors.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A strong sense of pessimism shrouded the start of an economic summit of rich and emerging economies Thursday, with President Barack Obama and fellow world leaders arriving in Seoul sharply divided over currency and trade policies.

The Group of 20 summit, held for the first time in Asia, has become the centerpiece of international efforts to revive the global economy and prevent future financial meltdowns.

Failure in Seoul could have severe consequences. The risk is that countries would try to keep their currencies artificially low to give their exporters a competitive edge in global markets. That could lead to a destructive trade war. Countries might throw up barriers to imports — a repeat of policies that worsened the Great Depression.

Hopes had been high that the Group of 20 — encompassing rich nations such as Germany and the U.S. as well as growing giants such as China and Brazil — could be the world forum for hashing out an economic way forward from financial crisis.

But agreement appeared elusive as the summit began, divided between those such as United States that want to get China to allow its currency rise and those irate over U.S. Federal Reserve plans to pump $600 billion of new money into the sluggish American economy, effectively devaluing the dollar.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

For much of the last decade, New Delhi sold itself as "India Rising." Barack Obama's trip here delivered a new message: India has risen.

During his three day visit that ended Tuesday, the U.S. president delivered nearly everything on India's wish list, affirming the country's growing importance.

He endorsed India's role in nearby Afghanistan, even though such a statement was sure to annoy India's regional rival Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the Afghan war. He chided Pakistan for not cracking down heavily enough on anti-India militant groups operating there. He lifted export controls, allowing India to buy high-tech weaponry from the U.S., and he gave spirited support to Indian industry, maintaining it wasn't stealing American jobs, but helping create new ones.

Most importantly for India, he backed its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, a mostly symbolic move that affirmed its place as a new global power.

"In Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging; India has already emerged," Obama told the Indian parliament Monday night.

Indian commentators saw the statement as a milestone in the nation's global image; No longer was it seen as an economic basket case, a potential dictatorship or an unstable collection of warring ethnic groups.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

Britain's Supreme Court Wednesday ruled in favor of a German heiress seeking to protect her considerable fortune from her ex-husband — a decision that gives new strength to prenuptial agreements in England.

The ruling marks a potential turning point in the legal battle over prenuptial agreements in England, where courts have generally refused to recognize them as valid, binding agreements.

Nicholas Phillips, the president of the Supreme Court, said the judges decided by an 8-1 margin to let stand an earlier Appeals Court ruling that the prenuptial agreement in this case was fair and should be applied.

It is a victory for Katrin Radmacher, 40, a paper industry heiress with a fortune of at least 55 million pounds ($86.5 million), and a defeat for her ex-husband, Nicolas Granatino, 39, a former investment banker who had been seeking a greater share of her wealth than had been spelled out in their pre-nup.

The case was complex: Radmacher is German, her ex-husband is French, but they married, lived and divorced in England. The prenuptial agreement was signed at Radmacher's father's insistence in Germany, and would have been recognized in both France and Germany, where pre-nups are commonly upheld.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

An appeals panel at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday rejected former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba's bid to have rape, murder and pillage charges against him dismissed.

Bemba is accused of commanding a militia responsible for atrocities in the neighboring Central African Republic in 2002-2003. He argued the charges were inadmissible because authorities in the Central African Republic had investigated the allegations and decided not to prosecute him.

The International Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, is a court of last resort. It cannot prosecute suspects if legal authorities in their home country already have convicted them or investigated and decided not to file charges.

However, appeals judge Anita Usacka rejected Bemba's arguments, saying the Central African Republic's highest court overturned a 2004 decision to dismiss charges against Bemba and correctly referred the case to the International Criminal Court.

"The appeals chamber confirms the impugned decision and dismisses the appeal," said Usacka, who is from Latvia.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

Ex-trader Jerome Kerviel was convicted on all counts Tuesday in history's biggest rogue trading scandal, sentenced to three years in jail and ordered to pay his former employer a mind-numbing euro4.9 billion ($6.7 billion) in damages.

The ruling marked a huge victory for Societe Generale SA, one of France's most blue-blooded banks, which has worked to clean up its image and put in place tougher risk controls since the scandal broke in 2008.

The 33-year-old former futures index trader stood expressionless as the court convicted him and pronounced a five-year sentence with two years suspended. Kerviel was found guilty on charges of forgery, breach of trust and unauthorized computer use for covering up bets worth nearly euro50 billion between late 2007 and early 2008.

In the most stunning blow, the court ordered Kerviel to pay the bank back the euro4.9 billion that it lost unwinding his complex positions in January 2008 -- a punishment he would almost certainly be unable to pay. He was also banned for life from working in the financial industry.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

An Israeli court has rejected an Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate's appeal against her deportation orders over entering Israel while being banned from the country.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire was detained at an airport lockup earlier this week for violating the conditions of her ban imposed in June, when she tried to reach Gaza aboard a blockade-busting ship.

At the time, Maguire was told she couldn't return for 10 years except with special approval.

The district court rejected her appeal Friday but gave her 48 hours to allow time for a Supreme Court appeal.

The 66-year-old Maguire is an outspoken champion of Palestinian statehood. Israel has banned other pro-Palestinian activists from entering, including Jewish-American linguist Noam Chomsky in May.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

The London law firm could face a fine of up to 500,000 pounds by the Information Commissioner over data breach.

The law firm has been accused of breaching with personal details of more than 8000 Sky broadband customers, 400 Plusnet customers and 500 Britons. The company is also accused of file sharing of its customers.

The details were unveiled in files on a website which belongs to the ACS: Law, a law company which has attracted the ire of a number of online forums because of its aggressive approach to people.

The website was the target of denial of service attack over the weekend which was the main reason of its collapse. When the site was brought back online all the hidden and unauthorized files became visible for normal users.

If the Information Commissioner finds this problem was happened because of the fault of the firm rather than a result of hacking then it would order a fine against it Experts said it was one of the worst data breach ever seen in the UK and the Information Commissioner should take strong legal action against the company.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.