Update on Aug. 8: I spoke with Mayor Beth Van Doyne who told me, basically, that LVG doesn’t have much of a case. “The Las Colinas Group is in a corner,” she said. “The city has done everything they were obligated to do. It’s nothing but a smear campaign.” The…
What would 120 acres of pristine, undeveloped green space in the heart of booming Lakewood go for on the open market? Hard to know, but it’s a fair bet that it would be much, much more than $7.4 million the 100-year-old Lakewood Country Club is listed for on county tax…
A U.S. District Court judge in Galveston yesterday blocked five parts of Texas’ new voter registration laws, all of which were aimed at curtailing large voter registration drives. Voting for America and Project Vote, two affiliated national projects that hire canvassers to register new voters, had sued Galveston County Tax…
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Farmers Branch’s voting system is depriving the Latino population of representation on the City Council. City leaders have 60 days to address the violation of federal voting law. Farmers Branch’s ethnic history has been troubled over the last six years or so. The town…
A controversial Farmers Branch immigration ordinance will get a second chance in court after a sound rejection back in March, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s controversial immigration bill will play a determining role. Farmers Branch has three times passed a “housing” ordinance which would require anyone renting…
You know Combat Zone Corp. as the illustrious production company that brought you such unforgettable cinematic experiences as Bareback Mount Him, These Feet Were Made For Fucking and Chow My Puntang” All of them are motion pictures of the first order, I assure you, but all is not well in…
Update at 4:24 p.m.: I still haven’t heard directly from TVA, but a press release from them just hit the wires. Mills’ claims are “ridiculous,” and she was fired for “ongoing inappropriate and abusive conduct toward her supervisor and fellow employees.” The full release is after the jump. Original post::…
Judging by a joint filing in a federal-court scuffle between Avalon Residential Care Homes and the City of Dallas, the end may be in sight. Dallas has for years struggled to strike a balance between regulating the city’s group homes without trampling their rights under federal housing laws. Safe to…
On a Saturday evening in late July, Beth Shapiro went for a bite at the Uptown Pub, a laid-back and unpretentious bar at the corner of Lemmon and McKinney avenues. She sat on the patio, where she spotted Cain, a large (140 pounds) friendly looking mastiff. As she petted the…
In March 2011, the Exciting Greater New St. John Primitive Baptist Church closed on a modest white clapboard building on 56th Street in South Oak Cliff. The church, led by the Reverend Vincent Davis, appointed three trustees to handle the financing of the purchase and later put Sandra Diamond Taylor…
In the course of reporting the recent Observer feature on wrongful convictions based on wrongdoing by prosecutors and police, an interesting tangential point surfaced multiple times. It was the reminder by several lawyers that wrongful convictions are all cases that went to trial, but that there are many other defendants,…
Last month, we wrote about a former Fairview Police officer who claimed the chief, Granver Tolliver, a fairly litigious former Dallas deputy chief of police, sexually harassed her repeatedly. In Lisa Mitchell’s lawsuit, she accused him of grabbing her by the ponytail and gesticulating crudely with his fingers during a…
As Governor Rick Perry vows not to take any of that filthy federal money to expand Medicaid in Texas, state lawmakers may also have to find another $39 million next year to keep the Medicaid Women’s Health Program alive. These days, the WHP has been going through some prolonged death…
Last May, Texas joined the growing roster of states with a voter ID law requiring those seeking to exercise their most fundamental civic duty to present a state-issued ID before casting a ballot. Like a driver’s license or, this being Texas, a concealed handgun permit. And that was that, at…
A family of Johnson County landowners is suing Chesapeake, the country’s second-largest natural gas company, for allegedly cheating them out of royalties. Their lawyer, Dallas-based attorney James Holmes, says they can thank endlessly indulgent Texas laws and a taxing authority more inclined to look the other way. The complaint filed…
View Larger Map Harry Engel loved his home right up to the day it killed him. The retired minister had grown up as an orphan, so he took particular pride in the modest Grand Prairie house he had shared with wife Wanda for 22 years. In February 2010, the couple…
Paul Green was not in the best of health in 2009 when he was hired as a bus monitor by Dallas County Schools. He had been battling colon cancer for more than a decade and, several years before, had been diagnosed with hypertension and congestive heart failure. As a result,…
Pedro Hermenegildo didn’t have insurance, so he paid Dr. Ricardo Rocha in cash to repair a hernia, a fairly routine, outpatient procedure. But according to a lawsuit filed against Rocha in a Dallas County district court last week, Hermenegildo lost much more than his hernial bulge. The surgery was performed…
Every year, when temperatures in Texas inevitably hit triple digits, the inside of the state’s prison cells heat up like an ovens. Only 21 of 111 units in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system are fully air conditioned; the rest have some AC but mostly not in the inmates’…
In April 2009, assistant Denton County District Attorney Cary Piel walked into the office of his colleague, assistant DA Nadiya Williams-Boldware, to discuss a case he was preparing for trial. He had just watched video of the crime that showed a black woman drive drunkenly through a cemetery, then fought…
Trouble seems to follow Fairview Police Chief Granver Tolliver wherever he goes. Back when he was a Dallas cop, soaring through the ranks to deputy chief, he became mired in an internal controversy over a vehicle accident in 1996. Department brass accused him of favoritism and of pulling the strings…
Update at 5:26 p.m.: Just kidding. Great Clips sends word that they are in the process of dismissing the lawsuit. “We have come to an amicable resolution with Mr. Ross,” the company said in a statement. You may not have noticed, but the hair-styling landscape in Dallas is shifting beneath…
