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By Washington D.C. Criminal Defense Lawyer Glenn Ivey of Price Benowitz LLP.

Criminal reform advocates have reason to celebrate.

Two current proposals in city government would make it easier for thousands of former criminals to have their arrest records either sealed or completely expunged, giving them a helping hand in finding housing or employment.

Sealing one’s record makes it available only to law enforcement, while expunging the record deletes it completely. Mayor Bowser’s bill would decrease the waiting times those seeking to seal or expunge their records currently face; it would also increase the crimes for which sealing would be possible.

Taking a cue from other cities and states that have made it easier for people to seal or expunge their records by expanding the list of crimes, Council member David Grosso has said he will introduce a bill that would further expand the situations where a record can be sealed, and require that records be expunged automatically if someone is not convicted of a crime.

Both bills reduce waiting periods before someone can ask for their record to be sealed, and both expands the list of sealable offenses. As the law now stands, 40 misdemeanors and one felony makes a person ineligible to have their record sealed.

“Punishing someone by keeping an arrest on their record when they have not been convicted of a crime does not make sense,” said Glenn Ivey, a criminal defense lawyer at Price Benowitz LLP. “Sealing or expunging your criminal record after an arrest can only be beneficial. Being able to succeed economically by finding a job or renting their own apartment — things that are virtually impossible with a criminal record — is a win-win for themselves and for society as a whole. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Being arrested in the District but not prosecuted is known as being “no-papered”; if you are no-papered, you can request that a judge seals your records. However, the process takes anywhere from two to four years. The mayor’s bill would make these cases automatically sealed; Grosso’s bill would expunge these records.

These new bills would affect thousands of people — out of 40,000 people who are arrested in D.C. each year, almost one-third of them are no-papered.

By criminal defense attorney Dayne Phillips, who is barred and practices in Columbia, South Carolina.

SunTrust bank, based in Atlanta, said that a former employee compromised 1.5 million customer accounts in a data breach, sharing the data with a criminal third party.

The bank has more than 1,400 branches, 2,100 ATMs in eleven states, including South Carolina, plus Washington D.C. The breach, which accessed customer contact lists, included the customers’ names, addressed account balances and phone numbers; it did not include social security numbers, drivers license numbers, account numbers or passwords.

The bank is working closely with the police and investigators. “Theft, including identity theft, is a serious crime that can severely affect the victims’ financial well-being, and it can be difficult to prove without concrete evidence linking the former employee to the breach,” said Dayne Phillips, a theft lawyer practicing in South Carolina. “SunTrust is responsible for keeping their customer account files secure and confidential. A former employee having access to this sensitive data is inexcusable.”

The bank learned of the breach in February but waited until April 20 to alert the public. According to the bank, it thought the information was not exposed externally until that date. As soon as they found out, the bank made the announcement that they have been working closely with law enforcement.

However, it seems prudent that the sooner the bank lets their customers know of the possibility of any fraudulent activity, the sooner they could have made arrangement to protect their information and identity and prevent any possible identity theft, which can take years to rectify.

Data and cyber breaches are prevalent, and we need to protect ourselves.

In 2016, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) and CyberScout, there were 1,091 data breaches, a 40 percent increase over reported breaches in 2015. In 2017 that number reached 1,579, a 44.7% increase over 2016. As of May 1, 2018, there have been a total of 383 breaches, exposing 12,918,657 records of unsuspecting customers.

This problem is not going away.

According to the bank, no fraudulent or unexplained activity has been detected, and customers can enroll in identity theft protection, IDnotify by Experian, for free. The product includes an annual credit report, credit monitoring, identity theft insurance up to $1 million, help in restoring their identity and monitoring of the dark web.

Customers will not be held responsible for any fraudulent activity in their accounts.

This column is written by D.C. Realtor and resident Sean Forschler.  Licensed in DC, MD & VA, he has been in the business since 2001 and currently works at RLAH Real Estate. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Co-operatives (co-ops) are probably the least understood type of residential home ownership. And yet, DC is one of 3 major cities where this type of ownership thrives — The other cities are New York and Chicago.

They have existed in the city since the 1920’s and unlike condominiums, co-ops never required special legislation to come into existence. DC contains about 125 co-ops (with only a few in VA & MD) and if included in a home search, many more options become available to a buyer.

A co-op is simply a corporation owned and operated by its members, in order to provide housing for its members. The corporation owns the land and improvements and thus is taxed as a whole entity.

Because of this structure, taxes tend to be significantly lower than its condominium counterpart, being one of several benefits of owning a co-op. Each unit owner pays for a portion of this monthly tax based on their ownership interest.

Ownership interest is generally based on the size of a unit. Having taxes included in the monthly fee is quite unique to co-ops as this is not the case with condo fees.

Of course, as in anything, there are a few exemptions, such as the Watergate and Riverplace. These co-operatives actually lease their land, owning only the improvements (buildings). (more…)

By DWI and criminal defense attorney Gary L. Medlin, who is barred and practices in Tarrant County, Texas, with The Medlin Law Firm.

The House Ways and Means Committee held votes on 12 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reforms on Wednesday, April 18 that are aimed at improving the customer service and information technology departments of the agency. Ironically, the vote was held on the new Tax Day, which was pushed back one day due to technical difficulties of the online filing system.

One of the bills that passed with a unanimous vote was created to improve customer service and enforcement. The bill would wind up permanently extending the program that offers free filing for taxpayers who are low-and-middle income.

This same bill would also create a permanent office for independent appeals, rename the IRS commissioner to IRS administrator, and then require said administrator to submit a plan for reorganization to Congress by September 30, 2020.

Another bill that passed, this one by a vote of 414-3, has a focus on updating the information technology and cybersecurity of the agency. The reforms from this bill would allow the IRS to accept debit and credit card payments and expand the systems for electronic tax-filing.

A bill was also passed during the Wednesday vote that would allow the Justice Department to create an expedited review process for identity-theft issues that involve IRS agents being impersonated. This reform bill was passed by a vote of 403-3.

All the bills passed on Wednesday will be added to the package that is sent to the Senate for a vote. There is no date set yet for the Senate to vote on these reforms passed by the House.

“Tax reform continues to occur as the latest set of bills make their way to the Senate,” Gary L. Medlin, a Fort Worth Identity Theft Lawyer of The Medlin Law Firm, said. “It can be challenging to keep up with all of these changes, but it’s important to know how the tax law changes affects how you file in the coming years.”

There were some smaller bills that were passed using voice vote in the House. These bills would provide updates to how identity theft victims are handled by the agency, turn the voluntary income tax assistance program into a permanent one, and require that the agency give 90 days’ notice should it decide to close an assistance center.

By Medford personal injury lawyer Richard Grungo, who is barred and practices in the state of New Jersey with Grungo Colarulo.

At the end of 2017, the Trump Administration began the process of reducing and discouraging the levying of fines against nursing homes by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The position taken by the administration was that these fines had caused nursing homes to take attention from caring for patients and focus instead on complying with regulations in order to avoid fines. Lobbyists argued that these regulations and penalties were reducing the quality of care for residents. The Trump Administration agreed and began the process of rolling back the penalties.

Penalties and fines were most often levied against nursing homes in situations where a patient was injured due to neglect or avoidable accidents, such as falls due to inadequate supervision. Or, where a patient had lost their life due to the negligence of the facility.

The use of fines and penalties for each incident was one of several ways that CMS could try and get a facility to comply with care regulations. CMS could also refuse to pay for newly admitted patients or impose penalties based on each day that a facility was in violation of a regulation.

Now, CMS has been directed to avoid imposing penalties when the incident was a “one-time mistake” — even if the mistake resulted in the death of a patient. If you have a loved one in a nursing facility, you have likely had concerns about the quality of care and one time or another. Learning about the roll-back of these regulations is undoubtedly not welcome news. (more…)

For over a century, the core of America’s postal system was the Railway Mail Service.

On board Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars, teams of clerks worked to ensure that mail was canceled, sorted and loaded into sacks for delivery across the nation, at speeds of up to 85 miles an hour.

In recognition of this critical service, the National Postal Museum celebrates Train Day every year in May, marking the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. Train tracks connecting the East and West coasts allowed the Post Office Department to quickly move mail across the entire country.

Join us on May 19 and 20 to partake in our annual Train Day Celebration and experience the rich history of the Railway Post Office through specialized activities and exhibits.

Visitors can play the RPO Sorting Challenge and try to sort the mail aboard an authentic train car before time runs out. Program participants additionally have the opportunity to learn the lingo of the Railway Post Office and crack the secret code of the railroad crews by communicating via train whistle.

Thanks to the following program partners, visitors can also enjoy elaborate model train railroad displays running throughout the museum. The National Postal Museum is pleased to host the Rappahannock Model Railroaders, The Washington, Virginia & Maryland Garden Railway Society and the Northern Virginia NTRAK. (more…)

By personal injury and insurance bad faith lawyer Scott Glovsky, who is barred and practices in the state of California with the Law Offices of Scott Glovsky.

In 2017, California enacted a law that allows terminally-ill individuals to ask pharmaceutical companies to allow them to access experimental drugs that have not yet been approved for public consumption.

The idea behind the law is simple, the drug trial and approval process is long and arduous and many of the patients that may benefit from the drugs in question may die well before the drug is approved for the public. Therefore, it allows drug companies to provide access to experimental drugs, if the company so chooses, to terminally ill patients prior to Food and Drug Administration (the FDA) approval and without opening itself up to liability in the event the drug causes the patient to die earlier.

Much like legalization of marijuana, however, there are federal rules that govern access to experimental medications that cannot be trumped by state law and drug companies that allow access to experimental medications risk having their drugs denied approval if a patient outside of the regular clinical trial process has an adverse reaction or dies from the medication.

As development of these medications and conduct of drug trials is expensive, drug companies are loathe to risk drug approval for one desperate patient and often decline to allow access outside of the clinical trial.

President Trump has come out in support of a national “Right to Try” law that would allow drug companies to provide access to terminally ill patients without risking any ongoing clinical trial.

Versions of the law have been floated and one that passed the Senate last year prohibited the FDA from using patient outcomes from a “Right to Try” situation in determining whether to approve a drug, unless it was critical to determining a drug’s safety.

The drug approval process is stringent for a reason. As dangerous drugs sometimes end up with FDA approval, how many would be on the market without the oversight that is currently in place? But for people with no other options who are facing death, the possibility that their lives could even be extended for a little while overcomes any fear they may have about a drug’s lack of testing.

“Regardless of how much testing is required, sometimes drugs end up on the market that cause people injury and sometimes death. The testing conducted by the FDA is critical,” said Scott Glovsky, a Pasadena Dangerous Drug Lawyer. “However, terminally ill individuals that may benefit from a drug in testing should have the opportunity to access those medications, provided they understand all of the possible consequences. Even a small extension on life can be a huge benefit.”