Mississippi Attorney Lawyer

At first glance, the U.S. Postal Money Order looks real enough: It is the right size, shape and color, it bears an official-looking logo, and it even has a watermark, a common security feature can be found on many financial documents in these Days.

But this money – and half a dozen more like it – are forgeries, as well as dozens of other money orders and cashier’s checks if Marty Ramage holds.

Ramage, Rena Sant Banking Division Vice President, said a large number of counterfeit documents have shown up in the area of financial institutions in recent weeks.

“It’s really hard to say if it is a fake, unless you have trained to provide for certain things,” said Ramage. “There is a growing problem.”

At first glance, the U.S. Postal Money Order looks real enough: It is the right size, shape and color, it bears an official-looking logo, and it even has a watermark, a common security feature can be found on many financial documents in these Days.But this money – and half a dozen more like it – are forgeries, as well as dozens of other money orders and cashier’s checks if Marty Ramage holds.

Ramage, Rena Sant Banking Division Vice President, said a large number of counterfeit documents have shown up in the area of financial institutions in recent weeks.

“It’s really hard to say if it is a fake, unless you have trained to provide for certain things,” said Ramage. “There is a growing problem.”

L Washington legal mandarin for six decades who served as White House counsel under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He had complications from a broken hip.

Cutler was a commanding presence among the capital’s power elite and at home in the highest levels of industry, government and politics. He was a founding partner of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, one of the city’s leading law firms. Last year, it merged with a Boston firm to become Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, with offices on three continents and more than 1000 lawyers.

President Jimmy Carter congratulates Lloyd Cutler after appointing him White House counsel in 1979. He returned to the White House in 1994 as counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigation. (Upi)

Cutler was a Democrat who was nonpartisan in his legal work. His clients ranged from liberal advocacy groups to big business, including trade associations for cars, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. His corporate clients included The Washington Post Co., CBS, Bethlehem Steel, Kaiser Steel, IBM, American Express, Pan American World Airways and the Long Iceland Railroad.

Industry experts speaking at a panel discussion on food biotechnology at the International Food Technologist’s (IFT) Annual Expo shared concerns that labeling food products as “non-GMO (genetically modified organism) may put food companies and manufacturers at risk for liability.

Increasing pressure from anti-biotech activist groups and product recalls associated with Starlink corn have compelled some food companies.

The debate over the state’s judicial and business climate raged in and around the Charleston Marriott Tuesday as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released its annual State Liability Systems Ranking Study.

Researchers for Harris Interactive found, perhaps not surprisingly, that 60 percent of more than 1400 in-house lawyers at large public corporations think the nation’s state court liability system is fair or poor.

For the fourth straight year, those lawyers ranked West Virginia’s court system behind only Mississippi as worst in the country, U.S. Chamber president and CEO Tom Donahue said at a morning news conference at the Marriott.

Donahue chose Charleston to announce the results of the 2005 short survey. He said he’ll fly to Illinois, another battleground Chamber, to deliver a similar message.

Lori Mill is an accountant. She’s also one of an increasing number of people whose health insurance countries only 80 percent of her medical costs.

So when she got a $ 1133 bill for a 30-second procedure in Virginia Mason Medical Center’s downtown outpatient clinic – the doctor clipped her toenail and sent it to the lab to be tested for fungus – she read it carefully. And she started asking questions.

She learned that if she’d gone to a different Virginia Mason outpatient clinic, such as the Kirkland clinic, where her doctor also practices, the bill would have been at least $ 418 less – the amount included on her bill as “miscellaneous hospital charges. ”

Nobody at Virginia Mason told her any of this ahead of time, said Mill, who lives in Everett and works in downtown Seattle.

“When I’m paying 20 percent of that bill, if I had known about [the charges] up front, I would not have been in that downtown clinic,” she said. Virginia Mason refused to change her bill, Mill said, even after she asked her insurer’s fraud department to review the case. So Mill told her story to a lawyer.

Yesterday, John Phillips filed a lawsuit he hopes to have certified as a class action against Virginia Mason, alleging unfair and deceptive practices in charging patients more at one clinic than the other, and not telling patients ahead of time.

After steering Compaq Computer Corp.. into a massive merger with Hewlett-Packard Co., Michael Capellas appears poised to take on an even tougher assignment as chief executive officer of bankrupt WorldCom.

Capellas said Monday he would step down from his position as president of HP and has been negotiating with WorldCom officials to take charge of the Mississippi-based telecommunications provider.

“I have been talking with them for the last several weeks, but we do not have a definitive agreement,” Capellas, 48, said.

He added that “other companies” have initiated talks with him but declined to name them.

The move comes six months after HP bought Compaq for $ 19 billion and Capellas assumed the role of No. 2 behind CEO Carly Fiorina. Analysts say they were not surprised by his decision, which was supported ..

 Other Robert R. Courtneys could be watering down life-saving drugs across America, and state regulators acknowledge they would not know it.

Courtney, now sitting in jail, diluted chemotherapy drugs for profit for as long as 10 years in Kansas City. Unfortunately, experts say, such criminal acts can not be detected by today’s regulatory systems.

Although that may be frightening enough, a six-month investigation by The Kansas City Star also found that:
—Pharmacy regulations vary so much between states that one compounding practice banned in Kentucky is allowed – even endorsed – in Oklahoma. Though many states have some compounding regulations, at least a dozen states, including Kansas, have none.
—Understaffed and overworked pharmacy regulators in some states can not keep up with routine inspection. For six months, Kansas had just one inspector statewide.
—Most states allow pharmacy technicians – some of whom are not even required to have high school diplomas – to mix drugs from scratch. Since 2000, technicians have made fatal errors compounding in California and Virginia.

Reynoldsburg resident David Percy is pondering an offer to reclaim 30 percent of his mother’s legacy.

Percy said he and his sister have not been able to claim $ 175000 left to them by their mother, who died in September. That’s because Kay Percy invested nearly all her life savings in notes sold by Modern Finance, a failed local investment company.

Now, at least one company is offering to purchase the notes for 30 cents on the dollar while Modern Finance’s parent company, the Thaxton Group, goes through bankruptcy.

Lori Mill is an accountant. She’s also one of an increasing number of people whose health insurance countries only 80 percent of her medical costs.So when she got a $ 1133 bill for a 30-second procedure in Virginia Mason Medical Center’s downtown outpatient clinic – the doctor clipped her toenail and sent it to the lab to be tested for fungus – she read it carefully. And she started asking questions.

She learned that if she’d gone to a different Virginia Mason outpatient clinic, such as the Kirkland clinic, where her doctor also practices, the bill would have been at least $ 418 less – the amount included on her bill as “miscellaneous hospital charges. ”

Nobody at Virginia Mason told her any of this ahead of time, said Mill, who lives in Everett and works in downtown Seattle.

“When I’m paying 20 percent of that bill, if I had known about [the charges] up front, I would not have been in that downtown clinic,” she said. Virginia Mason refused to change her bill, Mill said, even after she asked her insurer’s fraud department to review the case. So Mill told her story to a lawyer.

Yesterday, John Phillips filed a lawsuit he hopes to have certified as a class action against Virginia Mason, alleging unfair and deceptive practices in charging patients more at one clinic than the other, and not telling patients ahead of time.