Warning: Declaration of AVH_Walker_Category_Checklist::walk($elements, $max_depth) should be compatible with Walker::walk($elements, $max_depth, ...$args) in /home/seonews/public_html/wp-content/plugins/extended-categories-widget/4.2/class/avh-ec.widgets.php on line 62
{"id":12597,"date":"2014-02-26T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/2014\/02\/va-counsel-held-in-contempt-of-court-costs-taxpayers-45k\/"},"modified":"2014-02-26T09:00:40","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T09:00:40","slug":"va-counsel-held-in-contempt-of-court-costs-taxpayers-45k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/2014\/02\/va-counsel-held-in-contempt-of-court-costs-taxpayers-45k\/","title":{"rendered":"VA Counsel held in contempt of court, costs taxpayers $45K"},"content":{"rendered":"

What should have been a mere $200 fine for failing to appear in court, turned into a case that settled for $45,000 in fines.<\/p>\n

Judge David M. Murkowski, of the Kent County Probate Court, said that typically when someone fails to appear in court without an excuse, a small fine is imposed. In the case of VA regional counsel Roland L. Bessette, however, the case dragged on, became a \u201cproverbial federal case,\u201d and two years later was settled for $45,000 in attorney\u2019s fees \u2013 a burden that US taxpayers as a whole will bear.<\/p>\n

How could this happen?<\/p>\n

The case began when the VA became involved as an interested party in a veteran\u2019s conservator\u2019s probate filing because there were some inconsistencies in the filing. Bessette filed an appearance with the court as an interested party. In September 2011, Judge Murkowski issued a notice to appear at a scheduling conference, which Bessette failed to attend.<\/p>\n

Judge (more…)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What should have been a mere $200 fine for failing to appear in court, turned into a case that settled for $45,000 in fines. Judge David M. Murkowski, of the Kent County Probate Court, said that typically when someone fails…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[280,283],"tags":[1144,1475,2636,2634,2635,655,1360],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seonewswire.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Deprecated: Directive 'allow_url_include' is deprecated in Unknown on line 0