Tennessee
Graceland is not for sale, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter says in lawsuit
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, is fighting plans to publicly auction his Graceland estate in Memphis after a company tried to sell the property based on claims that a loan using the king of rock ‘n’ roll’s former home as collateral was not repaid.
A public auction for the estate had been scheduled for Thursday this week, but a Memphis judge blocked the sale after Keough sought a temporary restraining order and filed a lawsuit, court documents show.
A public notice for a foreclosure sale of the 13-acre estate posted earlier in May said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owes $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Keough inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, last year. Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, the lawsuit said.
Naussany Investments and Private Lending said Lisa Marie Presley failed to pay back the loan and sought to sell the estate on the courthouse steps, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough, on behalf of the Promenade Trust, filed the lawsuit last week, claiming that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan and unpaid sum in September 2023.
“These documents are fraudulent,” Keough’s lawyer wrote in a lawsuit. “Lisa Maria Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments.”
W. Bradley Russell, a lawyer for Naussany Investments, declined comment Tuesday.
An injunction hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in Shelby County Chancery Court.
“Elvis Presley Enterprises can confirm that these claims are fraudulent. There is no foreclosure sale. Simply put, the counter lawsuit has been filed is to stop the fraud,” Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. said in a statement Tuesday.
Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 as a tribute to Elvis Presley, the rock n’ roll icon and actor who died in August 1977 at age 42. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
Missouri
Senators, not taxpayers, will pay potential damages in Chiefs rally shooting case
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers will have to pay out of their own pockets if they lose defamation cases filed against them for falsely accusing a Kansas man of being one of the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooters and an immigrant in the country illegally.
Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Monday told his administration not to use taxpayer dollars to pay any potential damages awarded to Denton Loudermill Jr., of Olathe, Kansas, as part of his lawsuits against three state lawmakers.
But Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office will continue to represent the state senators, despite Parson earlier this month calling that “problematic.”
“We are not going to target innocent people in this state,” Parson told reporters earlier this month. “This gentleman did nothing wrong whatsoever other than he went to a parade and he drank beer and he was inspected.”
The Feb. 14 shooting outside the historic Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, killed a well-known DJ and injured more than 20 others, many of them children.
Loudermill, who was never cited or arrested in the shooting, is seeking at least $75,000 in damages in each of the suits.
“Missourians should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media,” Parson wrote in a Monday letter to his administration commissioner.
Loudermill last month filed nearly identical federal lawsuits against three Republican Missouri state senators: Rick Brattin, of Harrisonville; Denny Hoskins, of Warrensburg; and Nick Schroer, of St. Charles County.
The complaints say Loudermill suffered “humiliation, embarrassment, insult, and inconvenience” over the “highly offensive” posts.
A spokesperson for the Missouri attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment Monday about Parson’s request not to pay for potential damages or the lawsuits filed against the senators.
Loudermill froze for so long after gunfire erupted that police had time to put up crime scene tape, according to the suits. As he tried to go under the tape to leave, officers stopped him and told him he was moving “too slow.”
They handcuffed him and put him on a curb, where people began taking pictures and posting them on social media. Loudermill ultimately was led away from the area and told he was free to go.
But posts soon began appearing on the lawmakers’ accounts on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that included a picture of Loudermill and accusations that he is an “illegal alien” and a “shooter,” the suits said.
Loudermill, who was born and raised in the U.S., received death threats even though he had no involvement in the shooting, according to the complaints.
The litigation described him as a “contributing member of his African-American family, a family with deep and long roots in his Kansas community.”
Maine
Mother who said school officials hid her teen’s gender expression appeals judge’s dismissal of case
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Maine woman is appealing the dismissal of her lawsuit that accused school officials of encouraging her teen’s gender expression by providing a chest binder and using a new name and pronouns, without consulting her.
Amber Lavigne filed her notice of appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, weeks after a federal judge in Maine ruled she failed to establish legal claims for which the school district could be held liable.
The lawsuit filed last year contended the mother had a “right to control and direct the care, custody, education, upbringing and healthcare decisions of her children,” and that Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta violated her constitutional right by keeping the student’s gender expression from parents.
Lavigne, who has since begun home-schooling her teen, contends school officials urged her then-13-year-old not to tell parents about the chest binder, in addition to the new name and pronouns.
The lawsuit is the latest to weigh a minor’s right to privacy when confiding in a mental health professional against a parent’s right to supervise their children’s health and education.
California
County’s farm bureau sues over state monitoring of groundwater
HANFORD, Calif. (AP) — A lawsuit has been filed over California’s decision to take over monitoring groundwater use in part of the fertile San Joaquin Valley under a landmark law aimed at protecting the vital resource.
The Kings County Farm Bureau and two landowners filed a lawsuit last week over a decision by the State Water Resources Control Board in April to place the Tulare Lake Subbasin on so-called probationary status. The move placed state officials, instead of local officials, in charge of tracking how much water is pumped from the ground in a region that state officials deemed had failed to come up with a plan to sustainably manage the resource.
The lawsuit alleges the move went beyond the board’s authority in “an act of State overreach” that could devastate the largely agricultural county of about 150,000 people halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“This battle is about saving the community of Kings County,” the farm bureau said in a statement Thursday.
The state board said in a statement it is required to act when groundwater plans are determined to be inadequate. “The board is confident that it correctly applied its authorities to protect vital groundwater supplies,” the statement said.
It’s the first area in California to go through this process under the state’s 2014 groundwater law, which tasked local communities with coming up with long-term plans to keep groundwater flowing sustainably after years of drought and overpumping led to problems with the water quality and the sinking of land.
Alabama
‘Justice demands’ new trial for death row inmate, says county DA
An Alabama district attorney on Monday asked a judge to order a new trial for a death row inmate, saying that a review found that the 1998 conviction was flawed and “cannot be justified or allowed to stand.”
Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr filed a brief expressing his support for Toforest Johnson’s bid to receive a new trial. Carr has supported a new trial since 2020, but the latest filing detailed the findings of a post-conviction review of the case.
“A thorough review and investigation of the entire case leaves no confidence in the integrity of Johnson’s conviction. The interest of justice demands that Johnson be granted a new trial,” Carr wrote in the brief.
Johnson has been on Alabama’s death row since 1998 after he was convicted in the 1995 killing of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy, who was shot twice in the head while working off-duty security at a hotel. However, Carr, who was elected as the county’s district attorney in 2018, wrote that the “evidence in this case has unraveled over 20 years.”
Carr said that credible alibi witnesses place Johnson elsewhere at the time of the crime. He said there are multiple reasons to doubt the key prosecution witness, a woman who “claimed she overheard Johnson confess to the murder on a three-way phone call on which she was eavesdropping.”
Carr said that the “physical evidence contradicts” her account. He said she was paid $5,000 for her testimony and had been a witness in multiple cases.
“The lead prosecutor now has such grave concerns about (her) account that he supports a new trial for Johnson,” Carr wrote of the prosecutor who led the case in the 1990s.
The filing was the latest development in the long-running legal effort to win a new trial in the case that has garnered national attention and is the subject of a podcast. Former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, former Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, and several former judges and prosecutors submitted briefs to the circuit court or wrote editorials supporting a new trial for Johnson.
The current petition was filed in 2020 but was paused as other appeals played out in different courts.
The Alabama attorney general’s office has not responded to the latest filing. The office in 2022 asked a judge to dismiss Johnson’s petition: “Mr. Carr’s opinion that Johnson should receive a new trial is just that, his opinion,” lawyers for the attorney general’s office wrote in 2022.
Johnson’s daughter, Shanaye Poole, said she is thankful for Carr’s support for her father to receive a new trial.
“Our hope is that the courts will agree with him. Our hope is for our family to finally be reunited,” Poole said. She said her father has always maintained his innocence. “We’ve had to live in a nightmare for so long,” she said.
The Alabama Supreme Court in 2022 upheld a lower court’s decision denying a separate request for a new trial. Johnson’s lawyers had argued the state failed to disclose that the key prosecution witness was paid a reward. The Court of Criminal Appeals in May ruled that Johnson’s attorneys had not established that the witness knew about the reward or was motivated by it.
Graceland is not for sale, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter says in lawsuit
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, is fighting plans to publicly auction his Graceland estate in Memphis after a company tried to sell the property based on claims that a loan using the king of rock ‘n’ roll’s former home as collateral was not repaid.
A public auction for the estate had been scheduled for Thursday this week, but a Memphis judge blocked the sale after Keough sought a temporary restraining order and filed a lawsuit, court documents show.
A public notice for a foreclosure sale of the 13-acre estate posted earlier in May said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owes $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Keough inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, last year. Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, the lawsuit said.
Naussany Investments and Private Lending said Lisa Marie Presley failed to pay back the loan and sought to sell the estate on the courthouse steps, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough, on behalf of the Promenade Trust, filed the lawsuit last week, claiming that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan and unpaid sum in September 2023.
“These documents are fraudulent,” Keough’s lawyer wrote in a lawsuit. “Lisa Maria Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments.”
W. Bradley Russell, a lawyer for Naussany Investments, declined comment Tuesday.
An injunction hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in Shelby County Chancery Court.
“Elvis Presley Enterprises can confirm that these claims are fraudulent. There is no foreclosure sale. Simply put, the counter lawsuit has been filed is to stop the fraud,” Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. said in a statement Tuesday.
Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 as a tribute to Elvis Presley, the rock n’ roll icon and actor who died in August 1977 at age 42. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
Missouri
Senators, not taxpayers, will pay potential damages in Chiefs rally shooting case
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers will have to pay out of their own pockets if they lose defamation cases filed against them for falsely accusing a Kansas man of being one of the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooters and an immigrant in the country illegally.
Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Monday told his administration not to use taxpayer dollars to pay any potential damages awarded to Denton Loudermill Jr., of Olathe, Kansas, as part of his lawsuits against three state lawmakers.
But Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office will continue to represent the state senators, despite Parson earlier this month calling that “problematic.”
“We are not going to target innocent people in this state,” Parson told reporters earlier this month. “This gentleman did nothing wrong whatsoever other than he went to a parade and he drank beer and he was inspected.”
The Feb. 14 shooting outside the historic Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, killed a well-known DJ and injured more than 20 others, many of them children.
Loudermill, who was never cited or arrested in the shooting, is seeking at least $75,000 in damages in each of the suits.
“Missourians should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media,” Parson wrote in a Monday letter to his administration commissioner.
Loudermill last month filed nearly identical federal lawsuits against three Republican Missouri state senators: Rick Brattin, of Harrisonville; Denny Hoskins, of Warrensburg; and Nick Schroer, of St. Charles County.
The complaints say Loudermill suffered “humiliation, embarrassment, insult, and inconvenience” over the “highly offensive” posts.
A spokesperson for the Missouri attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment Monday about Parson’s request not to pay for potential damages or the lawsuits filed against the senators.
Loudermill froze for so long after gunfire erupted that police had time to put up crime scene tape, according to the suits. As he tried to go under the tape to leave, officers stopped him and told him he was moving “too slow.”
They handcuffed him and put him on a curb, where people began taking pictures and posting them on social media. Loudermill ultimately was led away from the area and told he was free to go.
But posts soon began appearing on the lawmakers’ accounts on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that included a picture of Loudermill and accusations that he is an “illegal alien” and a “shooter,” the suits said.
Loudermill, who was born and raised in the U.S., received death threats even though he had no involvement in the shooting, according to the complaints.
The litigation described him as a “contributing member of his African-American family, a family with deep and long roots in his Kansas community.”
Maine
Mother who said school officials hid her teen’s gender expression appeals judge’s dismissal of case
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Maine woman is appealing the dismissal of her lawsuit that accused school officials of encouraging her teen’s gender expression by providing a chest binder and using a new name and pronouns, without consulting her.
Amber Lavigne filed her notice of appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, weeks after a federal judge in Maine ruled she failed to establish legal claims for which the school district could be held liable.
The lawsuit filed last year contended the mother had a “right to control and direct the care, custody, education, upbringing and healthcare decisions of her children,” and that Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta violated her constitutional right by keeping the student’s gender expression from parents.
Lavigne, who has since begun home-schooling her teen, contends school officials urged her then-13-year-old not to tell parents about the chest binder, in addition to the new name and pronouns.
The lawsuit is the latest to weigh a minor’s right to privacy when confiding in a mental health professional against a parent’s right to supervise their children’s health and education.
California
County’s farm bureau sues over state monitoring of groundwater
HANFORD, Calif. (AP) — A lawsuit has been filed over California’s decision to take over monitoring groundwater use in part of the fertile San Joaquin Valley under a landmark law aimed at protecting the vital resource.
The Kings County Farm Bureau and two landowners filed a lawsuit last week over a decision by the State Water Resources Control Board in April to place the Tulare Lake Subbasin on so-called probationary status. The move placed state officials, instead of local officials, in charge of tracking how much water is pumped from the ground in a region that state officials deemed had failed to come up with a plan to sustainably manage the resource.
The lawsuit alleges the move went beyond the board’s authority in “an act of State overreach” that could devastate the largely agricultural county of about 150,000 people halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“This battle is about saving the community of Kings County,” the farm bureau said in a statement Thursday.
The state board said in a statement it is required to act when groundwater plans are determined to be inadequate. “The board is confident that it correctly applied its authorities to protect vital groundwater supplies,” the statement said.
It’s the first area in California to go through this process under the state’s 2014 groundwater law, which tasked local communities with coming up with long-term plans to keep groundwater flowing sustainably after years of drought and overpumping led to problems with the water quality and the sinking of land.
Alabama
‘Justice demands’ new trial for death row inmate, says county DA
An Alabama district attorney on Monday asked a judge to order a new trial for a death row inmate, saying that a review found that the 1998 conviction was flawed and “cannot be justified or allowed to stand.”
Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr filed a brief expressing his support for Toforest Johnson’s bid to receive a new trial. Carr has supported a new trial since 2020, but the latest filing detailed the findings of a post-conviction review of the case.
“A thorough review and investigation of the entire case leaves no confidence in the integrity of Johnson’s conviction. The interest of justice demands that Johnson be granted a new trial,” Carr wrote in the brief.
Johnson has been on Alabama’s death row since 1998 after he was convicted in the 1995 killing of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy, who was shot twice in the head while working off-duty security at a hotel. However, Carr, who was elected as the county’s district attorney in 2018, wrote that the “evidence in this case has unraveled over 20 years.”
Carr said that credible alibi witnesses place Johnson elsewhere at the time of the crime. He said there are multiple reasons to doubt the key prosecution witness, a woman who “claimed she overheard Johnson confess to the murder on a three-way phone call on which she was eavesdropping.”
Carr said that the “physical evidence contradicts” her account. He said she was paid $5,000 for her testimony and had been a witness in multiple cases.
“The lead prosecutor now has such grave concerns about (her) account that he supports a new trial for Johnson,” Carr wrote of the prosecutor who led the case in the 1990s.
The filing was the latest development in the long-running legal effort to win a new trial in the case that has garnered national attention and is the subject of a podcast. Former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, former Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, and several former judges and prosecutors submitted briefs to the circuit court or wrote editorials supporting a new trial for Johnson.
The current petition was filed in 2020 but was paused as other appeals played out in different courts.
The Alabama attorney general’s office has not responded to the latest filing. The office in 2022 asked a judge to dismiss Johnson’s petition: “Mr. Carr’s opinion that Johnson should receive a new trial is just that, his opinion,” lawyers for the attorney general’s office wrote in 2022.
Johnson’s daughter, Shanaye Poole, said she is thankful for Carr’s support for her father to receive a new trial.
“Our hope is that the courts will agree with him. Our hope is for our family to finally be reunited,” Poole said. She said her father has always maintained his innocence. “We’ve had to live in a nightmare for so long,” she said.
The Alabama Supreme Court in 2022 upheld a lower court’s decision denying a separate request for a new trial. Johnson’s lawyers had argued the state failed to disclose that the key prosecution witness was paid a reward. The Court of Criminal Appeals in May ruled that Johnson’s attorneys had not established that the witness knew about the reward or was motivated by it.
