Christian Brezill, 25, had pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft of U.S. property before senior U.S. District Judge Donald J. Stohr in December.

In October, Brezill and co-defendant Ronald Jackson, 58, were charged in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri with stealing over $1,000 in merchandise purportedly stolen from Best Buy after they arrested an individual with the property. The arrest was part of a sting operation, and the individual was working with federal law enforcement.

In addition, Brezill was ordered to pay restitution of $1,480 to the FBI jointly with Jackson.

Jackson pleaded guilty to the same charge and is scheduled to be sentenced April 23.

Police Department spokeswoman Katie O’Sullivan said previously that the men were no longer with the department. Jackson retired during an investigation into the allegations, and Brezill was fired.

According to court documents, on July 27, Jackson received a call from an individual that a person identified only as Jane Doe was in possession of electronics stolen from Best Buy. Jackson told the individual that he would find Doe and take the merchandise and split some of the electronic equipment with him.

Brezill and Jackson were uniformed patrol officers assigned to work in the department’s 6th District out of the North Patrol Division.

Brezill and Jackson discovered that Doe had some minor outstanding traffic warrants and arrested her. Unbeknownst to the officers, Jane Doe was working with federal law enforcement and the electronics seized from her were owned by the U.S. government.

The officers searched her car and found electronics equipment still in original boxes and Best Buy bags including: a Sony speaker system, a Phillips iPod docking system, a speaker cable, a Wii, an X-Box, a Logitech computer speaker system, a Dell laptop and an LCD flat-screen TV.

According to the court documents, they put these items into Brezill’s patrol car and never reported the seizure to the department. They split up the items later at a private residence.

Brezill’s attorney Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The case is USA v. Jackson et al., 4:09-cr-00650.

James B. Loken, of Minneapolis, will relinquish his post effective March 31, according to a news release. Loken, who took on the post on April 1, 2003, will remain on active service on the court.

Judge William Jay Riley of Omaha will succeed Loken as chief judge.

In addition to including the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, The Eighth Circuit encompasses Missouri. The court is based in St. Louis.

John Coleman, 47, went to Dr. Guilan Norouzi’s dental office in March 2007 to have some teeth extracted and get dental implants. He underwent conscious sedation, in which patients are given oral doses of a medicine intended to make them relaxed but still responsive but not completely “put to sleep” like general anesthesia.

Coleman’s wife Sarah has filed suit against Seattle-based company Dental Organization for Conscious Sedation, or DOCS, which trained Norouzi and supplied materials and protocols to him related to sedation dentistry procedures, alleging the company was negligent.

In her petition, Coleman claims that DOCS put profits above health and safety of dental patients by “aggressively marketing DOCS products and services, deliberately downplaying the significant health risks associated with the DOCS products, procedures, methods, manuals and protocols, and proposing methods that were not FDA approved and did not have a scientific basis.”

Coleman’s had filed suit against Dr. Norouzi and settled confidentially in September.

John Bitting, general counsel for DOCS, declined to comment saying the company hasn’t been served in the lawsuit.

The case is Sarah Coleman v. Dental Organization for Conscious Sedation, LLC., 10SL-CC00975.

The budget request is the smallest funding increase requested in more than 20 years, according to information provided on the judiciary’s Web site, www.uscourts.gov. The money is needed to enable courts to cope with anticipated increases in case filings, the judiciary said.

“In order to handle a growing workload and sustain a fair and expeditious delivery of justice, the federal courts must have the resources needed to do their work. We do not have programs that we can cut in response to a budget shortfall,” Judge Julia Gibbons, chair of the Judicial Conference Budget Committee, told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Gibbons is a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which consists of courts in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.

An “influx of crime fighting resources [in the president's budget] will result in more criminal cases in our district courts, more work for our probation and pretrial services officers, and increased caseload in our defender services program, which provides assigned counsel to eligible defendants,” she said.

She noted that additional appellate cases could be seen as the Justice Department adds immigration judges and staff to clear the backlog of cases in the immigration courts.

The civil caseload in the federal courts is expected to increase 6 percent; the criminal caseload is expected to increase 3 percent; and bankruptcy filings are expected to increase 20 percent increase. The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act increased the amount of work involved in each case, with new docketing, noticing and hearing requirements required for bankruptcy courts.

In addition, the number of convicted offenders under the supervision of federal probation officers, which hit a record in 2009, is expected to increase 3 percent in 2010.

Securitas Security Services USA Inc., Whelan Security and two security employees were named as defendants in eight lawsuits filed last week in St. Louis Circuit Court by survivors and families of those killed in the shooting. However, Whelan President Greg Twardowski said Wednesday that the company had not been providing service to the plant and was “befuddled” by being named in the lawsuits.

Securitas was and is ABB’s security provider in St. Louis, ABB spokesman Bob Fesmire said this morning.

As for Whelan, “I don’t know who they are, and I’m not sure where that’s coming from,” he said.

Plaintiffs attorney Ed Hershewe, of The Hershewe Law Firm in Joplin, was in depositions and didn’t return three phone calls left Wednesday. He had said Tuesday that the process was just starting and more information could come to light during discovery. 

“We’re in the very beginning of the beginning of these lawsuits,” Hershewe said. 

In January, gunman and ABB employee Timothy Hendron shot and killed three people at the north St. Louis plant and injured five others. Hendron died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Tuesday afternoon’s final decree from Jackson County Circuit Judge J. Dale Youngs increased the total judgment against Union Pacific to more than $2.065 million.

A jury this fall awarded $1.27 million to a woman who claimed she lost her job as a train conductor because of gender discrimination and retaliation. The jury also awarded Serena Eickhoff $120,000 in compensatory damages.

Eickhoff’s Kansas City attorneys, Dennis Egan of the Popham Law Firm and Martin Meyers, of The Meyers Law Firm, in November submitted a motion for attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses.

Anthony Byergo and Donald Prophete, both of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart in Kansas City, represented Union Pacific, but didn’t immediately return phone calls. A Union Pacific spokesman, Mark Davis out of Omaha, Neb., declined immediate comment.

Judge Youngs this week awarded Egan and Meyers a total of $452,971.25 in attorneys’ fees. Youngs also ordered the railroad to pay $22,293.45 in costs and expenses and awarded Eickhoff $200,000 in front pay.

He signed off on the jury’s original awards, bringing the total judgment to a total of $2,065,324.70. That’s $675,264.70 more than what the jury decided.

The case is Eickhoff v. Union Pacific, 0816-CV20813.

The Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2010, or H.R. 4506, was sent to the Senate last Friday by a 345-5 vote.

Nationwide, bankruptcy filings in federal courts rose 31.9 percent in calendar year 2009. More than 1.4 million bankruptcies were filed last year, up from the 1.1 million filed in calendar year 2008.

A defense attorney had asked last week that a new judge be assigned to Jetton’s case, which is pending in Scott County. The Supreme Court has assigned St. Louis Circuit Judge Donald McCullin.

Jetton has pleaded not guilty to a felony assault charge for allegedly battering a woman during a sexual encounter last fall.

The former Republican lawmaker also is the target of a federal grand jury investigation into alleged bribery involving a political donation and a 2005 bill regulating sexually oriented businesses. Jetton has denied any wrongdoing.

Jetton’s term in office ended in January 2009.

The firm will acquire Jefferson City-based law firm Hendren Andrae on April 1, according to a press release. Three shareholders, two senior partners and two associates from the firm will join Polsinelli to practice public policy, government relations, regulatory law and business litigation.

Richard Brownlee III, Michael Dallmeyer and Rodney Gray will all be joining Polsinelli. Former U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, will maintain an office in Jefferson City. Hulshof joined Polsinelli after losing the 2008 governor’s race to then-Attorney General Jay Nixon.

Kansas City-based Polsinelli Shughart, which had $167.5 million in revenue in 2009, has offices in 12 other cities, including St. Louis and Chicago.

The lawsuit, filed in 2008 in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, alleges that Jose Peppers violated the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. That law requires that no more than five digits of a card number can be printed on receipts.

In an order issued Tuesday, Chief Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. said the case had met the requirements of a class action lawsuit and could go forward.

According to Gaitan’s order, the class covers a period between Dec. 6, 2006, and Dec. 7, 2007, during which there were about 45,000 credit card transactions. In court papers, Jose Peppers argued that the lawsuit could have an “annihilating” effect on its business and urged the court to dismiss the suit. The law allows “not less than $100 and not more than $1,000″ for each plaintiff.

“The court is not persuaded that Defendants’ concerns about the potentially ruinous effects of a judgment, settlement or other resolution regarding damages outweighs the benefit of certifying a class at this stage of the litigation,” Gaitan wrote.

The suit is one of 12 identical lawsuits filed in the court in May 2008. The other 11, which named other Missouri businesses, were dismissed a few weeks later. Another similar lawsuit was filed against Sam’s Club in October 2008. It is still pending.

The McClelland Law Firm, of Liberty, and Walters Bender Strohbehn & Vaughan, of Kansas City, are the class counsel.

The case is Steven E. Hammer v. J.P. Southwestern Foods d/b/a Jose Peppers Border Grill and Cantina, 4:08-cv-339.