LOSING TRACK OF THE RELEASED
The New York Law Journal details the confusion surrounding hundreds of state prison and local jail inmates whose post-release supervision was thrown into question by two recent Court of Appeals rulings. The Court ruled that terms of post-release supervision must be set at sentencing by trial judges, and not added later by the Department of Correctional Services (as was done with the inmates in question). The State wants to hold, rather than release, inmates with questionable sentences for 60 or 90 days while it builds a case arguing for the inmates’ resentencing. “If members of the defendant class are immediately released from custody, plaintiffs’ ability to seek resentencing of those members will be irreparably prejudiced to the extent that the criminal justice system then loses track of these defendants, who are released without reporting instructions, without known or appropriate residences, and without employment,” Attorney General Cuomo’s office argued in State of New York v. Myers. “Unaccounted for and unaccountable to anyone, defendants pose a threat to public safety.”

UNPOPULAR POWER PLAYER
Invoking the public interest requirement of State utilities law, Administrative Law Judge Rafael Epstein has nixed global energy company Iberdrola SA’s planned $4.6 billion buyout of the regional powerhouse firm, Energy East Corp. Newsday has the story. New York State’s Public Service Commission, whose approval Iberdrola needs, had previously voiced concern about the merger, and recommended preconditions such as $600 million in rate cuts and Iberdrola’s selling all of its power-generation plants in New York, which corresponds with PSC’s goal of getting utilities out of the generation business to encourage competition. Epstein’s ruling, which is non binding, “defies common sense,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “At a time when gas prices are $4 a gallon and we desperately need to develop alternative sources of energy, to place such severe restrictions on the world’s leading wind power producer to develop wind power cries out for reversal,” Schumer said. “The ruling could cost us jobs upstate, $2 billion in investment and should be rectified by the Public Service Commission.”

Meanwhile, venting in The Albany Times Union, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno called for Epstein’s head. “That Administrative Judge — I don’t know who that person is — they have a right to their own opinion,” Bruno said. “But that person ought to be dismissed. That's how I feel.”

THIS BELONGS ON PAGE SIX
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub has dismissed a lawsuit by former New York Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, which accused Bill and Hillary Clinton, The New York Daily News, and others of trying to ruin his reputation. The New York Times has the details. In 2006, Stern made headlines for allegedly bartering a $100,000 bribe with California supermarket magnate Ronald W. Burkle to keep Burkle out of the gossip pages. “Indeed, the court is sorely tempted to dismiss the complaint” without further explanation, “as it fails, for the most part, to detail the specific acts to enable the defendants a fair opportunity to defend,” Justice Tolub wrote.

AMICABLE EMBLEM 
Reuters reports that Johnson & Johnson and the American Red Cross have settled their dispute over both groups’ use of an internationally recognized red emblem. Southern District Judge Jed Rakoff presided. “Johnson & Johnson brought the lawsuit very reluctantly only to protect what we believed were important trademark issues,” J&J Chief Executive William Weldon said in a statement. “The decision of the court has brought clarity to those issues, including its ruling that Johnson & Johnson has properly used its valued Red Cross trademark over the years, and we have no desire to continue our dispute through trial and appeal.”