Dannon will pay $21 million to 39 states, including North Carolina, to settle allegations that the company's advertisements overstated soem of the health benefits of its products.

Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Wednesday that Dannon will pay $861,111 to North Carolina, making this the state's largest settlement to date with a food producer.

In addition, Dannon will now be limited in what it can say about its Dannon Activia yogurt and DanActive products, and have scientific evidence to back up the claims that are made.

The SBI story has moved, in part, into the courthouses.  Two stories showed this last week.  Two cases -- one involving Derrick Allen and another involving Floyd Brown -- were being heard in courtrooms in Durham and Charlotte.  In the Durham courtroom, an SBI agent, Jennifer Elwell, rejected an audit of the SBI lab's practices that came out in August. She said she had only read parts of the audit. She said the two former FBI supervisors who conducted the highly critical audit didn't understand forensic science.

You will recall that Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is over the SBI, commissioned the audit and endorsed it, and said changes were in store for the SBI.

His spokeswoman reminded everyone of that on Thursday and noted that Elwell has been suspended from casework. 

In the Charlotte courtroom,  Cooper's lawyers argued that even if an SBI agent had "augmented" or "elaborated" or "smoothed out" what purported to be a confession from the mentally disabled Floyd Brown, the judge should toss his lawsuit over his confinement for 14 years in a mental hospital.

In the Allen case, Judge Orlando Hudson dismissed the murder, sexual assault and child abuse charges against him, saying that his rights had been violated by the work of the SBI crime lab.  We may know shortly whether the Brown case will be allowed to go forward. 

It is noteworthy that Hudson was also the judge who determined in 2007 that Brown should be freed because he was being unlawfully held.

There is more at stake in the Brown case beyond whether he will get compensated for his confinement. If the suit is allowed to go forward, his lawyers will get access to relevant internal documents at the Attorney General's office.  They may learn how much folks in the Attorney General's office and the SBI knew about problems with the "augmented/elaborated/smoothed out" confession that put Brown away. And why the agent, Mark Isley, who supposedly took down this fairly detailed narrative from a man with a mental capacity of a 7-year-old, has progressed up the ladder at the SBI.

Joe Neff and Mandy Locke -- who have spent much of the past year on the SBI story, including the Agents' Secrets series in August -- wrote a story with Andy Curliss published Sunday that put last week's events in context.

The reason the SBI story has moved into the courthouses is because this is where lawyers are going to have to show that their clients were wrongly convicted and imprisoned based on tainted SBI casework.  There were 230 cases cited in the audit; one of them was Derrick Allen's. 

The Allen hearing last week caused quite a stir, with SBI agents and former and current prosecutors on the witness stand, and with Hudson's decision to throw out the charges.  Imagine the impact of several dozen more of these hearings in courtrooms across the state over the next few years, with more SBI agents and more prosecutors on witness stands. This will not do great things for the credibility of the state's criminal justice system.

Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor picked by President Obama to police consumer finance, is recruiting 50 state prosecutors to help, including N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, Bloomberg News reports.

“The state attorneys general are natural partners for the consumer agency,” Warren, 61, told Bloomberg in an interview. “There are regulators in Washington that used to prevent state attorneys general from protecting consumers.”

The attorneys general say they are now invited to the nation’s capital and talk with Warren by telephone almost weekly as she sets up the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Cooper told Bloomberg that Warren wants states to help formulate new policies around mortgages and credit cards, her two top priorities.

Yesterday morning, we wrote about The News & Observer's 85-day old public records request.

Yesterday afternoon, the Attorney General's office delivered some, but not all, of the records. J.B. Kelly, general counsel to Attorney General Roy Cooper, promised that his office would  continue to work diligently to produce the records:

"We continue to work diligently to respond to all of your requests. The Attorney General has made it clear that providing public records is a high priority and record requests must be responded to as promptly as possible. We are committed to doing so. We have lawyers who have been pulled off their regular work load to focus solely on responding to your requests. But, as I have informed you in previous correspondence and as I informed the Attorney General, given the breadth and historical nature of many of these requests, identifying and collecting documents that may be responsive is a complex task, and the review of such documents is both necessary and time consuming."

Last week, we wrote an article  on how Attorney General Roy Cooper, a champion of  open records, has been dragging his feet in releasing public records about the embattled State Bureau of Investigation. The official response has varied. The documents will arrive shortly. The documents have already been released.  It's almost ready, just looking for a few stray pages.

As of today, Nov. 18,  we haven't received a page.

The logjam remains, somewhere between Kelley and Kelly and Cooper. Grayson Kelley is the chief deputy attorney general who earns $144,629 a year.

J.B. Kelly, Cooper's general counsel,  is not a state employee. He's on contract and pulled in $210,345.22 in 2009. Kelly's pay has increased 9.5 percent yearly since 2005, when he was paid $145,962.

Grayson Kelley has been handling the newspaper's request, but apparently J.B. Kelly will have the final say.

Here's a look at our request, now 85 days old and counting.

August 25
News & Observer requests copies of  federal and state audits of DCI system.

Sept. 17
Cooper's office is unresponsive on this request and others. The NO asks its lawyers to press for the records.

Oct. 20
Grayson Kelley email: "I'm on the way out of town, but my understanding is that each of these requests is in progress.Mr. Neff should receive more of these documents shortly."

Nov. 1
Grayson Kelley email: "I thought some of the audit materials had been released,but I'll check."

Nov. 10
Grayson Kelley email: "The last information I had was that we were trying to track down a few missing pages from one of the reports. I'll check with the lawyer we assigned to work with the SBI on this and get back to you."

Nov. 15
Grayson Kelley email: "JB Kelly isn't here today, but I'll try to get a status update as soon as I can talk to him.....he's handling the review and production process."
.
 

A legal opinion issued today by the state Attorney General's office says that the new law on personnel records requires state and local governments to release historical information on public employees' salary, employment and discipline.

The opinion comes after the Office of State Personnel and several local governments asked if the new law should only be applied to records created on or after Oct. 1, the law's start date. They suggested that since the law did not specifically cite retroactive information, it should only be applied to newly created personnel records.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said today that the former owners of auto warranty seller U.S. Fidelis have been permanently banned from selling or pitching auto warranties in the state.

Cooper and 10 other state attorneys general reached an agreement with Missouri-based U.S. Fidelis, which was once the leading seller of extended car warranties. The company declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

Cooper filed suit against U.S. Fidelis and its two owners, Darain and Cory Atkinson, in April, claiming they misled consumers about the benefits and coverage of service contracts, failed to provide written contracts to some consumers, failed to disclose key terms and restrictions and failed to pay refunds when requested.

The settlement requires the Atkinsons to comply with restrictions on any future business they may operation. They also must each pay North Carolina $4 million in civil penalties plus investigative costs.

It took a long  time to pry our most recent story on SBI agent Mark Isley from the N.C. Department of Justice. Isley, you may remember, is the agent accused of phonying up a false confession that kept a mentally retarded man in Dorothea Dix mental hospital for 14 years.

The N&O asked for the details and documents of the SBI's settlement with Isley in July. It took 12 weeks, a lot of prodding and lawyers before the office of Attorney General Roy Cooper released the public records. State law requires public servants to release public records in a reasonable amount of time. These records were clearly public. Let us know if you think this was reasonable time.

Here's the timeline.

July 23: The News & Observer requested the information on the Isley settlement from then SBI Director Robin Pendergraft in an interview. That afternoon, we followed up with an email detailing that request and others.

August 11: We repeated the request in an email listing all outstanding requests.

August 16: Ditto.

August 30: Ditto, but with stronger language

September 2: Ditto, but this time The N&O copied the email to Attorney General Roy Cooper, SBI Director Greg McLeod, N&O Editor John Drescher, and lawyers for the paper.

September 13: Requested again. This time we cite the payment to Isley's lawyer.

September 14: Requested again. This time we wrote the following:

“The News & Observer first requested details on Mark Isley's settlement with the Department of Justice on July 23, 2010. We have received nothing, despite repeated followup requests.The following information could help you locate the information and documents we request.

"On Oct. 24, 2005, the Department of Justice paid Ferguson Stein Chambers, a law firm, $1573.53 in legal fees for the Isley settlement. The check number was 418693.
The News & Observer again requests copies of ALL documents relating to this settlement, including all concessions or considerations given to Mr. Isley during this settlement.”

September 17: The Department of Justice gives its first substantive response, as follows: “The department is aware of your request for these materials.  I don't have an answer for you on this yet but I am continuing to follow up on it.”

For the next three weeks, lawyers for the N&O exchange letters, emails and phone calls with the Department of Justice.

October 11: The Attorney General's office acknowledges possession of documents and promises them by October 15.

October 15: The Attorney General's office releases a 38-page file to N&O's lawyers.

The SBI crime lab remains leaderless.

Gerald Arnold, former chief judge of the N.C. Court of Appeals, said today that other commitments have caused him to decline the job as interim director of the troubled crime lab.

“The time frame for me was not right, I wish it had been,” Arnold said. “It just didn’t work out.”

On September 8, Attorney General Roy Cooper announced that Arnold would act as interim lab director while a national search for a permanent director was underway.  Cooper said Arnold would make sure that the lab would provide test results that are accurate and properly reported.

“It is critical that Judge Arnold take a good thorough look,” Cooper said that day. “If problems are found, they will be fixed.”

The crime lab has come under widespread criticism and scrutiny that threatens pending cases as well as concluded cases. A recent audit found that SBI lab analysts withheld or misreported the results of blood tests in at least 229 cases.

That audit, by two retired FBI supervisors, focused on evidence withheld from prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Arnold said he did not have a difference of opinion with SBI leadership about how to do the job.

“It wasn’t’ that they said I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that,” he said. “I think I would have done whatever I wanted to do."

(updated below)

Cooper is "frustrated with this unfortunate development," according to an email from Noelle Talley, Cooper's spokeswoman. Cooper believes he's found an excellent replacement for Arnold to conduct an independent legal review, the email said, but did not specify whom the replacement would be.

Making public records requests is a big part of our job at the Investigations corner of The News & Observer. One of the most routine requests we make is for the salary of a state employee.Typically, a phone call or email gets the answer the same day.

Not so with the former director of the SBI crime lab.

Last  month,  Attorney General  Roy Cooper removed Jerry Richardson as head of the SBI’s crime lab and announced a national search for his successor.

The N&O thought readers might want to know about Richardson's new job and salary. We asked that question of new SBI director Greg McLeod on Aug. 27, the day Richardson was removed. McLeod said the details hadn't been worked out yet. That was reasonable.

On Sept. 2, Tne N&O sent this request to Noelle Talley, Attorney General Roy Cooper’s public affairs director: "What is his new job and title and pay?"

On Sept. 8, Talley answered part of the question:  “In his new role, he will work directly with the Case Records Management System and Criminal Information and ID sections.”

On Sept. 9, The N&O replied: “What's Jerry Richardson's  salary in the new job?”

Again on Sept. 13: “What is Jerry Richardson's salary?”

And on Sept. 21: “What is Jerry Richardson's current salary and job?"

That elicited the following reply from Cooper’s office the same day: “The last I heard the SBI was working with Human Resources on this issue. I will check to see if that has been resolved.”

The N&O replied that day: “Please send us his salary and title as of today. If it changes in the future when things are resolved, please give us an update at that  time.”

No reply.

The N&O asked again today, Friday Sept. 24. We’ll let you know what we find.

Update

The Department of Justice sent this message late Friday afternoon, that didn't mention Richardson's current salary ($98,481) but does say it  will be adjusted in the future:

The  Office of State Personnel maintains control over certain positions and therefore, DOJ administration is still working with it to get approval of an appropriate position at a lower pay grade equivalent to the position he held prior to becoming an exempt employee as SBI lab director. Currently he has been reassigned to work with the case records management and Criminal Information and ID sections. The department cannot reduce his salary until this process is complete.