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Groton Daily Independent
Monday, June 26, 2017 ~ Vol. 24 - No. 347 ~ 23 of 39
The lead attorney for people suing the automakers said in a statement following the announcement that he doesn’t expect the bankruptcy to affect the pending claims against the companies. Settlement agreements with Toyota, Subaru, BMW and Mazda already have won preliminary court approval, Peter Prieto noted.
That settlement will speed the removal of faulty in ators from 15.8 million vehicles and compensate consumers for economic losses, he said. Claims are continuing against Honda, Ford, Nissan and Takata.
Fallout from the bankruptcy ling came swiftly from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which said it was strip- ping the company founded in 1933 from trading as of Tuesday.
Key makes in ators, seat belts and crash sensors for the auto industry and is owned by China’s Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. Its global headquarters and U.S. technical center is in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
Key said it won’t cut any Takata jobs or close any of Takata’s facilities.
The Takata corporate name may not live on after the bankruptcy. The company says on its website that its products have kept people safe, and it apologizes for problems caused by the faulty in ators. “We hope the day will come when the word ‘Takata’ becomes synonymous with ‘safety,’” the website says.
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Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report.
Joe Arpaio on trial over immigration actions echoing Trump’s By JACQUES BILLEAUD, Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — The immigration rhetoric and crackdowns pushed by President Donald Trump have a familiar ring in Arizona, where former Sheriff Joe Arpaio once used similar tactics to become a national gure.
Now, Arpaio is going on trial on a criminal charge stemming from those immigration enforcement actions.
The eight-day trial that begins Monday in federal court in Phoenix will determine whether the 85-year-old retired lawman is guilty of misdemeanor contempt of court for disobeying a judge’s order to stop traf c patrols that targeted immigrants. The judge later found his of cers racially pro ling Latinos.
Arpaio’s legal troubles played a major role in voters turning him out of of ce in November after a cam- paign in which he appeared alongside Trump at several rallies in Arizona.
The former six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix has acknowledged defying the judge’s 2011 order in a racial pro ling lawsuit by prolonging the patrols for months. But he insists it was not intentional. To win a conviction, prosecutors must prove he violated the order on purpose.
If convicted, Arpaio could face up to six months in jail, though lawyers who have followed his case doubt that a man of his age would be put behind bars.
For nine of his 24 years in of ce, Arpaio did the sort of local immigration enforcement that Trump has advocated. To build his highly touted deportation force, Trump is reviving a long-standing program that deputizes local of cers to enforce federal immigration law.
Unlike other local police leaders who left immigration enforcement to U.S. authorities, Arpaio made hundreds of arrests in traf c patrols that sought out immigrants and business raids in which his of cers targeted immigrants who used fraudulent IDs to get jobs.
His immigration powers were eventually stripped away by the courts and federal government, culminat- ing with the 2013 ruling that Arpaio’s of cers pro led Latinos.
Arpaio’s defense centers around what his attorneys said were weaknesses in the court order that failed to acknowledge times when deputies would detain immigrants and later hand them over to federal authorities. Jack Wilenchik, an Arpaio attorney, said the former sheriff is charged with a crime for cooperating with
U.S. immigration of cials, which the Trump administration now encourages.
“This is really just a ght about immigration law and what it means,” Wilenchik said. “And Arpaio is trying
to do what a good cop does, which is to enforce the law.”
His critics hope the case will bring a long-awaited comeuppance for the lawman who led crackdowns
that divided immigrant families and escaped accountability.