Court Digest

Nevada
Nick Carter faces lawsuits alleging sexual assault from decades ago
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter has won a favorable ruling in one of two civil lawsuits filed against him in Nevada, one by a woman who alleges he raped her on his tour bus in Washington state in 2001 and another by a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her on his boat off Florida in 2003.

A state court judge last Wednesday declined to dismiss a countersuit that Carter and his attorneys brought alleging defamation by three people in the first case, which was filed last December by a Nevada woman, now 40, who alleges that Carter attacked her on his tour bus after a concert in Tacoma, Washington, when she was 17 years old.

“He told plaintiff she would go to jail if she told anyone what happened between them,” the woman’s lawsuit said. “He said that he was Nick Carter and that he had the power to do that.”

The other case involving the Florida allegations was filed Monday in Clark County District Court.

Carter, now 43, lives in Las Vegas. He has denied the allegations of sexual battery and infliction of emotional distress the two women make against him. Each woman seeks unspecified monetary damages greater than $30,000.

Carter appeared with his attorney in court Wednesday when Clark County District Court Judge Nancy Allf declined to dismiss his counterclaim accusing three people — including a third woman who alleged he raped her in 2003 — of defamation, conspiracy and abuse of process.

The judge’s decision means that woman, Melissa Schuman, and her father, Jerome Schuman, will have to answer Carter’s allegations that they have waged a campaign to profit from his fame. Carter is seeking more than $2.3 million in damages.

“For years, Melissa and Jerome Schuman have been conspiring with anyone they could manipulate to drum up false claims against Nick Carter in a brazen attempt to get rich off of him,” Carter’s attorney, Liane Wakayama said in a statement Thursday to The Associated Press.

Schuman lost her bid in California in 2018 to have prosecutors bring a criminal complaint against Carter based on her allegation that he forced her into sex in his Los Angeles-area apartment.

Carter has denied Schulman’s accusations that he raped her. He did not speak during Wednesday’s court hearing.

Attorney Alan Greenberg, representing the Schumans, maintained in court that Carter was a public figure, that the allegations against him have merit and that Melissa Schuman reported to two friends and a therapist in 2003 that she had been sexually assaulted.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they were sexually assaulted, but Schuman has spoken publicly about her experience and approved of the use of her name.

Carter’s attorneys maintain that the Schumans did not make their allegations public until late 2017, after a broad social movement galvanized by the hashtag #MeToo began exposing previously untold cases of sexual violence.

They also allege the Schumans “recruited” the woman who accused Carter of sexual assault in Florida.

That plaintiff, who lives in York County, Pennsylvania, asks in court documents to be identified only by her initials. She alleges that Carter raped her on his yacht in 2003 when she was 15 years old and they met in Marathon, Florida.

“This case illustrates how much time, courage, and perseverance it takes for victims and survivors to come forward about child sexual abuse and seek justice,” Margaret Mabie, the woman’s New York-based attorney, said in a statement.

“Despite numerous complaints about Carter’s past conduct towards young women, his victims continue to struggle to hold (him) publicly accountable for his harms against them,” Mabie said.

The Backstreet Boys formed in 1993 and are best known for such hits as “I Want It That Way,” “As Long as You Love Me” and “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).”

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing federal land managers to identify threats to older trees, such as wildfire and climate change, and develop policies to safeguard them.

As the Forest Service goes “back to the drawing board, we expect them to meaningfully involve all members of the public to create a durable solution,” Klavins said.

New Hampshire
Former state senator accused of spending COVID-19 relief loan on luxury cars
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A former state senator was accused Thursday of lying in order to get a COVID-19 relief loan for his casino and using the money to buy luxury cars for himself and his wife, a Republican leader in the New Hampshire House.

The allegations against former Sen. Andy Sanborn were announced by the attorney general’s office, which reviews the owners of charitable gaming businesses every five years. Sanborn owns the Concord Casino within The Draft Sports Bar and Grill in Concord and is seeking to open a much larger venue a few miles away, but the state lottery commission is now moving to permanently ban him from operating any such business.

In an email, Sanborn said he strongly disagrees with the commission’s findings and welcomes the chance to challenge them at a hearing.

“I have full confidence our actions were transparent and in complete accordance of the law,” he said.

In the meantime, federal authorities have been notified, and the state has begun a criminal investigation, said Attorney General John Formella.

“This case highlights the importance of law enforcement’s role in keeping illegal activity out of New Hampshire’s charitable gaming industry,” he said in a statement. “Our obligation to protect the public demands that we take action against any person who is found to have used their regulated casino to enrich themselves with fraudulently obtained taxpayer funds.”

Sanborn, of Bedford, served four terms in the state Senate before unsuccessfully running for Congress in 2018. His wife, Laurie Sanborn, is in her 7th term in the House, where she serves as speaker pro tempore and chair of the Ways and Means Committee. She did not respond to an email seeking comment Thursday, and her phone was not accepting new voicemail messages.

According to the investigation, Sanborn fraudulently obtained $844,000 in funding from the Small Business Administration between December 2021 and February 2022. Casinos and charitable gaming facilities weren’t eligible for such loans, but Sanborn omitted his business name, “Concord Casino,” from his application and listed his primary business activity as “miscellaneous services.”

In his email, Sanborn said he did his due diligence to ensure compliance with the application’s requirements.

“Like so many businesses and organizations we applied for federal relief to assist in meeting the operational challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

He’s accused of spending $181,000 on two Porsche race cars and $80,000 on a Ferrari for his wife. Sanborn also paid himself more than $183,000 for what he characterized as rent for his Concord properties, the attorney general said.

In June, the Concord Planning Board approved his proposal to build a 24,000-square-foot (2,230-square-meter) casino and restaurant, with the possibility of adding a hotel and event center. According to the Concord Monitor, the board had been considering the proposal for months when Sanborn forced a vote despite some members’ concerns about a lack of public vetting. A city spokesperson said officials are evaluating the impact of the attorney general’s report on that decision.

Rep. Matt Wilhelm, the House Democratic leader, said the attorney general’s report was deeply concerning and called on House Speaker Sherm Packard to remove Laurie Sanborn from a commission studying charitable gaming laws. House Republican leaders did not respond to a request for comment.

Oregon
Judge: Rule change allowing logging of old-growth forests violates laws
PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge has found that a Trump-era rule change that allowed for the logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest violates several laws.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman on Thursday found that the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act when it amended a protection that had been in place since 1994.

The findings came in response to a lawsuit filed by multiple environmental groups over the change.

Hallman recommended that the Forest Service’s environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact should be vacated and that the agency should be required to prepare a full environmental impact statement related to the change.

“The highly uncertain effects of this project, when considered in light of its massive scope and setting, raise substantial questions about whether this project will have a significant effect on the environment,” Hallman wrote.

The Forest Service didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The agency has two weeks to object to the judge’s findings and recommendations.

The protection changed by the Trump administration banned the harvesting of trees 21 inches (53 centimeters) or greater in diameter and instead emphasized maintaining a mix of trees, with trees at least 150 years old prioritized for protection and favoring fire-tolerant species.

The area impacted by the rule is at least 7 million acres (2.8 million hectares), approximately the size of the state of Maryland, on six national forests in eastern Oregon and southeast Washington state.

The Trump administration said the change, which went into effect in 2021, would make forests “more resistant and resilient to disturbances like wildfire.”

“We’re looking to create landscapes that withstand and recover more quickly from wildfire, drought and other disturbances,” Ochoco National Forest supervisor Shane Jeffries told Oregon Public Broadcasting at the time. “We’re not looking to take every grand fir and white fir out of the forests.”

The lawsuit, however, said the government’s environmental assessment didn’t adequately address scientific uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of thinning, especially large trees, for reducing fire risk. The groups said the thinning and logging of large trees can actually increase fire severity.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Pendleton, Oregon, also said overwhelming evidence exists that large trees play a critical role in maintaining biodiversity and mitigating climate change and that eastern Oregon is lacking those trees after “more than a century of high-grade logging.”

Greater Hells Canyon Council, Oregon Wild, Central Oregon LandWatch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club were all plaintiffs in the lawsuit with support from the Nez Perce Tribe.

Rob Klavins, an advocate for Oregon Wild based in the state’s rural Wallowa County, said in a news release that he hopes the Forest Service will take this decision to heart and called on the Biden administration to stop defending the Trump-era rule change.