Episodes
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Our focus on 'Forever Chemicals’ (also known as PFAS) is critical and ongoing because of the health risks that have impacted many people, and for legal cases that have been slow to unfold.
PFAS is the substance that makes Teflon non-stick, fire-retardant chemical foam so effective, and degreasing and stain resistant treatments improve clothing and more. Contamination in the human body is permanent—and that’s where the Attorney General’s Office comes in! Learn more about how we've teamed up with other states and the federal government to seek legal remedies for this pollutant.
On this edition of Legally Speaking, we speak to Health and Environment Division Director Craig Anderson to clarify this issue.
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Copper theft is becoming more common and is a costly loss on construction sites, EV recharging stations, utility work sites, among others. The take offers quick cash for thieves.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office is currently prosecuting a unique case in Salt Lake County, where sheriff’s detectives arrested four men—all connected to either stealing copper from Kennecott or buying the stolen property so they could resell it for profit. It's also a heavy case: The copper items weigh more than ten thousand pounds and are valued at $147 thousand.
Big money is our focus today, and on crimes like this. So who better to ask than our detectives who see this kind of thing in our Crimes Against Statewide Economy (CASE) unit everyday?
Legally Speaking talks to CASE Commander James Russell and State Bureau of Investigation Detective Megan Johnson about this costly trend.
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Missing episodes?
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Real Estate Workshop (REW), a group that promised to teach people how to make it big in real estate, may have taught potential students a more painful lesson about consumer awareness. REW turned out to be a huge scam that upsold people to the point of depleting bank accounts, retirement savings, and causing debt. A legal case and settlement resulted in a $42.5 million fine being imposed, with $2.8 million going toward restitution.
REW offered ‘free’ seminars but in reality, the training sign up was up-sold and never delivered. That’s when our White-Collar Crime Attorneys and the Division of Consumer Services got involved. Their work resulted in this outcome.
Assistant Attorney General Peishen Zhou and Assistant Director of Consumer Protection Blake Young both explained the details of the complaint and settlement.
For more information, click here.
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The State of Utah has filed a significant lawsuit challenging federal ownership of 18.5 acres of land within its borders. Today, the Legally Speaking guest is Solicitor General Stan Purser.
Mr. Purser explains why the lawsuit goes directly to the Supreme Court, where the state will argue the federal government's control of the land is unconstitutional.
At a news conference, Attorney General Reyes pointed out that Utah isn't allowed to watch over more than two-thirds of its own territory because it’s controlled by people who don’t live in Utah and who aren’t accountable or responsive to its citizens. It also isn’t allowed to collect taxes on the land.
It’s a hot-button issue with conservationists, but important to state leaders, who have been fighting this issue for decades. Utah’s national parks and monuments are NOT part of this lawsuit.
Click on this link for valuable information about the lawsuit and perspective on the volume of land involved.
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Utah recently received the final settlement payment from the federal government in the 2015 Gold King Mine lawsuit. You may recall the dramatic pictures of bright yellow and orange water flowing down Colorado’s Animas and San Juan Rivers into Utah and Lake Powell. That water was at least 3 million gallons of mine tailings full of arsenic and heavy metals from the Bonita Mine. Utah sued the EPA, which caused the spill, and now the legal case is complete.
Even though the blowout was an accident, the EPA admitted responsibility and a settlement came after some hard work by the attorney general’s office. The state received more than $7 million, and the final payment came recently.
Meanwhile, the pollution in that water was significant enough that Governor Herbert at the time declared a State of Emergency to preserve the health, safety and welfare of citizens as well as the interests of Utah farms and businesses, which led to the lawsuit.
In this edition of Legally Speaking, Craig Anderson, the Director of the Environment and Health Divisions at the Utah Attorney General’s Office shares some details about the case that weren’t available until now.
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As the Opioid problem continues to plague our state, a lot of people are curious about how much money the various settlements have brought to Utah. But the reality is that Utah’s Opioid Settlements are best described as works in progress.
Utah has received money from various sources: pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and others. But there is no bottom-line amount to report, since there are important legal actions still pending.
Here is the picture so far: Settlements that have been finalized will return about $495 million to be divided between the state and the counties. ($252 will come to the state, while about $242 million will go to the counties.) Payments will come over different timeframes ranging from immediate payment to payments over up to 17 years. As of August, 2024, the state has actually received about $69 million, while the counties have received about $59 million.
The settlements are important to our state, since the opioid crisis is still taking an unprecedented toll on families and is ruining lives as the problem evolves.
On this edition of Legally Speaking, we’re getting perspective from our top attorney over the Opioid settlements: Kevin McLean, Assistant Attorney General in the White Collar and Commercial Enforcement Division of our office.
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The Utah Attorney General’s Office handles thousands of requests for public records every year. The Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) is the way they can get it.
Typically, it is a request from an individual who has a legal interest in a case, or a reporter who requests records in order to complete a story. But not all the documents our office generates are available to the public—they’re specifically not public, due to confidentiality or privacy concerns.
The GRAMA process exists in order for our office to have a process to handle requests with care. Today, the Legally Speaking guest is Lonny Pearson, the GRAMA Coordinator.
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Utah and Wyoming teamed up to sue the BLM for skipping a step in the process before they imposed a new rule that significantly impacts land management and restricts your use of millions of acres of federal land.
The BLM Rule restricts access in the interest of conservation but Utah and Wyoming are fighting back saying the new rule was put into place illegally. The States say the BLM Rule doesn't comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires the study of the environmental effects of new rules on federal land.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office is on top of this lawsuit saying the BLM exceeded its authority—limiting access to $245 million acres nationwide of federal public land, including $22.8 million acres here in Utah.
In this episode, we're speaking with Jason Deforest, an assistant attorney general in our office, who is overseeing this lawsuit.
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In this edition of Legally Speaking, we examine the legal issues surrounding Taberon Honie’s death sentence, which is set to be carried out August 8, 2024.
Honie has been on Utah’s Death Row for 25 years. In June 2024, he made one last plea for clemency with the Board of Pardons and Parole, but other than that, his death warrant has been signed and his execution set for August 8. We’ll update the case as of July 17, 2024.
Background on this case: In 1999, Honie was convicted of the extremely violent murder of his girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, in Cedar City. Benn was viciously and repeatedly stabbed, to the point of mutilation. Honie was arrested at the scene, confessing: “I stabbed her. I killed her with a knife.” Benn’s three granddaughters were present during the murder, all had blood on them, and a four-year-old was sexually assaulted.
Graphic details set the stage for our conversation with Daniel Boyer, Assistant Solicitor General in the AG’s Office Criminal Appeals Division.
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Utah State law protects Utahns from excess pollution, unsafe conditions and more—and the Attorney General’s Office helps enforce those rules.
When it comes to preserving safe, healthy air, water and land, the Division of Environmental Quality has a big job. Most of the time, any violation of the rules is caught, noted, and remedied quickly. But when it keeps happening, that’s when the legal process starts and the AG’s office gets involved.
The process is an interesting one, and we learn more about it in our Legally Speaking conversation with Marina Thomas, Director of our Environmental Section.
Marina oversees air quality specifically, but the process is the same for water, radiation control, drinking water and hazardous waste.
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In this Legally Speaking edition, we speak with Assistant Solicitor General Karen Klucznik about the recent State v. Smith Appeals Court victory.
The Utah Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the Utah Attorney General’s Office, and on behalf of victims, by setting limits to the widely-used Extreme Emotional Distress defense in murder cases.
It’s taken more than a decade for this case to work through the Utah legal process. With the help of recent legislation, new standards apply about when a defendant can say in court that they 'lost control' and shouldn't face the maximum penalty because they reacted violently to a situation.
This case centers on Daniel Smith, a husband who shot his wife seven times - 25 minutes after she told him she wanted a divorce and was leaving him. He said he was traumatized and shot his wife in an emotional haze. So, he wanted to claim an extreme emotional distress defense that would have lowered a murder conviction to manslaughter. Based on the case facts, the trial court denied the defense. The Utah Court of Appeals recently affirmed the trial court’s ruling and Smith’s murder conviction.
The bottom line is, because of the statutory changes to the EED defense and the court of appeals’ ruling, defendants who kill their intimate partners when their partners try to leave may find they are less able to use the extreme emotional defense as a mitigating factor, due to the timeline, level of violence, and other factors.
Assistant SG Klucznik has argued extreme emotional distress cases for many years and joins us now to examine the implications of the Appeals Court ruling.
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Utah’s Children’s Justice Centers are in nearly every county in the state and are a safe place for abused children to talk about and provide evidence regarding what they’ve been through. These CJCs look like residential homes to provide a comfortable, secure environment for interviewing young victims of violent crime.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office oversees the state’s CJCs, designed as important “safe houses.” There, specially trained investigators help children talk about what they’ve been through as part of an ongoing investigation. What they say can be used in court. It’s a compassionate way to deal with the dispassionate prosecution of a criminal case.
In Part 1, we spoke to the CJC's Deputy Director, Heather Stewart. In this Legally Speaking episode, Part 2, we hear from Matthew Janzen from the Davis County Attorney’s Office about the CJC's importance there.
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Utah’s Children’s Justice Centers are in nearly every county in the state and are a safe place for abused children to talk about and provide evidence regarding what they’ve been through. These CJCs look like residential homes to provide a comfortable, secure environment for interviewing young victims of violent crime.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office oversees the state’s CJCs, designed as important “safe houses.” There, specially trained investigators help children talk about what they’ve been through as part of an ongoing investigation. What they say can be used in court.
It’s a compassionate way to deal with the dispassionate prosecution of a criminal case. In this special two-part Legally Speaking, we first speak to the CJC’s Deputy Director, Heather Stewart, who loves to educate people about it. In part two, we will hear from Matthew Janzen from the Davis County Attorney’s Office about the CJC's importance there.
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Intense—immersive—realistic.
VirTra training can put you into dicey situations that result in lethal force, or not. The Utah Attorney General’s Office is proud to employ VIRTRA training. It is realistic training with situations police officers face daily, which are not easy.
It’s an exciting tool that uses giant screens, intense surround sound, and a real-but-disabled handgun. Different situations play out on the screens as the trainee, playing the part of a police officer, moves around and shouts commands—trying to diffuse what’s occurring without using their weapon.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Join us on this Legally Speaking episode as we dive deeper into VirTra training with Will Fowlke, the Training Center Director for the Investigations Division.
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Poisoning a best friend and roommate. This podcast is a case study in the prosecution of a woman charged with poisoning her roommate in Millcreek, Utah.
In 2019, the Utah Attorney General’s office worked with federal authorities to convict Janie Lynn Ridd of abuse and possession of a biological agent. Charges state that Ridd purchased a Staphylococcus strain and gave it to her roommate over time. That roommate was supposed to be her best friend.
It’s a case the Attorney General’s office worked on with the U.S. Department of Justice. The case was prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Michael Gadd, who commented on the case for Legally Speaking.
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In November 2023, Utah filed a lawsuit against insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo, Nordisk, and Sanofi, as well as pharmacy benefits managers CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum RX. The lawsuit claims that the companies charge too much for insulin due to their pricing scheme.
Since filing, consumers have contacted our office and shared personal stories of their sacrifices to afford this crucial medicine.
Mark Holliday from our office is the lead attorney on the case for the state. Legally Speaking welcomes him with an update and his perspective on the situation.
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Whenever a meeting involves the public’s business—whether it’s a city council, the legislature or any branch of state or local government—that meeting is subject to the Open and Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
These days, there are many meetings in our state, and controversial issues are often discussed. The Utah Attorney General's Office is one of the entities authorized to field concerns about open meetings and enforce OPMA. The job belongs to the Civil Review Committee, led by Assistant Attorney General Elliott Clark, who joins Legally Speaking to discuss how OPMA works.
OPMA in Utah Code
OPMA Brochure
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Child abductions and missing children, when they happen, are devastating to a family, and in fact to entire communities. A kidnapped or missing child is often cited as a parent’s worst nightmare. Although they’re relatively rare, a fast response is essential. Fortunately, law enforcement has crafted a response with the Utah Child Abduction Response Team or CART.
In the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the person leading our participation in the Utah CART is Sara Lundquist, who joins Legally Speaking to talk more about it.
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The Utah Attorney General’s Office has an office dedicated to protecting the integrity of the Medicaid program. Working with federal agents, we take on fraud, waste, or abuse of the system. It’s called the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit—or MFCU.
Every state has a MFCU, but Utah received the 2023 Inspector General’s Award for Excellence, which is a huge feather in the cap of everyone who works in the office and to our guest, Kaye Lynn Wooten, its director. Listen to Kaye Lynn answer questions about how the MFCU does its job on behalf of victims and taxpayers.
To report fraud and/or abuse, visit the MFCU page on the Utah Attorney General's Website.
Read more about a recent case where a man was convicted of a 2nd-degree felony and sent to prison for financial abuse of a vulnerable adult—his mother.
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This Legally Speaking episode examines one of the largest dark net drug trafficking cases in Utah.
In 2019, Aaron Shamo was sentenced to life in prison under the Controlled Substance Act for running a massive Fentanyl and Xanax manufacturing and distribution scheme.
A case of this magnitude is fascinating. In this interview, Assistant Attorney General Michael Gadd, who worked with the Department of Justice, shares more details about this case.
Explore these resources to learn more:
DOJ News Release on Shamo’s Conviction Shamo accomplices convicted CNBC Documentary on Shamo case - Show more
