According to a recent report aired on CBS News program 60 Minutes, as foreclosed homes flood the market in the midst of the economic crisis, banks are finding that all too often the ownership documents on these properties are missing. The report says “shortcuts” taken during the heydays of issuing mortgage-backed investments meant that some legal documents behind the mortgages “simply aren’t there.” Reporter Scott Pelley said it appears some lending institutions, desperate to turn over foreclosed properties, are allegedly resorting to forging documents to replace missing paperwork.

A Charleston County, South Carolina, jury awarded $1,189,408 to Plaintiff Clifford Hansen after determining he had been unfairly excluded in a business purchase that he had personally developed. The jury held defendant, Beechwood Development Group of South Carolina, LLC, accountable for the investment Mr. Hansen made in developing plans to purchase Hickory Springs Water Company, which bottles and distributes drinking water for retail and wholesale customers. The defendants eventually purchased the business and assets of the company to the exclusion of the plaintiff.

Johnnie Carr, who joined childhood friend Rosa Parks in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and kept a busy schedule of civil rights activism up to her final days, has died. She was 97. Carr died Friday night [Feb. 22, 2008], said Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman Melody Ragland. She had been hospitalized after a stroke Feb. 11.

A jury has ordered BDO Seidman, the nation's fifth-ranked accounting firm, to pay more than $351 million in punitive damages in a lawsuite, bringing BDO's potential liability in the case to roughly $521 million.