PORT ST. LUCIE — A U.S. Appeals Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that Port St. Lucie resident Colleen Demers was wrongly fired by Adams Homes when she took maternity leave four years ago and reinstated the $5,000 in damages awarded by the jury.

Demers worked as a real estate agent for Adams Homes, which builds houses in Viera, Melbourne and West Melbourne, when she became pregnant in 2005. The company dismissed her, claiming she was an independent contractor and not entitled to family leave benefits.

But a trial judge in Orlando last year ruled the company had treated Demers as an employee for 3 1/2 years and offered no evidence that she was an independent contractor. (more…)

VERO BEACH — In a rare criminal case, a jury convicted a Vero Beach man of murder and selling drugs in the drug-overdose death of one of his customers.

William McCartney III, of Vero Beach, was convicted Wednesday of murder and illegally selling drugs, including two capsules of methadone that Nolan Adams, 19, took before dying at his home early Jan. 25, 2005.

Adams died in his bed several hours after buying the potent drugs at McCartney’s apartment along Indian River Boulevard. (more…)

SEWALL’S POINT — Sewall’s Point resident Sherman Allen just assumed Florida Power & Light Co. had the authority to bury a 13,000-volt distribution line on his property 4 ½ years ago, but a Martin County court has decided the company was less than candid with Allen and ruled the power line must go.

In late 2002, FPL obtained a permit from the Town of Sewall’s Point to use a drainage easement along Allen’s property to bury a power line it was running under the St. Lucie River from Stuart as a second, alternative power source for the town in emergencies.

Once the approximately $425,000 project made landfall in Sewall’s Point in 2004, the company began burying the heavy line and 8-inch conduit on Allen’s property.
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STUART — Business is down so much in the Martin County Courthouse that Court Clerk Marsha Ewing said Monday she may have to resort to layoffs in her 15-person office.

“I’m hoping and I’m praying that it doesn’t come to it, but it’s very possible that it will come to layoffs if things don’t turn around,” Ewing said.

Ewing said she rescinded a 3 percent pay raise in January and required all workers to take an unpaid day off each month in response to the downturn in filings that has reduced fee payments by nearly $600,000 compared to last year. (more…)

ST. LUCIE WEST — Martin Memorial Health Systems plans to open a freestanding emergency department this fall to provide medical care to western Port St. Lucie until it can build a full-service, 80-bed hospital in Tradition.
Martin Memorial and Port St. Lucie officials gathered Tuesday to celebrate the start of construction on the emergency center, which will be part of the health systems’ facility on St. Lucie West Boulevard. Expected to open by Sept. 1, the 12-bed center will be a full-service emergency department.
“It will provide critical services close to home rather than having people fight traffic when time matters most,” Martin Memorial Chief Executive Officer Mark Robitaille said.
Port St. Lucie’s growing population and sometimes gridlocked traffic were Martin Memorial’s main arguments for building a hospital in the city, which already is home to St. Lucie Medical Center, a for-profit hospital owned by Tennessee-based HCA Inc. (more…)

Wendy Portillo

Portillo got the suspension after a lengthy St. Lucie County Schools investigation into the incident. Alex was 5 years old last May when he was voted out by classmates. He was in the process of being diagnosed with a type of autism. (more…)

VERO BEACH — Ray Adams took his wife Phyllis outside, behind her work place, and told her to hold him as tight as she could — just like he held her.

What he said next devastated her, there in the bright sunshine off Ocean Drive.

Their 19-year-old son Nolan died a few hours earlier on Jan. 25, 2005. He ingested two capsules of the potent drug methadone William McCartney III, 34, is accused of selling to him illegally for $50 the day before in Vero Beach. (more…)

Kenneth Atkins

A jury convicted Kenneth Atkins of raping the 15-year-old girl in 2004, and a judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Both Atkins, who was 16 at the time, and another man, Martin Lyke, were charged as adults. Lyke told police they raped the girl, Atkins said the sex was consented.

An appeals court in 2006 overturned Atkins’ conviction, ruling that the judge presiding over his first trial should not have allowed prosecutors to let jurors hear a recorded conversation between the then 15-year-old rape victim and her friend after the alleged rape.

In the first day of Atkins second trial today, his attorney Jerome Stone argued that the teens had consensual sex after drinking heavily at the party.

The alleged victim, now an adult, was tearful at times on the witness stand as she recounted the night she said Atkins and Lyke lured her to the pool area of the apartment complex and took turns raping her.

Lyke pleaded no contest to the rape charges and was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004. According to Department of corrections records, he was released last month.