Court briefs

Pageant winner files lawsuit

A forklift driver who won the Mrs. Nevada portion of the Mrs. America pageant has filed a District Court lawsuit claiming her crown was improperly taken away by pageant officials who said she was too fat.

Ruthan Grider said she was banned from the national pageant by Loni Kallay, director of Mrs. America pageants in Nevada and California, even though she lost 30 pounds in two months.

The lawsuit filed against Kallay and Mrs. America Productions Inc. seeks unspecified general and punitive damages in excess of $90,000.

The lawsuit claims that Grider, a 37-year-old mother of two and a grandmother, lost financial opportunities and was embarrassed because she was stripped of her crown in July.

After the incident, Kallay told the Sun that Grider's weight wasn't what led to her removal as Mrs. Nevada, but that she didn't respond to pageant officials about appearance dates.

Former boxing champ pleads not guilty

Former heavyweight boxing champion Michael Doakes has pleaded not guilty to charges he beat, restrained and sexually assaulted his live-in girlfriend in a jealous rage.

Doakes, who has been sitting in jail since the Aug. 30 incident, demanded a speedy trial and District Judge John McGroarty set Nov. 30 as the date the burley boxer will face a jury.

Doakes, however, will return to court Monday and ask the judge to release him pending the resolution of the case.

At an earlier court hearing, Sandra Cummings told a justice of the peace that she was attacked when she arrived home about 5 a.m. after attending a Janet Jackson earlier that night.

LV man charged with tax evasion A federal grand jury has returned a four-count indictment against James Conway, charging the Las Vegas man with two counts of tax evasion and two counts of failing to file tax returns.

Nevada's U.S. attorney Kathryn Landreth and James Collie, chief of the IRS Southwest Criminal Investigation Division, announced the indictments this week.

The evasion counts are for 1979 through 1982 and 1984 through 1987 for evading payments of approximately $370,000. The indictment states that Conway used Social Security numbers that did not belong to him and concealed bank accounts under names of fictitious entities and entities that he did not control.

The two counts of failing to file tax returns are for the years 1992 and 1993.

The case is being prosecuted by the Justice Department's tax division.

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