Briefs for March 9, 2001

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 12:04 p.m.

A Las Vegas jury took just 90 minutes Thursday to decide that Curtis Barker did not kill Roy Powell in self-defense.

Instead, the jury convicted Barker of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon and will go back to court next week to decide if he should get a life sentence with or without the possibility of parole.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Schwartz used a suveillance tape from the Orleans hotel-casino to prove the case against Barker. During opening statements, he showed the two men walking into their room together and Barker, 37, leaving the room 20 minutes later with a duffel bag. No one entered the room again until Powell's body was found.

The two men had just met weeks earlier at a substance abuse halfway house.

Deputy public defender Howard Brooks admitted his client hit Powell, 32, over the head with a bottle of liquor and kicked him repeatedly, but only after Powell attacked him with a wrought iron lamp.

The two alcoholics had fallen off the wagon and had been drinking all day, Brooks said.

Airport ordered to pay $13 mil.

McCarran International Airport was ordered Wednesday to pay $13 million to a businessman for taking airspace above his 37-acre property on Tropicana Avenue near the airport runways.

The settlement is the largest verdict awarded in a Nevada eminent domain case, said attorney Kermitt Waters.

When the airport took the landowner's airspace to allow safe take-offs and landings on runways that run north to south, it limited the height of the property owner's building to 35 feet on one end and 200 feet on the other.

Insurance firm trimming 85 jobs

CARSON CITY -- Employers Insurance Co. of Nevada said today it is reducing its staff by 85 employees.

At its peak, when it was a state agency with a monopoly in writing industry insurance, the system had 1,100 employees. The work force, with the latest reductions, will bring the total to about 525 employees with offices in Reno, Las Vegas, Carson City and Elko.

The company plans to relocate most of its remaining Carson City employees to Reno.

The company reported pre-tax income of $40 million in 2000 and continues to be the largest writer of workers compensation insurance.