Study: Murders among black youths on the rise

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows.

The study, to be released Monday by criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is showing that murders have leveled off nationwide.

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Court Weighs How Maternity Leaves Affect Pensions

Several Supreme Court justices questioned on Wednesday whether AT&T Corp. is discriminating against former employees by paying smaller retirement checks to women who took pregnancy leaves in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Lawyer now lives among his clients

It's not unusual for a lawyer to have to meet a criminal client in a prison.

It's another thing to bump into your client because you're living in the same jail.

So it is for D. Scott Perrine, now housed at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the Northeast. It's the same prison housing Perrine's client Pete Hopkins, 20, one of three men whose beating by Philadelphia police on May 5 was captured on an infamous video by a Fox29 news helicopter.

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Indiana Girl Sues For Chance To Play Baseball

Logan Young has been playing baseball with the boys for nine years, and she and her parents don't think that should change now that she's in high school.

The 14-year-old and her family have filed a federal lawsuit over an Indiana High School Athletic Association rule that prohibits the Bloomington South freshman from trying out for the high school baseball team because she is female.

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Innocent Man Freed After 23 Years Files Suit

A man who spent 23 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit sued St. Louis County and the officers who arrested him, saying investigators ignored inconsistencies in the victim's description.

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Opportunities emerge for law firms, even as they struggle

The global financial crisis has been hard on big law. Some firms in Atlanta and around the country are even laying off lawyers as clients cut back on service.

Amid the turmoil, Alston & Bird managing partner Richard Hays sees a promising niche in what's sure to be a confusing new financial, regulatory and legislative environment for clients.

"For law firms, that presents an opportunity," he says. "We are staying close to it."

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Supreme Court Argument Report: Lawyers as 'Repeat Players'

During argument at the Supreme Court on Monday in a confrontation clause case, the justices and attorneys engaged in some spirited exchanges concerning whether defense lawyers -- especially those "repeat attorneys" who appear often before the same judges and prosecutors -- would be likely to take undue advantage of a rule requiring forensic technicians to testify when lab reports are admitted as evidence in drug cases.

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Man with 'largest collection of infants and babies' porn gets 10 years

A Central Florida man who had a massive child-pornography collection that included victims as young as newborns was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison Wednesday.

Tony Guerra, a former food-services worker at what was then called Disney-MGM Studios, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of receiving and distributing child pornography.

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Jury finds racism in deputy's case;

Black supervisors in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were acting out of racism when they called a group of Latino deputies the "Mexican Mafia" and disciplined a member, jurors found Thursday.

Angel Jaimes, a 19-year veteran of the department, was harassed because of his Mexican origin by his supervisors, who, according to testimony, said the station "was run by Mexicans and they were going to change that," the panel concluded.

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Paralegal Pleads Guilty to Taking $1.7 Million From Firm

A former paralegal at a South Windsor, Conn., law firm has pleaded guilty to stealing $1.7 million from her employer to pay her gambling debts.

Patricia Baddeley-Meehan of Ellington, Conn., admitted in her plea Thursday that she took the money between 2003 and 2007 from her employers, the Berman & Russo law firm.

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Asking for Details of Workers' Illness Causes a Legal Migraine for Employers

A recent lawsuit against retail chain Dillard's Inc. is highlighting what some claim is a growing problem in the workplace: employers asking too much information about workers' illnesses when asked for sick leave.

In the Dillard's case, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that one California store required employees to reveal the specific nature of their illness in order to deem sick leave as an excused absence. The EEOC argues that this policy violates the Americans With Disability Act (ADA). EEOC v. Dillard's, No. 08-CV-1780 (S.D. Calif.).

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Ore. Court Rules Frozen Embryos Can Be Destroyed

PORTLAND Ore.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has ordered six frozen embryos destroyed after ruling they can be treated as personal property in a divorce.

The court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that an agreement leaving the final decision up to the ex-wife must be followed.

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Conn. High Court Rules Same-Sex Couples Can Marry

Connecticut's Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry, making that state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions.

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Gravett & Gravett: Divorce Attorneys Who Help Couples Save Their Marriages

When most people think of divorce attorneys, they imagine lawyers who work with people to dissolve their marriages. However, a law firm in New York state, Gravett & Gravett, goes a step further: they help troubled couples to try to save their marriages.

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Sex offenders sue over Halloween restrictions law says Stay at home, post sign, no candy for kids. ACLU says Limits are too vague and add punishment.

St. Louis - Four Missouri sex offenders are challenging a new state law that confines them to their darkened homes on Halloween and restricts them from contact with children that night.

Their lawyer says the law leaves them uncertain of whether they can even costume their own children or grandchildren.

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Supreme Court Opens Term With Tobacco Case

On the opening day of its fall term, the Supreme Court jumped right into a controversial case in which tobacco companies are seeking to block litigation in state courts over health claims made about "light" cigarettes. By the end of Monday's hourlong arguments in Altria Group v. Good, most justices appeared to agree with Altria -- the parent company of Philip Morris -- that the federal cigarette labeling law pre-empts state tort suits like the one before the Court. In August 2007, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the suit, in which a group of Maine smokers allege that claims of reduced tar and nicotine were false, was not pre-empted.

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Walgreens Loses Bid to Block Ban on Tobacco Sales

A San Francisco law banning the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies, possibly the first of its kind in the country, will go into effect today after surviving an attempt by Walgreens to halt it.

The Deerfield, Ill., company had sought a preliminary injunction Tuesday in Superior Court, arguing that its suit challenging the law is likely to succeed and that its stores would suffer millions of dollars in lost revenue in the meantime.

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Lawyer Indicted for Forging Will of Brother Killed in Plane Crash

A well-known Allentown, Pa., lawyer was indicted by a federal grand jury last week on charges of fabricating wills to add himself as a beneficiary after his brother, also a lawyer, and sister-in-law were killed in a February 2007 plane crash.

The indictment charges that attorney John Karoly Jr., 58, conspired with his son, John "J.P." Karoly III, 28, and a doctor, John J. Shane, 72, to present fake wills in Northampton County Orphans' Court that showed Shane as the sole witness.

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Erin Brockovich Working for Small N.Y. Law Firm

The legal crusader portrayed by Julia Roberts in the Oscar-winning film "Erin Brockovich" is now working for a Manhattan personal injury law firm that specializes in asbestos cases.

The real Erin Brockovich signed a consulting contract with Weitz & Luxenberg and will be involved in soliciting cases and investigating claims. Brockovich told the New York Post: "I'm hands-on and they're hands-on so it will be a team effort."

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Legal Departments, Law Firms Weighing Wikis

A little over a year and a half ago, Sun Microsystems' in-house legal department was in the midst of overhauling its internal Web site.

Gregory Bennett, a program manager in charge of Sun's internal and external legal Web sites, was talking to general counsel Michael Dillon about how the company could better track the age and origin of staff-written content on its internal site when the Sun GC suggested trying something new.

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Ex-Biopure Executive Falsely Told Court He Had Cancer, US Alleges

A former executive of a Cambridge-based biotech company lied to a federal judge when he said he was gravely ill from colon cancer - an attempt to dodge a costly federal lawsuit over problems stemming from an experimental synthetic blood product, federal officials said yesterday.

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Settling More Lucrative Than Going to Trial, Study Shows

Plaintiffs who go to trial may not realize just how big of a gamble they are making when they decline a settlement offer.

A new study that will appear in the upcoming edition of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies finds that settling is generally more lucrative than taking a case to trial.

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States, medical groups oppose abortion rule

WASHINGTON (AP) - Several medical associations and 13 state attorneys general voiced their opposition Wednesday to a proposed federal rule that they fear would open the door for hospitals and physicians to deny access to contraception.

In late August, the Bush administration proposed stronger job protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections. Abortion foes called it a victory for the First Amendment, but abortion rights supporters said they feared the rule could stretch the definition of abortion to include birth control.

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Yemen attack shows Qaeda rebound in key country

This week's attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen shows al Qaeda's ability to regroup in a strategically important country and further underscores a shift in the group's focus from Iraq, analysts said.

It is a reminder that the United States will have to keep fighting al Qaeda on multiple fronts even if Iraq -- cast by the Bush administration as the central front in its war on terrorism -- calms down.

"Al Qaeda's most senior leaders have called for attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, and extremist groups in Yemen have made it known in words and terrible misdeeds that they are willing to murder innocent civilians," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

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Cabinet disagreements threaten Zimbabwe unity deal

President Robert Mugabe and his political rivals have been unable to agree on how to share key Cabinet posts, an opposition spokesman said Thursday, in a sign that deep and bitter divisions were threatening a watershed unity government agreement.

Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change said a meeting of party leaders broke up with no resolution and deputies had been asked to keep negotiating.

Mugabe's party "is claiming all the powerful ministries," Chamisa said. "That is why there couldn't be agreement and it's being referred back to the negotiators."

He said the ministries in contention included home affairs, which directs police forces that have been accused of political violence. Mugabe remains commander in chief, so the opposition was likely to insist on control of at least some security forces.

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