Free Republic

Inevitably, as spring turns to summer and the Capitol begins to get serious about what the Legislature will do, or not do, for the year, the building's longest-running and most fundamental conflict is renewed: Big Business vs. the Big 4 liberal groups that seek higher taxes and/or more regulation of corporate California. Although the multibillion-dollar conflict is a 365/24 affair -- it was a significant subtext in several Democratic primary duels for legislative seats this month, for example -- it bursts into the public realm each year when a business coalition led by the California Chamber of Commerce issues a...

With the recent passage of Cover Tennessee, health care in Tennessee is facing another journey in health-care experimentation. Due to the lack of details presently available, this action is viewed with some degree of trepidation by the physicians throughout our state, who will be relied upon to provide the care for new Cover Tennessee enrollees. Tennessee health care is already at a crisis point. In February, we were named the 21st medical liability crisis state by the American Medical Association because of the serious signs of access problems currently facing our patients. While the Tennessee Medical Association supports plans to...

A group of San Diego men denied free Mother's Day weekend giveaways at major league baseball games are suing some teams -- including the Oakland A's -- over their lost tote bags and reversible bucket hats. Alfred Rava, a San Diego attorney, filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court May 8 for sex discrimination against the Oakland A's after he did not receive a free plaid reversible bucket hat during a promotion at the A's game May 8, 2004. The suit, filed on behalf of all men who were denied the reversible hats, claims discrimination occurred because the hats were...

About 40 percent of the medical malpractice cases filed in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis of the hotly debated issue that pits trial lawyers against doctors, with lawmakers in the middle. Many of the lawsuits analyzed contained no evidence that a medical error was committed or that the patient suffered any injury, the researchers reported. The vast majority of those dubious cases were dismissed with no payout to the patient. However, groundless lawsuits still accounted for 15 percent of the money paid out in settlements or verdicts. The study's lead researcher, David Studdert of the...

LOS ANGELES - A state appeals court today upheld $28 million in punitive damages against Philip Morris in a suit by a woman who smoked the company's cigarettes for 45 years and died of lung cancer in 2003. A Los Angeles jury initially awarded a record $28 billion in punitive damages to Betty Bullock of Newport Beach, in addition to $850,000 in compensation for her economic losses and pain and suffering. The trial judge cut the punitive award to $28 million, but Philip Morris said the amount still exceeded limits on punitive damages established by the U.S. Supreme Court. The...

SAN FRANCISCO - In what may be the first legal action of its kind in California, a Cameron Park transgender person is alleging that co-workers and supervisors harassed her and tried to force her out of her job after she switched genders. In an interview Monday, Danielle Ryan described the hostile work environment that she claims developed at the South Natomas office of the international engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff. A computer technology specialist, Ryan said incidents began 15 months ago, after she announced that she considered herself a woman and would start wearing women's clothing to work. Ryan, 44,...

WHAT DO iPods, baseball statistics and hot yoga have in common? All are examples of copyright and trademark fights that have brought on battles between businesses and consumers. So far, consumers are losing. Almost nothing, it seems, can be freely used if a company can claim ownership and charge a fee. Take one of the crazier examples. Do you think that baseball box scores are in the public domain for anyone to see and use, just like today's temperature or stock prices? Think again. Major League Baseball wants to squeeze more money out of the sport by licensing its ballpark...

NASHVILLE — The American Civil Liberties Union will likely appeal a recent ruling by a federal appeals court, which allows Tennessee to offer anti-abortion license plates bearing the message "Choose Life." A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati earlier this month overturned a lower-court ruling that said the tag illegally promoted only one side of the abortion debate. The ACLU and other plaintiffs have until Friday to file an appeal for a hearing before the 6th Circuit, according to Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. They would have another week to...

NASHVILLE -- Despite a massive lobbying effort and doctors declaring that Tennessee faces a "crisis," legislation to put new state limits on medical malpractice lawsuits has been killed for another year. The bill backed by the Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) and a coalition of 46 other organizations was defeated in the five-member Civil Practice subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Two members voted for it; three against. Rep. Rob Briley, D-Nashville, who chairs the subcommittee, said proponents simply had not presented any objective evidence that lawsuits have really caused a problem in Tennessee and that the proposed limits would be...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds' lawyer says he'll ask a judge to order that the authors of a new book detailing the Giants' slugger's alleged use of steroids turn over any profits they make. Notice of the lawsuit came today in a letter from attorney Michael Rains' office to the agent for authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. They are reporters for The Chronicle and authors of the book "Game of Shadows." The book, published today, concerns the Bay Area laboratory known as BALCO and the athletes, including Bonds, who allegedly were illicitly supplied with performance-enhancing drugs. According to the...

New Haven -- A lawyer for eight gay couples argued in court Tuesday that Connecticut's marriage laws illegally create a separate class of people based on sexual orientation. The couples, with the help of the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, filed suit in 2004 in an attempt to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage. Last year, Connecticut approved civil unions for gay couples, which gives them the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples, but that law also defined marriage as existing only between a man and a woman. Assistant Attorney General Jane Rosenberg defended the laws Tuesday...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration argued Friday that a newly enacted law wipes out hundreds of pending court cases by detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are challenging their confinement. In papers filed with a federal appeals court, the Justice Department said the Detainee Treatment Act signed by President Bush on Dec. 30 restricts detainees' rights to reviews by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. The reviews are limited, said the Justice Department, to the question of whether the detainees have been correctly categorized by the U.S. military as enemy combatants. The enemy combatant designation...

Providence -- A judge ruled Tuesday that the state cannot seek punitive damages against three lead paint companies found liable for creating a public nuisance in Rhode Island. The companies — Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC — still must pay to clean up the mess caused by lead paint, which could amount to billions of dollars. Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein will decide later exactly what the companies must do to fix the problems

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lawyers representing thousands of motorists who sued the cities of San Francisco and San Diego after they were caught on camera running red lights agreed today to dismiss their litigation. The agreement caps a 2½-year legal battle in which the plaintiffs tried to recover millions in fines, traffic school costs and attorney fees after being cited thanks to the automatic traffic cameras. "We're very pleased that plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss their cases -- not merely because it saves taxpayer dollars, but because it ensures the continued viability of programs that are saving lives throughout California," San...

Chicago -- The American Bar Association denounced President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program Monday, accusing him of exceeding his powers under the Constitution. The program has prompted a heated debate about presidential powers in the war on terror since it was disclosed in December. The nation's largest organization of lawyers adopted a policy opposing any future government use of electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes without first obtaining warrants from a special court set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The 400,000-member ABA said that if the president believes the FISA is inadequate to...

A Marin County jury dismissed claims Thursday that Wal-Mart and a San Rafael bicycle importer knowingly sold bicycles with a defective part that caused the front wheels to fall off, injuring nine boys in California and other states. The 12-person civil jury rejected claims that the nation's largest retailer and Dynacraft BSC Inc. sold bicycles with faulty quick-release levers and were liable for millions of dollars in damages for the children's injuries between 2000 and 2003. Co-defendant Carl Warren & Co., a claims processor for Dynacraft, was also cleared of any wrongdoing. Jurors, who had been deliberating since Tuesday after...

Much to the delight of people who appreciate legalistic stupidity, the winner of the Wacky Warning Label Contest was announced last week. This competition, in its ninth year, is sponsored by a Detroit organization called Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. As the name suggests, its goal is to spotlight the bizarre, ridiculous and confusing warning labels found on consumer products. The 2006 champ was the label that came with a 1,000-degree industrial heat gun, admonishing users not to attempt drying their hair with it. Second place went to this cautionary note on kitchen cutlery: "Never try to catch a falling knife."...

<p>Certain state courts in Texas, Illinois, West Virginia and Florida are sought out the most by "litigation tourists," who are guided by personal-injury lawyers to jurisdictions they know will produce a victory, according to a recent report by a national tort-reform interest group. Courts in Rio Grande Valley and on the Gulf Coast of Texas; Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties, Ill.; West Virginia; and South Florida hear a disproportionate number of cases filed by plaintiffs "who neither lived nor were injured in these jurisdictions," says the report by the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), a group of more than 300 businesses, corporations and municipalities. Jefferson County, Texas, which includes the cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur on the Gulf Coast, is "a notorious class-action magnet," according to the report, "Judicial Hellholes 2005." Between 1998 and 2002, the number of class-action lawsuits filed in the county increased by 82 percent, although only 13 percent of defendants and 64 percent of the named plaintiffs in the cases were residents of the county, the report says. Texas often is held out as a flagship state by tort-reform advocates because of a series of policies to restrict legal penalties in such cases enacted when President Bush was the state's governor. "Unfortunately, 'judicial hellholes' continue to exist in Texas," ATRA President Sherman Joyce said after the report's release. "Judges in these Texas jurisdictions continue to fail to apply the laws set forth by a decade of reforms enacted in this state." The Dec. 13 report cites a number of factors contributing to the designation, including the "willingness of courts to expand liability through novel legal theories" and the "prevalence of forum shopping."</p>

Riverside -- Two 16-year-old girls who were expelled from a private Lutheran high school because they were suspected of being lesbians have sued the school for invasion of privacy and discrimination. The lawsuit, filed last week in Riverside County Superior Court, seeks the girls' re-enrollment at the tiny California Lutheran High School, unspecified damages and an injunction barring the school from excluding gays and lesbians. The suit could be a test case in the state on whether religious schools can deny enrollment to gays and lesbians, said Richard Ackerman, a lawyer who is president of Temecula's Pro-Family Center, which focuses...

FRESNO, Calif. - A federal judge has thrown out a $10 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit alleging that Yosemite National Park was negligent in the death of an experienced climber who was killed by a rockfall. In a ruling released last week, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Sandra M. Snyder agreed with National Park Service lawyers who argued that Yosemite was immune from such lawsuits because Congress has given rangers discretion on when and where to warn the public of potential dangers. The suit was filed by the family of Peter Terbush, a student at Western State College, in Gunnison,...

Forget "Friday Night Lights." For this Jefferson County High School football team, it was "Bloody Monday" that has put a head coach and four of his former players on opposing sides in a federal courtroom. Four Jefferson County players cut from the team in October and their parents filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court against head football coach Marty Euverard, Jefferson County High Principal Dale Schneitman and athletic director Craig Kisabeth. Both sides agree that whatever happened on Oct. 10, a day the teenagers' attorney, Michael S. Kelley, called "Bloody Monday," in the football locker room led to...

A lesbian teen who was expelled in April for kissing another girl is suing her private school to ensure other students never have to experience what she went through. Jessica Bradley and her father, Ronald Bradley, claim that Covenant Christian Academy in Loganville, Ga., breached its contract with them by expelling the ninth-grader for carrying on an "inappropriate relationship" in violation of the school's standard of conduct on "sexual immorality." The suit filed in Gwinnett Superior Court last Friday also claims the school invaded Jessica's privacy by airing details of her personal life and outing her to the community, even...

The family of a man suspected of shoplifting from a Texas Wal-Mart is suing the retail giant after an autopsy revealed that he suffocated to death while security guards restrained him. The parents and wife of Stacy Clay Driver are seeking unspecified damages from Wal-Mart and several of its associates after the 30-year-old carpenter died on Aug. 7 following a struggle with guards who had chased him out of the store for allegedly stealing a $94 gift card. The suit, filed Nov. 15 in Harris County, also seeks compensation for intentional infliction of emotional distress against Driver, claiming the employees...

SEATTLE (AP) - The Mormon church has been ordered to pay $4.2 million to two college-age sisters who say a bishop mishandled complaints of sexual abuse by their stepfather, a Mormon priest at the time. A jury Friday found the church liable for misconduct and negligence in the case of Jessica Cavalieri, 24, and her younger sister, Ashley, 19. The girls had been abused by their stepfather, Peter N. Taylor, at their home during the 1990s. Taylor pleaded guilty to child molestation in 2001 was sentenced to more than four years in prison. Jessica Cavalieri said in court documents that...

ATLANTA -- Acting on behalf of a seller of spiritual books, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit arguing that a Georgia law exempting the Bible from sale taxes is discriminatory and should be extended to all publications dealing with the meaning of life. "If they're not taxing someone's holy scriptures, they shouldn't be taxing anyone's," said Candace Apple, who owns the Phoenix and Dragon Bookstore in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. "I'm not willing to stand at the counter and tell someone, `Oh, sorry, your religion is wrong.'" Apple and Thomas Budlong, former president of the...

NEW ORLEANS -- The Longue Vue estate, with its English furnishings, Turkish rugs, blown-glass chandeliers and oil paintings, is on life support. Hundreds of yards of air-duct hoses run through doors and into cellars, trying to save the mansion from Hurricane Katrina's long-lasting remnant: mold. The storm flooded the flower-studded grounds, swamped the wine cellar and buried the gardener's quarters in muck. Two months after Kartina, workers are at war with creeping moisture, trying to repel stench and rot from the Greek Revival mansion and museum in Old Metairie, a National Historic Landmark. New Orleans — the perennially flooded city...

Firefighters sued Metro Nashville over mold in their Fire Station and won $76,000. Lawyers for the Firefighters assert that this was never about the money.

Two environmental groups have gone to court to challenge renewed Alameda County permits for Altamont Pass wind farms, saying more studies are needed on the energy operations' lethal effects on birds. One of the groups said Monday that interference by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, forced them into court action. Lawsuits by Californians for Renewable Energy and the Golden Gate Audubon Society claim Alameda County supervisors were "arbitrary and capricious" when they approved bird-protection measures in September as conditions of the permits granted to Altamont wind-energy companies. The regulations were approved despite critics, including the office of California Attorney General Bill...

NEW YORK - A jury ruled Wednesday that the Port Authority was negligent in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 - a long-awaited legal victory for victims of an attack that killed six people and wounded 1,000. The six-person jury ruled that the Port Authority, the agency that owned the World Trade Center, was negligent by not properly maintaining the parking garage, where terrorists detonated more than a half-ton of explosives in a Ryder van. It said the negligence was a "substantial factor" in the allowing the bombing to occur. The jury took just one day to...

Talk about getting soaked. The San Francisco Unified School District is about to be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make gym showers in middle and high schools accessible to people in wheelchairs, even though the showers have hardly been used in years -- by anyone, disabled or not. The reason: The recent settlement of a long-running disabled-access lawsuit, which calls for the district to spend as much as $1.5 billion in the next six years to bring schools into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and similar laws. Now once upon a time, students used...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A lesbian student has reached an out-of-court agreement about six months after her senior portrait was banned from the yearbook because she was dressed in a tuxedo. Kelli Davis, now a freshman at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said she hopes the settlement will prevent future discrimination against students. "It wasn't a gender-identity issue," Davis said. "I'm obviously a female; I don't try and be a guy. But I was being discriminated on because of my gender." The dispute began earlier this year when Fleming Island principal Sam Ward pulled Davis' yearbook photo because it...

SAN FRANCISCO - A teenage baseball player hit in the face by a ball during practice was injured because of the ordinary risk of the game and cannot collect $340,000 in damages awarded by a jury, a state appeals court ruled. Scott Vogel, then 18, was injured in July 2000 while practicing for a tournament game in Santa Rosa with the North Bay Devil Rays. Vogel was handling a throw at second base from an outfielder when a manager standing between the pitcher's mound and the base hit what was supposed to be a fly ball. Instead, the drive struck...

Los Angeles -- A woman is suing ABC's reality show "Extreme Makeover" for unspecified damages, alleging its decision to cancel her appearance contributed to her sister's suicide. In a lawsuit filed Sept. 9 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Deleese Williams, 30, of Conroe, Texas, claimed the producers subjected her to needless humiliation and goaded her sister, Kellie McGee, into insulting her appearance. Williams says a psychologist and numerous doctors told her she needed an "eye lift, ears pulled back, chin implant and breast implants." She was also told she needed dental surgery to break and reset her jaw for a...

An Israeli left wing group has filed a lawsuit in the United Kingdom against Chief of General Staff, Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and his predecessor, Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon, for their involvement in the 2002 assassination of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh. Halutz has been shrouded in controversy ever since July 2002, when under his command as head of the Air Force, a war plane dropped a one-ton bomb in downtown Gaza City on the apartment building of Shehadeh, killing 15 civilians along with Shehadeh, and wounding 150. In addition, the Yesh Gvul group announced that it was withdrawing a petition it...

NEWARK, N.J. - Immigrants who claimed they were abused at a detention center won a $2.5 million settlement from a private company that operated the center for the federal government. After legal fees, some 1,600 detainees will divide about $1.5 million based on how long they were held and what they said was done to them, the New Jersey Law Journal reported this week. U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, in Newark, approved the settlement Aug. 10. The detainees were being held at the Elizabeth center between August 1994 and June 1995 for what was then called the Immigration and...

A Knox County jury on Tuesday convicted a man who claims he was brutalized by deputies of assaulting one of them. Jurors deliberated two hours before deeming Gary Lynn Harvey guilty of disorderly conduct and assault on Knox County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Mike Evans. The jury acquitted Harvey of a charge he assaulted Deputy Erick Tipton. The verdict came after a five-day trial and the dismissal of a female juror after she claimed she overheard Evans make a threatening statement about Harvey. The case stems from an encounter in May 2003 at an apartment complex on Fox Lake Way where...

Christmas came early for the lawyers who won a public-interest lawsuit to make San Francisco schools more accessible to the disabled. A federal judge awarded the legal eagles $6.95 million for their work. That's less than the $9 million the lawyers had been asking for, but substantially more than the $2 million the school's insurance would cover. So now officials may have to dip into the district's already stretched general fund to pay the bill. But before you bring out the lynching rope, it should be noted that U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the cash-strapped district had "largely brought...

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. - The school district and the state will pay more than $6.7 million to a family of an autistic boy to settle claims that the agencies failed to provide the child with an adequate education. An attorney involved in the case said he believes the settlement is a record payment for a special education case. The case began in 1999, when Deborah and John Porter claimed that the Manhattan Beach Unified School District in suburban Los Angeles had failed to provide their son with appropriate instruction in reading, language instruction and socialization. The state's special education hearing...

SAN FRANCISCO - A state appeals court dismissed a student's lawsuit against the California State University system that alleged the university discriminated against Hispanics by considering SAT scores as a factor in admissions. The 2nd District Court of Appeals in Ventura also dismissed allegations that CSU's policy of giving admissions preference to students who live near California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo discriminated against minorities. The suit was brought by Rita Garcia, who did not win admission to Cal Poly in 2002. Her suit, which other students who had been denied admission joined as co-plaintiffs, cited a 2001 state...

LOS ANGELES - A large law firm and two of its attorneys must pay $267,000 for filing a frivolous racketeering lawsuit against critics of a luxury condominium development on Big Bear Lake, a judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real on Monday sanctioned Foley & Lardner and two attorneys in its San Diego office, S. Wayne Rosenbaum and Suzanne Washington. The attorneys represented the condominium developer, Irving Okovita. It's unusual for a federal judge to slap a law firm with such a big penalty, said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics. "For a court...

Lawyers representing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and as many as 1.6 million present and former female employees will face off Monday before a three-judge appellate panel, arguing the merits of a federal judge's decision that made the discrimination lawsuit the largest in U.S. history. The ultimate judgment could significantly influence the direction of the case as well as the future application of class-action law, advocates on both sides say. The suit, filed by a team led by Berkeley-based The Impact Fund in 2001, alleges that Wal-Mart systematically denied women equal pay and promotions. San Francisco U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins in...

Little Rock, Ark. (AP) -- The National Transportation Safety Board says it will stand by a report blaming pilot error for a 1999 plane crash and likely will ignore a jury's decision to fault the airport. Jurors on Thursday awarded the widow of Capt. Richard Buschmann more than $2.1 million after her lawyers argued that conditions at the airport — not Buschmann's mistakes during an attempt to land in a severe thunderstorm — were the main cause of his death. Ten others also were killed. The NTSB said its conclusions were reached by aviation experts, as opposed to 11 random...

STUART, Fla. (Court TV) — A car crash that left two teens dead and another in prison continues to afflict this small coastal town nearly three years after the fatal accident. Stephen Bromstrup, 16, allegedly downed several beers that he sneaked into a June 17, 2002, pool party that Barbara and John O'Brien threw for their 14-year-old daughter. After the party, Bromstrup and two friends, Daniel Downes and Matthew Gordon, climbed into a 1988 Pontiac Firebird and took off through the O'Briens' upscale neighborhood, according to police. Prosecutors say Bromstrup raced through a stop sign at 70 miles an hour...

MIAMI -- A Florida appeals court has ruled for the first time that pharmacists can be held liable for failing to warn about risks associated with use of drugs repeatedly or in harmful combinations, even if they are filling a doctor's prescriptions. The 4th District Court of Appeal, reversing a state circuit court's ruling, decided this week that Robert Powers can pursue claims of negligence against two pharmacies — Your Druggist and The Medicine Shoppe — that filled his wife Gail's prescriptions for neck and back pain. She died of an overdose. The negligence claims against the pharmacies were dismissed...

NASHVILLE — A federal appeals court panel has approved Tennessee’s procedures for kicking people off TennCare, the state’s expanded Medicaid program. The ruling, which overturns a lower court decision, means the state does not have to hold a hearing for each TennCare recipient before removing them from the program. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday and handed down a decision Friday. The court said decisions on how to run TennCare were up to the elected officials in Tennessee, "so long as the State’s disenrollment process satisfies the requirement...

DETROIT -- A jury awarded $10.6 million to one-time radio host who was fired after complaining a co-worker's perfume made her sick. Erin Weber said WYCD-FM fired her in 2001 after she complained she was allergic to another host's perfume. She said the station owner, Infinity Broadcasting Inc., discriminated against her for a disability — allergies — and retaliated after she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

BOSTON - The family of the late paleontologist and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould sued two Boston hospitals and three doctors Friday, alleging the famed author would still be alive if they had properly diagnosed his cancer four years ago. The doctors all failed to recognize a 1-centimeter lesion on a chest X-ray taken of the Harvard professor in February 2001, according to Alex MacDonald, the lawyer for Gould's survivors. Thirteen months later, when another chest X-ray was taken, the lesion had grown to 3 centimeters and the cancer had spread to Gould's brain, lungs, liver and spleen, MacDonald said....

Columbus -- Ending one of the last fights from the contentious 2004 presidential campaign, Ohio's top judge on Thursday declined to punish four attorneys who had challenged the results in court. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled against Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's attempt to have the lawyers sanctioned for filing "a meritless claim" against the vote that gave President Bush a win in Ohio and, as a result, enough electoral votes to win a second term in the White House. In legal documents filed with the state Supreme Court, the lawyers had said the challenge they filed on behalf of...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Rhode Island's Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that a lawsuit filed by a woman whose car was struck by a stolen flatbed tow truck being chased by police should be heard by a jury. The decision reverses a lower-court ruling that threw out the lawsuit by Mary Seide, who was traveling home to Boston when the accident occurred. in continuing the chase even as the truck drove the wrong way down a busy interstate. "The plaintiff produced evidence that reasonably could lead to the conclusion that the officers' decision to continue the pursuit and their failure to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday that it will decide if states and counties can be sued for not accommodating disabled prisoners, setting up another legal showdown over the power of Congress to tell states what to do. The high court ruled seven years ago that a landmark federal civil rights law protects people being held in state prisons. Since then, however, lower court judges have disagreed over whether states can be sued for damages by prisoners under the Americans With Disabilities Act, a law meant to ensure equal treatment for the disabled in many areas of life....