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Louisville, Ky. (AP) -- A lawsuit can continue against the Vatican alleging that top church officials should have warned the public or authorities of known or suspected sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead for the lawsuit filed by three men who claim priests abused them as children. They allege the Vatican orchestrated a decades-long coverup of priests sexually abusing children throughout the U.S. Louisville attorney William McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims nationally in...

Santa Ana, CA (AP) -- Day laborers reached a tentative settlement with the Orange County Sheriff's Department in an unusual harassment lawsuit that saw workers take their case to federal court, an attorney said. . . . Trial had been set to begin Tuesday in the suit filed by more than 50 laborers who claimed deputies violated their right to free speech by telling them they couldn't seek work on a street corner in Lake Forest.

A tray of asymmetrical chocolate lumps balances on the counter behind the espresso machine, where owner Jean-Marc Gorce is slinging a cappuccino. Scotch-taped to the walls, clippings about the mom-and-pop truffle shop display accolades from Gourmet, the New York Times and 7 x 7. At the window, a few stools share a high counter; outside, two tables perch on the sidewalk. Cluttered but quaint, off-kilter but authentic, XOX Truffles is just the sort of place that one might associate with North Beach's motley character. Yet one of its design anomalies - a step from the curb into the shop -...

On one side are disabled Californians, who can't believe businesses still deny them access.On the other are angry business owners, who loathe the lawsuits spawned by a doorway too narrow, a toilet too high, a ramp too steep.After years of failed efforts, the Legislature is attempting again to bridge the divide with a proposal to curb lawsuits while improving public access for California's disabled. Democratic Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro has put together a complex bill she believes both Democrats and Republicans – as well as disabled Californians and business interests – can support.Critics say the plan is too...

The Antioch Police Department has been named in a federal lawsuit alleging the department's Community Action Team unfairly targets African-American families enrolled in the subsidized-housing program known as Section 8. Filed in U.S. District Court earlier this month by Bay Area Legal Aid — a civil legal service for low-income families — the suit alleges the city and police department are engaged in a "concerted and unlawful campaign to seek evidence which could lead to the termination of participants' Section 8 voucher benefits." Four individuals and a group of Section 8 families are named as plaintiffs. The suit seeks unspecified...

NEW YORK—A popular restaurant has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit with a lesbian who said a bouncer chased her out of the women's bathroom and forced her to leave because she looked masculine. The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the settlement Tuesday on behalf of Khadijah Farmer. The Caliente Cab Company, while denying the allegations, also agreed to add gender identity to its nondiscrimination policy, amend its employee handbook with a section on customer restroom use and adopt a gender-neutral employee dress code. Farmer said the confrontation at the Greenwich Village eatery occurred June 24...

New Orleans (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam. Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf...

California has the seventh-worst legal climate in the nation for business, according to a survey released Wednesday by a leading business lobby. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform said California's legal climate moved up a spot from last year, but was still stuck in 44th place. "California's low ranking is not surprising, given the fact that California courts have a reputation for certifying class action lawsuits that most other jurisdictions would toss out, and that California juries are increasingly likely to award disproportionately large judgments in civil cases,"

Republicans complained Wednesday that Senate Democrats are scheduling votes around the plans of presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but predicted the ploy wouldn't save a pay equity bill. "To have the schedule of the Senate revolve around the schedule of the presidential candidates strikes me as particularly ridiculous," said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was delaying Senate business until late Wednesday to give Obama and Clinton time to return from the campaign trail. Republicans bristled at the move, particularly in the face of Reid's complaints earlier this week of GOP...

Why can't America find jurists like John Leighton Williams? Alexander Martin-Sklan, an accountant from a London suburb, tore his right quadriceps tendon in a fall in a store parking lot in June 2004. Stuck to the bottom of his right sandal was a grape, and a plan for raisin' money was born. Mr. Martin-Sklan sued the store for $600,000 for pain, suffering, depression, and compensation for lost business during his recuperation and his inability to ski or play tennis anymore. But Deputy Judge Williams ruled Mr. Martin-Sklan didn't have a leg to stand on. The plaintiff could have picked up...

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities. There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning. One alternative would be to do what the board has done for the past three years - seat its president near floor level, instead of the ornate, elevated podium that would require a significant retrofit of the historic room. Board President Aaron Peskin said he would like to find a...

WICHITA, Kan.—A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a patient-advocacy group to sue the federal government on behalf of patients of a physician who is charged with running a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown urged about 40 of Dr. Stephen Schneider's patients, some of whom had come to the hearing on crutches, to seek care at the emergency room, not the court. "If someone can prevent a criminal prosecution by filing a civil suit, there would be a flood of civil suits," Brown told the courtroom. The judge said the patients...

New Orleans (AP) -- A federal judge threw out a key class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding from a levee breach after Hurricane Katrina. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over the failure of a wall on the 17th Street Canal that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. The suit led to 350,000 separate claims by businesses, government entities and residents, totaling billions of dollars in damages against the agency. The fate of many of those claims was pinned to that lawsuit...

San Francisco (AP) -- Lawyers for environmental and native Alaska groups are asking a federal appeals court in San Francisco to block an oil company's plans for exploratory drilling near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday agreed to settle class-action lawsuits covering plaintiffs in four states who claimed its Explorer sport utility vehicles were prone to rollovers, the company and an attorney for the plaintiffs said. The settlement applies to about 1 million people in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, said Kevin P. Roddy, a New Jersey attorney and co-counsel for the SUV owners who brought the lawsuit. He said the settlement will be filed later Wednesday in Sacramento County Superior Court. It will allow vehicle owners to apply for $500 vouchers to buy new Explorers or $300...

SAN FRANCISCO - A lawsuit by animal-rights advocates accusing UCSF of illegally spending state money on painful and unnecessary experiments on dogs and monkeys was dismissed Tuesday by a San Francisco judge, who said Congress has designated federal regulators, not the courts, to oversee the research. "You want to have the court become the regulator of this particular lab," Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney told a lawyer for six health professionals who filed the taxpayer suit against the university. "I don't think that's what Congress intended." The plaintiffs wanted Mahoney to halt what they called illegal experiments and appoint a...

Spanish-speaking couple sues, accuses entities involved with mortgage, of negligence, misrepresentation -- ANTIOCH -- When it came time to sign her mortgage documents, Judy Murillo said she heard something in English that made her stop signing. The terms of her loan didn't sound right. "We weren't supposed to have Mello-Roos," she said, her brow furrowing as she sat at her dining room table. Although Murillo speaks some English, she is more comfortable with Spanish, the language she and her husband used when communicating with her real estate agent, who was also her loan consultant, and his assistant. She said...

A federal judge has dismissed the bulk of a civil rights lawsuit that accused Contra Costa sheriff's deputies of traumatizing the housemates of Scott Dyleski as they searched for Dyleski after the killing of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and television commentator Daniel Horowitz. Deputies had the right to enter the home on Hunsaker Canyon Road without warrants, as they believed Dyleski might be destroying evidence, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in a ruling Monday. Kim and Fred Curiel and their three children, along with Mike Sikkema and his wife, Hazel McClure, and their two children, said deputies...

A judge dismissed three Ecuadorians from a lawsuit against San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., saying attorneys "manufactured" their claims that the company's chemical dumping in their country caused cancer. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco threw out the claims against Chevron, the second-biggest U.S. oil company, Aug. 3. He blamed lawyers representing the Ecuadorians for fabricating their illnesses. Seven residents of Ecuador's Oriente region sued, claiming they contracted cancer due to Texaco Inc. and Texaco Petroleum Co.'s, now part of Chevron, contamination of rain forests. The case relies in part on Gloria Chamba, who in the complaint claimed her...

Four men who were allegedly refused ladies' night discounts at a Los Angeles nightclub have the right to sue on the grounds of discrimination even if they never demanded equal treatment from the club, the state Supreme Court said Thursday. California's Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits a broad range of discriminatory business conduct, including sex-based pricing, and does not require customers to demand that a company change its policies before going to court, Chief Justice Ronald George said in the unanimous decision. A lower court had thrown out the case because the men had not complained first. The ruling addressed...