Free Republic

An Arizona appeals court on Wednesday upheld a jury’s $600,000 judgment in favor of a rancher in a defamation lawsuit, rejecting an environmental group’s argument that documents it posted on the Internet were shielded by the First Amendment. The Court of Appeals upheld a Pima County Superior Court jury’s award of compensatory and punitive damages to Jim Chilton in his lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit with offices in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, D.C. A lawyer for the rancher said the appellate court had stood up for a person wrongly defamed, while an attorney...

An environmental group asked for a court review Thursday of tighter gas mileage rules for pickups and sport utility vehicles that many conservationists said do not go far enough in limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government set the new standards last week in response to rising concern about the supply and cost of energy from abroad. The rules, covering 2008 through 2011, would save 10.7 billion gallons of fuel over the lifetime of the vehicles sold during that period, officials said. The Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity filed a one-page petition Thursday asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court...