The Montana Supreme Court has reversed a lower court and ruled that a Montana construction company can either collect a debt or foreclose on a high-end guest ranch involved in a decade-long financial fight.

The Independent Record reports that the high court on Tuesday ruled that the owner of Paws Up used a "shell" corporation to try to avoid paying Helena-based Dick Anderson Construction.

Paws Up is owned by Monroe Property Co., which is controlled by David Lipson, the former CEO of the haircut chain Supercuts.

In 2001 Anderson filed a lawsuit seeking to collect the final $800,000 on the $10 million project. Arbitrators awarded Anderson about $1.4 million in 2005 in damages, interest and attorney's fees.

The Supreme Court will let two West Virginia residents revive a lawsuit against Bayer AG over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.

The high court on Thursday unanimously agreed to let Kevin Smith and Shirley Sperlazza's class-action lawsuit against Bayer go forward.

The 8th U.S. Court of Appeals had thrown out their lawsuit out after a federal judge overseeing multistate litigation against Bayer refused to let other West Virginians file a similar class-action lawsuit against the corporation.

The high court said that decision was incorrect.

The Supreme Court has upheld the criminal conviction of an Alabama man even though the justices agreed the police search that produced incriminating evidence was illegal.

The high court's 7-2 ruling Thursday against Willie Gene Davis highlighted an unusual series of events. Between Davis' arrest and a federal appeals court ruling affirming his conviction, the Supreme Court put new limits on the ability of police to search a vehicle immediately after a suspect is arrested.

The question for the justices was whether to invoke the exclusionary rule that generally requires evidence to be suppressed if it results from a violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. In this case, the court said, the good-faith efforts of the officers overrode that concern.

The Supreme Court says courts must consider age when examining whether a child is in custody and must be given Miranda rights.

The high court on Thursday ruled that police and school officials were wrong when they interviewed a 13-year-old special education student about a string of break-ins in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The interview took place in a closed room at his school. The boy was never read his Miranda rights, and his lawyer challenged the use of his confession.

The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to throw out the confession and said courts cannot look at age when examining whether the boy thought he could leave.

But the U.S. Supreme Court said in a 5-4 vote that courts have to consider how old the child was during the interrogation.

The Supreme Court says judges cannot give convicts extra time in prison in hope it will be used to get them into rehabilitation services.

The high court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of Alejandra Tapia, who was trying to reduce her 51 month sentence for alien smuggling, gun possession and bail jumping.

She wanted a three-year sentence, but the judge said that a longer sentence would increase her chances of getting into a 500-hour prison drug rehabilitation program. Tapia was never placed in the program.

Tapia says Congress has disapproved of judges using imprisonment as a method of rehabilitation. The lower courts disagreed.