An appeals court has thrown out a verdict that awarded $5 million to a former New York City police officer who accidentally shot himself in the knee.

Anderson Alexander had sued the city, claiming he accidentally shot himself in 2002 while leaning back in a faulty chair in Brooklyn's 73rd Precinct. He retired from the force after undergoing several surgeries.

A jury in 2008 awarded him $5 million in damages. It found the city was negligent despite testimony that nothing broke on the chair.

A Supreme Court justice declined to throw out the verdict. But last week, the Appellate Division overruled the judge, saying there was no evidence to show the city knew the chair was defective.

Alexander's lawyer, Matthew Naparty, said his client is evaluating his options.

The Supreme Court will decide whether a teacher at a church-run school is a religious or secular worker when it comes to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School of Redford, Mich.

Cheryl Perich, a teacher and commissioned minister, got sick in 2004 but tried to return to work from disability leave despite being diagnosed with narcolepsy. She taught third and fourth graders

The school said she couldn't return because they had hired a substitute for that year. They fired her after she showed up anyway and threatened to sue to get her job back.

Perich complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sued the church.

The church wanted the case thrown out. Courts have recognized a "ministerial exception" to the ADA which prevents government involvement in the employee-employer relationship between churches and ministerial employees.

But the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Perich's job as a teacher was secular, not religious, so the exception blocking the lawsuit didn't count. The church wants that decision overturned.

Federal authorities plan to file a sex-offender charge against a 78-year-old man who was recently acquitted of killing a blind woman in upstate New York in 1972.

A state prosecutor revealed in court Monday that Willie James Kimble will be arraigned in U.S. District Court next week on a charge of failing to register as a sex offender in Florida. If convicted, he could draw up to 10 years in prison.

Kimble was acquitted March 10 of bludgeoning to death Annie Mae Cray at her home in Rochester on Oct. 29, 1972.

After his trial, the twice-convicted sexual predator was ordered held on state charges he violated his sexual-offender status by skipping town in 2009 while the murder was being re-examined. Police tracked down Kimble in his native Sarasota, Fla.

The suspect in the January shooting rampage in Tucson has been transferred to a specialized facility in Missouri to undergo a court-ordered mental evaluation.

Lawyers for 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner say in a court filing that he was taken from Tucson to a federal Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday.

The lawyers want an appeals court to order him returned.

Loughner will be given tests to determine if he understands the nature and consequences of the charges he faces and can assist in his defense.

Loughner has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the Jan. 8 attack that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. She remains at a rehabilitation center in Houston as she recovers from a bullet wound to the brain.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled the Omaha Tribe can be subject to a lawsuit over payment for work on its casinos, racetrack and other facilities.

The tribe was sued in 2009 by Omaha-based building contractor StoreVisions for breach of contract. The lawsuit says the tribe has not paid for construction work.

The Omaha Tribe argued it is immune from lawsuits because the federal government has granted American Indian tribes sovereign immunity. The tribe said in court documents that a waiver of sovereign immunity signed in 2008 by the tribal chairman and vice chairman for StoreVisions isn't valid, and the case should be thrown out.

A Thurston County district judge disagreed, ruling the lawsuit can proceed. The state's highest court affirmed that ruling in an opinion issued Friday.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled that teeth are not a dangerous weapon.

The decision Wednesday overturned a first-degree assault conviction for a Marion County man who bit off part of a neighbor's ear in 2008 in a drunken fight.

The Oregonian reports a second-degree assault conviction against 30-year-old Scott Russell Kuperus II stands. But first-degree assault involves a dangerous weapon, and teeth don't qualify.

His attorney says the first-degree assault charge that carried a sentence of 90 months in jail will be dismissed and Kuperus will be sentenced to 70 months for second-degree assault.