A Minnesota court says pulling up the saggy pants of a crime suspect is not an illegal search, even if it turns up a gun.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling Tuesday came in a case that arose after a drug suspect was stopped by St. Paul police officers.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that the man's jeans fell down when he put his hands up, prompting an officer to hoist up the droopy drawers. In the process, the officer found a gun.

The man was later sentenced to five years in prison for illegally possessing a firearm.

On appeal, his attorney argued the gun was found in an illegal search.

But the appeals court determined the officer had hoisted the pants "presumably to conceal rather than to reveal."

A Florida man has pleaded guilty in New Jersey to running a multistate Ponzi scheme that prosecutors say left investors with about $80 million in losses.

Nevin Shapiro admitted in a Newark federal courtroom Wednesday to using Florida-based Capitol Investments USA Inc. to raise nearly $900 million from investors who thought they were buying into a wholesale grocery distribution business.

Prosecutors say Shapiro used the proceeds instead to fund a lifestyle so lavish, he has a university athletic lounge named after him.

Prosecutors say Shapiro left at least 60 investors in Florida, Indiana and New Jersey with millions in losses. He could face up to 17 years in prison.

Turner Padget Graham & Laney, P.A. announced Wednesday the firm’s inclusion in the inaugural Best Law Firms list, published by U.S. News & World Report in conjunction with Best Lawyers. Turner Padget is recognized as the top firm in 16 practice areas throughout the state, and is noted in eight additional categories among other top law firms in South Carolina. Inclusion on the U.S. News & World Report Best Law Firms list signals a combination of excellence and breadth of experience. The full list is available today at www.usnews.com/bestlawfirms. 

Turner Padget is recognized in the following categories:

Florence
•    Tier One Rankings:
o    Alternative Dispute Resolution
o    Criminal Defense: White-Collar
o    Trusts and Estates Law
•    Tier Two Ranking:
o    Tax Law

Charleston
•    Tier One Rankings:
o    Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants
o    Professional Malpractice Law – Defendants
•    Tier Two Rankings:
o    General Commercial Litigation
o    Real Estate Law

Columbia
•    Tier One Rankings:
o    Alternative Dispute Resolution
o    Banking and Finance Law
o    Insurance Law
o    Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants
o    Municipal Law
o    Product Liability Litigation – Defendants
o    Real Estate Law
o    Trusts and Estates Law
o    Workers’ Compensation Law – Employers
•    Tier Two Rankings:
o    Construction Law
o    Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Defendants
o    Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants
•    Tier Three Ranking:
o    General Commercial Litigation

Greenville
•    Tier One Rankings:
o    Alternative Dispute Resolution
o    Workers’ Compensation Law – Employers
•    Tier Two Ranking:
o    Intellectual Property law

The inaugural Best Law Firms list showcases over 8,000 law firms ranked in one or more of 81 practice areas. Major clients and leading lawyers were asked to rate the law firms they consider best in their practice areas. Ultimately, 9,514 clients – including every Fortune 100 company and over half of Fortune 1000 companies – provided 194,370 firm practice area evaluations. These survey responses were combined with more than 3.1 million evaluations of individual lawyers previously collected by Best Lawyers. Data regarding the number of clients a firm serves, combined with information on billing ranges, pro bono commitment, diversity and other objective data were integrated to develop the final list. 

About the U.S. News Media Group
The U.S. News Media Group is a multi-platform digital publisher of news and analysis, which includes the monthly U.S. News & World Report magazine, the digital-only U.S. News Weekly magazine, www.usnews.com, and www.rankingsandreviews.com. The U.S. News Media Group’s signature franchises include its News You Can Use® brand of journalism and its “America’s Best” series of consumer guides that include rankings of colleges, graduate schools, hospitals, health plans, and more.

About Best Lawyers
Best Lawyers is the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession.  For over a quarter century, the company has helped lawyers and clients find legal counsel in distant jurisdictions or unfamiliar specialties. Best Lawyers lists are excerpted in a wide range of general interest, business and legal publications worldwide, reaching an audience of more than 17 million readers.

About Turner Padget
Founded in 1929, Turner Padget is one of South Carolina’s largest law firms with 91 attorneys and five offices in Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville and Myrtle Beach. The firm provides clients in many industries with quality legal services in areas such as arbitration and mediation, business entity planning and organization, business litigation, construction and environmental litigation, employment and labor law, estate and tax planning, insurance coverage analysis and litigation, intellectual property, personal injury defense litigation, products liability, professional liability, real estate transactions, trucking and transportation, and workers’ compensation. For more information, visit www.turnerpadget.com. 

A dispute over whether an imam who plans to build a mosque near ground zero ignored safety hazards at property he owns in northern New Jersey is headed to court.

Parties in the lawsuit against Feisal Abdul Rauf are scheduled to appear Wednesday in state Superior Court.

A lawsuit filed by Union City claims Rauf ignored numerous code violations at two apartment buildings he owns. Union City is just across the Hudson River from New York and has about 70,000 residents.

The lawsuit claims Rauf didn't fix 12 fire code violations the year before one building caught fire. It says parts of the other building have been without electricity, smoke detectors and fire alarms because Rauf's company didn't pay utility bills.

A spokesman tells The Associated Press the imam won't comment on the lawsuit.

European journalists won greater protection for their sources in a ruling Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights that faulted Dutch law enforcement for arresting an editor and ordering his magazine to surrender images of an illegal street race.

In an unanimous ruling, the Strasbourg-based court's 17 judges said Dutch public prosecutors should have sought an independent opinion on whether their criminal investigation overrode the public's interest in a free press.

Press advocates welcomed the ruling as a landmark that will cement European journalists' right to protect their sources.

Autoweek magazine, a publication of Sanoma Uitgevers BV, had promised anonymity for participants in the outlawed 2002 race in exchange for being allowed to send a reporter and photographer.

Police believed one of the cars that participated in the race had been used as a getaway car in burglaries of cash machines by a gang that used a shovel loader to break into the ATMs, including one raid in which a bystander was threatened with a gun.