The high court agreed Tuesday to review Merck's challenge to a federal appeals court's reinstatement of a class-action securities lawsuit.

Investors had charged Merck with providing misleading information or omitting information about the risks of Vioxx. A U.S. District judge dismissed the November 2003 lawsuit, ruling that all the plaintiffs' claims were time-barred under the statute of limitation.

But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to allow the lawsuits and Merck appealed to the Supreme Court.

Vioxx was pulled from the market Sept. 30, 2004, because it doubled risks of heart attack, stroke and death. That day alone, stockholders lost a collective $28 billion.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (GAYR'-hahrtz-ry-tur) is accused of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter during a supervised visit in Boston last July. He and the girl were found six days later in Baltimore.

Gerhartsreiter also is charged with providing a false name to police. His lawyers had argued it would be unfair for jurors to hear him called Gerhartsreiter, because he has not been convicted of providing the false name.

Superior Court Judge Frank Gaziano said Tuesday he would call him Gerhartsreiter to introduce the case, then refer to him as "the defendant" during the trial.

Jury selection is to begin Tuesday.

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one unless the attorney is present.

The Michigan ruling applied even to defendants who agree to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.

The court's conservatives overturned that opinion Tuesday, with Justice Antonin Scalia saying "it was poorly reasoned, has created no significant reliance interests and (as we have described) is ultimately unworkable."

Scalia, who read the opinion from the bench, said their decision will have a "minimal" effects on criminal defendants. "Because of the protections created by this court in Miranda and related cases, there is little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present during interrogation," Scalia said.

The Michigan v. Jackson opinion was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the only current justice who was on the court at the time. He dissented from the ruling, and in an unusual move read his dissent aloud from the bench. It was the first time this term a justice had read a dissent aloud.

"The police interrogation in this case clearly violated petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to counsel," Stevens said. Overruling the Jackson case, he said, "can only diminish the public's confidence in the reliability and fairness of our system of justice."

The court Tuesday unanimously overturned a decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

The law makes it a felony to use a communication device in "committing or in causing or in facilitating" a drug purchase.

Prosecutors say that Salman Khade Abuelhawa's use of a cell phone for a misdemeanor purchase of around $120 of cocaine fell under the statute. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction.

But the high court said Congress did not intend for phone buyers to get more jail time than people who walk up to dealers and buy drugs.

Mike Stefani "engaged in conduct that is contrary to justice, ethics, honesty or good morals," the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission said in a nine-page complaint. Staff at the grievance commission act as investigators and prosecutors of misconduct by lawyers.

"I was simply representing my clients to the best of my ability," Stefani said. "I'm not going to accept allegations that I'm dishonest or committed a crime." He added: "I'm going to defend my reputation."

The text messages were "irrefutable" evidence that Kilpatrick, a lawyer, committed perjury at a 2007 civil trial when he denied having an affair with a top aide, but Stefani didn't notify the commission in a timely manner, investigators said.

Stefani obtained Kilpatrick's text messages by sending a subpoena to SkyTel Inc., the city's communications provider.

The messages arrived in October 2007, a few weeks after the police officers' trial. The officers claimed Kilpatrick punished them because they were investigating wrongdoing by his inner circle.

A California man has pleaded guilty to opening tens of thousands of bogus online brokerage accounts and then pocketing tiny test deposits made by companies like E-Trade Financial and Charles Schwab.

Michael Largent, 23, of Plumas Lake, Calif. pleaded guilty Thursday to computer fraud charges in connection with the scam, which ran between November 2007 and May 2008.

Largent's arrest was widely covered on the Internet last May, where it was likened to so-called Salami Slicing scams depicted in movies such as Superman III and Office Spaces.

According to prosecutors, Largent wrote a script that opened more than 58,000 online accounts at instructions such as E-trade and Schwab. He used fake names, including cartoon monikers such as Hank Hill and Rusty Shackelford to open these accounts and then profited when the brokerage firms would make tiny test deposits to make sure they were linked to his account.

Typically these deposits were between $0.01 and $2 but they added up. In total he made or tried to make more than $50,000 in the scam, the Department of Justice said.

Largent is also alleged to have received more than $8,000 in micro-deposits from Google, although he was not charged with this in his May 22 indictment.

He is set to be sentenced on Aug. 13 and faces up to five years in federal prison on two computer fraud charges, a U.S. department of Justice spokeswoman said Thursday.