The six-person Broward County jury must decide whether Stuart Hess was addicted to cigarette nicotine before he got lung cancer and died. If so, the jury would later decide any damages against the Philip Morris tobacco company.

The lawsuit by widow Elaine Hess is the first to go to trial since the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 threw out a $145 billion class-action jury award, ruling that each case had to be proven individually.

Hess' lawyers said Thursday he was hopelessly addicted to nicotine. The lawyer for Philip Morris said Hess chose not to quit despite known health risks.

Party spokesman Todd Riffle said papers were filed late Wednesday asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case.

GOP leader Tom Wilson hopes to get the court to order the Democratic governor to release the e-mails he and his staff exchanged with Carla Katz.

Corzine dated Katz, the leader of the state's largest state worker union, before he became governor. Wilson argues that the public has the right to see the e-mails Corzine and his staff exchanged with Katz during the 2007 labor talks to ensure no backdoor negotiations took place.

"The public has the right to judge for themselves whether Corzine's conduct was appropriate," Wilson said in a statement Thursday. "To do so, they need to see the e-mails and look at Corzine's actions on this contract."

Corzine and Katz were involved in the negotiations, though neither were principal negotiators.

Corzine has said the two did not discuss the contract. Katz, in court papers, however, argued that the e-mails should remain private because they involve contract talks, which are exempt from Open Public Records Act requests.

An appellate court ruled unanimously last month that Corzine's e-mails could stay private. That decision overturned a trial court ruling ordering the e-mails released.

The Appeals Court said the governor's electronic correspondence was protected by executive privilege, a legal principle that allows members of the executive branch of government to keep certain communications confidential in order to govern effectively.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit accusing Decatur Hotels of exploiting foreign workers it hired after the August 2005 storm scattered many of its employees.

The suit claims Decatur Hotels violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it refused to reimburse foreign workers for recruitment, transportation and visa expenses. Decatur's foreign workers spent up to $5,000 apiece to relocate to New Orleans.

A three-judge panel concluded the law doesn't require an employer to cover any of those expenses.

The ruling Thursday tracks the conclusion of the initial investigation that Billey Joe Johnson had shot himself with a 12-gauge shotgun.

The 17-year-old's death has inflamed suspicion since Dec. 8. That's when the standout running back at George County High School was killed after a deputy stopped him for running a red light.

Johnson's family and the NAACP had rejected suicide as the cause of the death. They have said he had too much to live for including a shot at playing in the NFL.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LUCEDALE, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi grand jury is expected to release its report on the shooting death of a star high school football player during a traffic stop.

An initial investigation concluded that Billey Joe Johnson had shot and killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun.

The 17-year-old's death has inflamed suspicion since Dec. 8. That's when the standout running back at George County High School was killed after a deputy stopped him for running a red light.

Assistant District Attorney Brice Wiggins says the grand jury's report is expected at a hearing Thursday afternoon in George County Circuit Court in Lucedale.

Johnson's family and the NAACP have rejected suicide as the cause of the death. They say he had too much to live for including a shot at playing in the NFL.

In a hearing before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Deputy Attorney General Daniel Powell argued that a judge's demand for a $250 million down payment violates state sovereignty and federal law. A court-appointed receiver wants that money to go toward his $8 billion plan to build seven new medical and mental health facilities for the state's 33 adult prisons.

Powell told the three-judge panel that the plan goes far beyond what's needed to remedy the prison health care system. The state cited proposed amenities such as therapy rooms, basketball courts and bingo boards. Powell added that the state already has taken steps to improve care that has been ruled unconstitutional.

The demand for billions to improve inmate medical care comes during a time of "extreme fiscal crisis," the state argued. California is struggling to bridge a $42 billion budget gap, furloughing employees two days each month, cutting billions from education and social services and considering a variety of tax increases.

The judges in the cases said the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the parents' claims — and backed years of science that found no risk.

"It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive," the court concluded in one of a trio of cases ruled on Thursday.

The ruling, which was anxiously awaited by health authorities, was a blow to families who have filed more than 5,000 claims for compensation through the government's Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The claims are reviewed by special masters serving on the U.S. Court of Claims.

To win, the families' attorneys had to show that it was more likely than not that the autism symptoms in the children were directly related to a combination of the measles-mumps-rubella shots and other shots that at the time carried a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal.

But the court concluded that "the weight of scientific research and authority" was "simply more persuasive on nearly every point in contention."

The court still has to rule on separate claims from other families who contend that rather than a specific vaccine combination, the lone culprit could be thimserosal, a preservative that is no longer in most routine children's vaccines. But in Thursday's rulings, the court may have sent a signal on those cases, too:

"The petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction," a judge wrote about one theory that the families proposed to explain how autism might be linked.