Court-appointed receiver J. Clark Kelso has been given broad authority by federal courts to fix the nation's largest state prison system's medical and mental health care, treatment so poor it has been ruled unconstitutional.

Kelso and the Legislature, however, have been unable to agree on where the funding to fix it should come from. The state Senate has blocked borrowing that Kelso says he needs to fix medical care for the state's more than 170,000 prisoners.

If the receiver doesn't get his way, a judge could order the money taken directly from the state treasury.

To avoid that, Kelso wants the governor's office to bypass the Legislature and sign a contract authorizing up to $7 billion for the medical care expansion. The money would go toward seven health care centers that would house 10,000 inmates in need of medical attention and mental health treatment.

Ronald D'Alessandro has started a law firm, Keohane & D'Alessandro PLLC with offices in San Francisco, New York City and Albany, N.Y. "My partner is in San Francisco," said D'Alessandro. D'Alessandro, 35, met his law partner, Stephen Keohane about seven years ago when Keohane was counsel for IBM. "He was one of my best clients," D'Alessandro said. A senior associate, Darrell Pogue, is based in New York City.

D'Alessandro was one of the founders of the Albany intellectual property firm Hoffman, Warnick & D'Alessandro LLC. Michael Hoffman, Spencer Warnick and D'Alessandro started the firm about nine years ago when they met while working at another firm, Schmeiser Olsen & Watts LLP in Latham.

Last week, it was announced that the firm was rebranding, calling itself Hoffman Warnick LLC. D'Alessandro said he enjoyed starting up another firm.

"I didn't realize how much fun it was to be back at the grass roots," he said. "Each day can bring something different. You never know what the next day will bring. It can bring headaches but also a lot of interesting challenges."

It took a week for the furniture to arrive at his new office at 1881 Western Ave.

The unanimous decision came in a case involving the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The court ruled in favor of two firms alleging that manipulation by competitors had resulted in a disproportionate share of tens of thousands of tax liens going to the competitors.

Tax sales in Cook County enable the collection of unpaid property taxes, giving buyers of tax liens an opportunity to take over property if the owners don't pay up.

The issue for Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co. and BCS Services Inc. was whether they could sue even though they had not relied on allegedly fraudulent statements the defendants submitted to Cook County. The statements said that each tax buyer was truly independent from other tax buyers in the competitive bidding.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said that nothing in the RICO law required Phoenix and BCS to show that they relied on alleged misrepresentations by a defendant.

Cook County requires that each buyer submit bids only in its name and not through any related entity.

Phoenix and BCS alleged that a number of related entities "packed the room" in tax sales by having relatives in two families bid for the same properties.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said that Anup Engquist must be a member of a class targeted for discrimination in order to bring a claim.

The case revolves around an 8-year-old Supreme Court decision. In that case in 2000, the justices ruled that a person may assert an equal protection claim as a "class of one" rather than on the usual grounds of racial discrimination against an entire group.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the "class of one" theory does not apply in the public employment context, where the government has greater leeway in dealings with its employees.

Born in India, Engquist worked at a laboratory operated by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. She says that after she complained about a colleague who allegedly harassed her, the man and a superior eliminated her position. A jury subsequently ruled in Engquist's favor.

Nine federal appeals courts have ruled that public employee claims similar to Engquist's can go forward.

The case before the court involved alleged contract fraud by a former unit of General Motors Corp. At issue was whether the False Claims Act covers any fraudulent claim paid for by government funds, or only fraudulent claims directly submitted to a government official.

Justice Samuel Alito charted a middle path, saying the law can be used if fraudulent statements are ultimately intended to get the government to pay claims.

The whistleblower law does not apply in situations in which a subcontractor does not intend the government to rely on a fraudulent claim as a condition of payment.

A lower appeals court had ruled that the whistleblower suits could proceed, because the False Claims Act covers claims made to other parties, "so long as the claim will be paid with government funds."

The court sent the case back to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to apply the standard it laid out Monday.

The unanimous decision Monday was helpful to customers of Intel Corp. and is the latest step by the justices to scale back the power of patent-holders.

The case revolves around a long-time Supreme Court doctrine that says the sale of an invention exhausts the patent-holder's right to control how the purchaser uses it.

In 1992, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that hears patent cases from around the country began eroding the doctrine, ruling that patent-holders could attach post-sale conditions to patented products.

Justice Clarence Thomas reined in the appeals court, saying that "for over 150 years the Supreme Court has applied the doctrine of patent exhaustion" and that it applies in this case.

In the case before the Supreme Court, a South Korean company, LG Electronics Inc., licensed some of its patents to Intel Corp.

LG then sued some of Intel's customers for patent infringement, saying they owed royalties to LG because the customers combined Intel's microprocessors and chipsets with non-Intel products.

Patent laws can carry triple-damage awards when a court finds willful infringement.

The Intel customers are computer system manufacturers that include Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc. System manufacturers sell to industry brandnames such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp. and Gateway Inc.

The Bush administration supported Intel's customers. It cited inconvenience, annoyance and inefficiency of multiple royalty payments being passed down the chain of distribution with no obvious stopping point.