Virgin Mobile USA began as a 50:50 joint venture between Sprint Nextel and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, which floated the company last month.

The shareholders suing the business invested in Virgin Mobile USA's initial public offering, or later bought its stock in the open market.

Last month, the pay-as-you-go service provider sold 27.5m shares for $15 each, at the low end of expectations. The shares rose as high as $16.63 a share on the first day on the open market, but have since steadily declined, amid a broader market sell-off.

advertisementThey were trading down 27c at just $7.25 yesterday afternoon, having fallen around 55pc from their peak.

The offering raised $413m. The company had said it would use the proceeds from the stock sale to repay debt and to buy out 16.7pc of Sprint Nextel's interest.

A spokesman for the company said: ''The lawsuit is completely without merit and we will defend it vigorously."

The company is a separate entity from Virgin Mobile in the UK, which was sold to cable giant NTL to form Virgin Media, in which Sir Richard is the largest shareholder - as he is is Virgin Mobile USA.

A jury found a Chicago man guilty of abducting his ex-girlfriend and their four children and holding them hostage at an Elkhart motel.
 
The jury deliberated for two hours Wednesday before finding Jerry White, 31, guilty of one count of attempted murder and eight counts of criminal confinement.

White was accused of holding his former girlfriend, Kimberly Walker, and their four children hostage in Elkhart starting on Jan. 20. Police searched for them for more than three days until they found everyone unharmed at a motel on Elkhart's north side.

The case led to an Amber Alert that drew national attention.
White showed no emotion when the verdict was read. During his testimony, White said he never forced anyone to stay in the home and Walker and their four children went with him willingly to the motel where police later found them.

"They could've left if they wanted to," White said. "I never told anyone that they could not leave."

White also was charged with shooting a man after entering his former girlfriend's home. The man, Lathie Turnage, was blinded in the shooting. White said he shot Turnage out of fear.

White will be sentenced December 20. He faces up to 80 years in prison.
"I'm just glad it's over," said Pamela Walker, Kimberly's sister.

Neal Kuopus also passed on his right to a preliminary hearing, thereby sending the case closer to a trial date.

Kuopus appeared briefly in Alameda County Superior Court and let his attorney, deputy public defender Norma Rivera, speak for him.

Rivera asked him several questions to confirm that he understood he had a right to a preliminary hearing, where a judge must decide that a crime happened and that the defendant probably was involved.

The decision to skip the hearing was somewhat of a surprise, because according to court documents, Rivera and deputy district attorney Michael Roemer previously came to an agreement that Kuopus would plead guilty to one of the charges in exchange for a prison sentence of as many as three years, as well as five years of probation.

Rivera declined to comment on the case. Roemer said he could not comment specifically on the case, either.

Roemer said it has become more common to bypass a preliminary hearing.

Kuopus is accused of firing a gun at his ex-girlfriend several times Sept. 9 before escaping in the woman's truck. He was arrested three days later after a neighbor spotted him at his home.

He faces three felony counts of shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Police said Kuopus, 56, shot at the woman after she came to his home in the 4800 block of Mulqueeney Common to reclaim possession of her truck.

After an argument inside his home, police say, he followed her out as she got inside a vehicle with her friends. Both shots missed all three people inside, but one shattered a window.

No one was hurt and the victims were able to drive away and call police.

Kuopus is set to appear in court in Hayward Dec. 11 for an arraignment.

Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey reported the "bribery overture" to federal authorities and agreed to assist investigators in an "undercover capacity," according to the indictment.

Scruggs was indicted along with three other attorneys, including his son, who is his law partner, and a former Mississippi auditor. They face charges including one count of defrauding the federal government and two counts of wire fraud.

"I'm convinced that these guys did not do what they're accused of doing," said Joey Langston, a lawyer for Scruggs' firm.

Also named as defendants in the indictment are Zach Scruggs; Sidney Backstrom, a lawyer in Scruggs' firm; Timothy Balducci, a New Albany, Miss.-based lawyer; and former state auditor Steven Patterson, who works with Balducci.

Patterson resigned as auditor in 1996 after he was accused of lying on state documents to avoid paying taxes on a car tag.

Scruggs turned himself in to authorities Wednesday afternoon at a federal building in Oxford, Miss., where the grand jury handed up the indictments earlier in the day, Langston said.

After their arraignment Wednesday, Richard Scruggs was released on $100,000 bail, while Zach Scruggs and Patterson each were freed on $50,000 bail. Langston said Backstrom is expected to be arraigned Thursday, but he couldn't say when Balducci is expected to appear in court.

Langston said it was too early for him to comment on the details of the allegations.

"Right now, we've just got to get our arms around it," he said.

Richard Scruggs, whose brother-in-law is Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., earned millions from asbestos litigation and from his role in brokering a multibillion-dollar settlement with tobacco companies in the mid-1990s.

His case against the tobacco companies was portrayed in the 1999 movie "The Insider," starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

After Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, the Gulf Coast native sued insurers on behalf of hundreds of policyholders whose claims were denied after the storm.

On Tuesday, FBI agents searched Scruggs law offices and left with copies of computer hard drives, Langston said.

The alleged bribery scheme stems from a lawsuit filed in March against Scruggs by a Jackson, Miss., law firm, Jones, Funderburg, Sessums, Peterson & Lee in a dispute over $26.5 million in attorneys' fees.

Scruggs created a legal team called the Scruggs Katrina Group to represent policyholders who sued their insurers after the hurricane.

In January, Scruggs' legal team reached a mass settlement of suits with State Farm Insurance Cos. that involved more than $26 million in lawyers' fees.

The lawsuit accuses Scruggs of trying to "freeze out" lawyers from the Jackson law firm, including senior partner John G. Jones, and pay it a "ridiculously low figure" for its "substantial" work.

After the suit was filed, Balducci is accused of having several meetings and conversations with Lackey in which Balducci agreed to pay the judge for ruling in favor of Scruggs in the case, according to the indictment.

Scruggs allegedly tried to cover up the scheme by falsely creating documents that showed he hired Balducci to work on an unrelated case, when he was actually reimbursing him for the cash bribes, the indictment said.

The indictment includes excerpts of telephone conversations between Balducci and the judge that were presumably recorded by federal authorities.

A 40 percent contingency fee negotiated by a Manhattan law firm retained by the widow of a real estate developer involved in a multimillion-dollar estate dispute was not "unconscionable on its face," an appeals court ruled yesterday.

The court said that "at first blush," the 40 percent fee — worth about $42 million — that was claimed by the law firm, Graubard Miller, from Alice Lawrence, the 83-year-old widow of the real estate developer Sylvan Lawrence, "might arguably seem excessive and invite skepticism."

But a majority of the five-member panel of the court, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled that whether the fee was reasonable should be determined at a trial, based on a further exploration of the discussions that led to the fee agreement and the difficulty of the case.

In a dissent, one justice, James M. Catterson, called the fee "exorbitant." He said that the retainer agreement was signed when a $60 million settlement offer was already on the table.

The estate was settled just five months later for more than $100 million, the judge said, meaning that the law firm's fee was almost equal to the additional amount it won.

Mark Zauderer, a lawyer for the firm, said in a telephone interview that Graubard Miller was delighted with the decision, which was issued in response to Mrs. Lawrence's appeal of two decisions in Surrogate's Court.

Mr. Zauderer said that the fee had been justified by the law firm's success in winning about $115 million for Mrs. Lawrence against Seymour Cohn, her husband's brother, business partner and executor — against an adversary who, he said, was "extremely wealthy and well defended."

"What the courts recognize is that a fee agreement is not unconscionable simply because it can produce a big fee," Mr. Zauderer said. "You have to look at the value rendered to the client."

Leslie Corwin, Mrs. Lawrence's current lawyer, said there was a "strong possibility" that she would seek to have the Court of Appeals hear the case.

Mr. Lawrence died in 1981. At the time, he and his brother owned "more than 90 commercial buildings and parcels of real estate," the dissent said. Mrs. Lawrence wanted to sell them. Mr. Cohn, who died in 2003, opposed her.

"This is now the third time a court or a judge has affirmed the right of the Graubard firm to be paid a well-earned fee in which it got a tremendous result in a highly complex case," Mr. Zauderer said.