Canadian drug company Biovail Corp. has fired Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman LLP, the law firm that engineered the company's high-profile lawsuit that claimed hedge funds and research analysts colluded to depress its stock price.

Kasowitz Benson, which is based in New York, is embroiled in a legal controversy over whether it willfully violated a protective order when it used information subpoenaed from Banc of America Securities in a shareholder suit in New York Federal court. That information was used to draft Biovail's February 2006 complaint against SAC Capital Management LLC, Sigma Capital Management LLC, Gradient Analytics Inc., Gerson Lehrman Group, former Banc of America Securities analyst David Maris and others.

Judge Richard Owen presides over the shareholder suit filed against Biovail in 2003. For the last month, Owen has been presiding over hearings to probe the violation of the protective order. Those hearings are scheduled to resume in early April.

Biovail's public relations firm Sitrick & Co. said in an e-mail statement that the company terminated Kasowitz Benson because of "issues arising from proceedings before Judge Owen." Biovail said it "maintains confidence in its pending lawsuits."

A spokesman for Kasowitz Benson had no comment.

A lawyer defending Kasowitz Benson during the hearings in front of Owen earlier this week disclosed documents against Biovail's will. The lawyer argued in court that Kasowitz Benson had a right to disclose the information because the firm was being accused of wrongful conduct.

"We have asked Biovail to come forward and clarify the record. They have declined to do so to date," said John Siffert of Lankler Siffert & Whohl LLP. "We are not saying that Biovail had an appreciation for the protective order barring what we did anymore than we did, but at least they knew about the protective order and didn't tell us," Siffert said.

Evidence introduced in court shows that Kasowitz Benson lawyers continued to use and share material obtained from Banc of America after they were told about a March 2005 court order preventing its use in other venues.

According to evidence that came up during hearings in front of Owen, Kasowitz Benson drafted and circulated to several law firms a shareholder complaint that was later filed against SAC and others in New Jersey federal court. That complaint closely mirrors the one filed by Biovail against the same defendants a month earlier and uses some of the same information obtained from Banc of America.

Lawyers representing shareholders suing Biovail in New York federal court argued in a letter sent to Judge Owen last week that Biovail's lawyers drafted and caused the filing of the New Jersey shareholder complaint to hamper class certification in New York.

Kasowitz Benson also represents Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Canadian insurer who sued some of the same defendants and alleges a similar conspiracy to depress its stock.

Last June, Kasowitz Benson partner Marc Kasowitz testified in front of a Senate hearing about hedge funds, alleging that supposedly "independent" research reports are routinely bought and paid for by short-selling hedge funds, and warned lawmakers that "the potential for gross fraud and abuse is stunning."

The complaint contends her gray tabby, Gumbie, became ill after eating food from an Iams Select Bites pouch in early February. Gumbie became lethargic, refused food and lost weight, she said, and a veterinarian diagnosed acute renal failure. The cat was "pet-hospitalized" and prescribed intravenous fluids.

Johnson told CNN she considers herself lucky. "Thankfully we got her to the vet in time. My cat was very ill, but there are lots of people around the country whose pets have died or been euthanized."

Since coming home, Gumbie has required a great deal of care. "It is stressful to have to stick a needle in the cat every day," said Johnson, who has had to administer daily subcutaneous fluid-and-drip injections since bringing Gumbie home.

Gumbie is likely to require medical tests and monitoring every few months, and Johnson expects this will increase her expenses considerably. She said she already has paid more than $3,000 in veterinary bills.

Johnson's attorney, Frank Jablonski of Progressive Law Group, said more than 95 people have joined the suit since it was filed, and he expects many more.

"We have all the clients we need," he said. "We wouldn't bring a lawsuit that we are not confident we will win." The lawsuit is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. Courts will have to certify the class and what venue will hear the case.

Menu Foods spokesperson Sam Bornstein declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the company has received tens of thousands of consumer inquiries and is doing its best to respond to them. "Our hearts go out to many thousands of pet owners, some of them for their losses and some for their worry," he said.

Menu Foods announced the precautionary recall March 16. The recall affects dog and cat food manufactured between December 3 and March 6, and is limited to "cuts and gravy" style pet food in cans and pouches produced at its plants in Kansas and New Jersey. The food is packaged under a wide variety of brand names.

Both the Food and Drug Administration and Menu Foods have been unable to identify the root cause of the problem, but the FDA said Tuesday that officials were focusing on a recent supply of wheat gluten as the likely culprit.

Pfizer Inc. said Thursday that a federal appeals court has overturned a lower court decision that upheld the patent protecting its widely-prescribed hypertension drug Novasc, a move that opens the door to early generic competition.

In a statement, Pfizer said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a lower court ruling in favor of Pfizer, which found the Norvasc patent to be valid and enforceable. The appeal was brought by Apotex, which has been seeking to have the Pfizer patent nullified in order to put out a generic version of the drug.

Pfizer added that it is "reviewing the decision and is considering all its options, including seeking reconsideration."
Other generic drugmakers have also been seeking to put out generic versions of the drug, including Mylan Laboratories (MYL) . Norvasc is slated to lose patent protection later this year.

Prudential analyst Timothy Anderson said in his note Thursday that the appeals ruling could allow for the introduction of generic versions of Norvasc as soon as next week.

"We did not anticipate this ruling, but it will probably only have a muted impact on Pfizer which is already a washed-out, low valuation name," wrote Anderson.

"Earlier generic entry is a negative and could cost the company $1 billion in sales or so in 2007, but given Pfizer's size and cash generation this it not very material to the company's future outlook, in our opinion," Anderson added.

Reed ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) arguments against COPA, "true, reliable and credible and I accept those facts" and determined COPA violated the First Amendment's right to free speech.

Reed said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales failed to "meet his burden of showing that COPA is the "least restrictive, most effective" alternative in achieving the "compelling [public] interest."

The ACLU filed a suit for permanent injunction relief against enforcing the law a week after Congress passed the measure in 1998. The organization argued that COPA overreached lawmakers' good intentions to protect children from "sexually explicit" material available online. Under COPA, children are defined as anyone under 17-years of age.

As written by Congress and signed by then President Bill Clinton, any commercial Web site operator that made "sexually explicit" material available to minors was, under COPA, subject to criminal and civil sanctions even if the online material was otherwise acknowledged as free speech for adults but deemed "harmful to minors."

COPA provided a safe harbor for Web site owners if they required the use of a credit card or other identification method used to verify age or, significantly, "any other reasonable measures that are feasible under available technology."

The ACLU immediately contended that Internet filtering technology was more feasible than any age verification methods, mitigating, the ACLU claimed, the impact on otherwise protected free speech. By the time the Bush administration inherited the political hot potato, it steadfastly maintained that filtering technology does not work and the threat of jail time and steep fines were the most effective defenses against making sexually explicit material available to minors.

Reed wrote that the ACLU's clients "post content on their Web sites including…resources on sexual health, safer sex, and sexual education; visual art and poetry; resources for gays and lesbians; online magazines and articles; music; and books and information about books that are being offered for sale." No matter Congress' valid interests to protect children, Reed ruled, such free speech restrictions on content stifled legal online free speech.

"I may not turn a blind eye to the law in order to attempt to satisfy my urge to protect this nation's youth by upholding a flawed statute, especially when a more effective and less restrictive alternative is readily available." Reed wrote.

As the case bounced all the way up from the district court to the Supreme Court and back down again, the Bush administration insisted filtering technology is not an effective tool for parents to censor adult content for their children. The ACLU argued otherwise. As the case dragged on for almost a decade, the Department of Justice (DoJ) eventually subpoenaed Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL for proof child protection filters were ineffective tools against sites with sexually explicit material.

While Google successfully fought the subpoenas, the other search engines turned over evidence that convinced Roberts that "filtering products block both Web pages originating from within the United States and Web pages originating from outside the United States."

That determination, Roberts ruled, sank the DoJ's defense of COPA.

Roberts said that, in addition to their content-filtering features, filters can provide parents with a report indicating which Web sites a child visited, which sites were blocked, the number of e-mails and instant messages a child sent and to whom a child sent e-mail or instant messages.

Roberts further ruled that Internet-filtering technologies offer "money-back guarantees or free trial periods, so that parents can simply download a filtering product for free over the Internet and then use it for a set time period to see if it is something that they want to continue using."

"Based upon the testimony of [ACLU witnesses], which I accept, I find that filters generally block about 95 percent of sexually explicit material," Roberts ruled. He also determined that two separate reports commissioned by Congress, "have confirmed that content filters can be effective at preventing minors from accessing harmful materials online."

The Bush administration has the right to appeal the decision, but the DoJ had not responded to Roberts' decision by press time.

"We think some people may have skipped over it on the form – even with the software, in some instances – just completing the return as they did last year. We've been surprised by that," Everson said.

For this year only, most taxpayers can claim a refund of $30 to $60. The amount depends on the size of your family, for taxes the IRS mistakenly collected on long-distance phone services. So far, 30 percent of tax filers are failing to claim the refund, and half of the taxpayers paid preparers to complete their return, Forbes reported.

On the other hand, the IRS received huge telephone refund claims, allegedly fraudulent, for around $10,000 early in the filing season. "That's a lot of phone usage. Even my teenage kids can't generate that much phone usage," Everson joked. A subsequent crackdown on fraud appears to be effective, he said.

Other challenges for the IRS included extensions of tax breaks that did not become final until the end of December. The agency had to hussle to implement the changes in time for filing deadlines, and incorporate the changes into software programs.

A new direct-deposit service was also difficult: Filers can split their refund and have it sent electronically to different financial institutions. Everson said about 55,000 people took advantage of the service, that’s of 74 million returns processed so far, but he expects it to become more popular.

James Paone, a partner at Lomurro, Davison, Eastman and Munoz in Freehold, N.J., said that the firm's insurer -- The Chubb Corp. -- said several weeks ago that it would not add the blog to the existing policy. "We were in the process of beginning to set up a blog, having internal discussions about what areas of law would be the subjects," he said. "We wanted to cover the first base, which is Chubb's coverage. Our insurance carrier said a blog is not a risk they were interested in insuring. The entire discussion stopped."

Paone said his firm contacted Chubb to ask about insurance coverage in case someone tried to sue it over content in the blog. Now, the law firm is in the process of setting up a meeting with Chubb "so we can understand what their rationale is for saying they weren't interested in covering that kind of risk," Paone said.

Chubb did not immediately respond to a request for comment.