A Tampa law firm that has garnered millions of dollars in neglect and abuse settlements and lawsuits against nursing homes in Florida and around the country is now on the defense end of a suit that contends the firm knowingly violated Tennessee law regarding contingency fees.

The lawsuit against the firm, Wilkes & McHugh, was filed in December in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Tennessee.

Plaintiff Debbie Howard hired the firm several years ago to sue a Memphis nursing home in the death of her grandmother for medical negligence, according to the 38-page complaint.

The class-action claim states Wilkes & McHugh engaged in an unlawful scheme to collect 40 percent or 45 percent in contingency fees of settlement amounts, although Tennessee law caps fees to 33 and 1/3 percent in medical malpractice cases. The complaint says the law firm charged the higher and unlawful contingency fee to hundreds of clients in Tennessee.

“Although it has never actually tried any of these nursing home lawsuits in Tennessee, defendant Wilkes & McHugh has reaped tens of millions of dollars in legal fees from settlements ... paid by nursing home defendants to their Tennessee clients during the Class period,” according to the complaint.

An Italian military court Saturday convicted 10 former SS soldiers and acquitted 7 others in the 1944 killing of more than 700 people in Marzabotto, a small town in nothern Iraly. The slaughter, which took place south of Bologna, is considered the worst killing of civilians in Italy during World War II. All of the men on trial were tried in absentia and are believed by many to be living in Germany. Each of the convicted men received life sentences for murder.

The massacre was committed by retreating German troops from September 29, 1944 to October 5, 1944. During that time, the SS soldiers killed mainly women, children and elderly in a supposed hunt for resistance fighters.

The 2006 budget shows that last year the FBI received $5.7 billion in federal funding while the DEA received $2.4 billion. The DEA said it would be unable to sustain employment at its current level if Congress does not allot an additional $95 million, and ATF officials say they need $71 million more in order to maintain its 4,900 employees. Observers say that the failure to approve 2007 budgets for the DOJ agencies could impede efforts to counter both violent crime and terrorism. While other agencies are feeling the burden of the lack of budget approval, Congress has already approved budgets for the military and for homeland security.

President Bush Friday signed into law new federal legislation seeking to protect traditional, wireless, and internet phone calling consumers by preventing phone companies from selling their private phone records without customer authorization and criminalizing attempts to obtain those fraudulently. The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006 passed the Senate in December in response to the Hewlett-Packard corporate spying scandal that broke this past summer.

The Act prohibits "making false or fraudulent statements" to phone company employees in an effort to obtain confidential phone records. It also forbids "accessing customer accounts through the Internet" without authorization. Those who contravene the Act can face up to 10 years in prison.

In November, Argentine officials announced that the investigation into abuses committed during Argentina's "Dirty War" from 1976-83 would be expanded to include the tenure of Peron, who succeeded her husband Juan Peron when he died in office in 1974. After the announcement a lawyer for Isabel Peron told a local television station that accusations shouldn't be made against her 30 years after she left office. Peron was ousted from office in a bloodless coup in March 1976 and held under house arrest for five years before being exiled to Spain.