Snyder was convicted of first-degree murder in August 1996 by an all-white jury in Jefferson Parish. The jury also recommended the death sentence. He was found guilty of slashing his estranged wife and a man when he found them in a car outside her mother's home in August 1995.

Lawyers for Snyder said the state illegally struck all five qualified black members from the jury pool using preemptory challenges, or challenges for which a reason does not have to be given.

Under a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, attorneys are not allowed to exclude people from a jury solely because of their race.

A split Louisiana Supreme Court rejected Snyder's challenge, with the majority saying that race had no part in the state's decisions involving potential jurors.

The auto product liability lawsuit, Levesque vs. Ford Motor Company, started today, December 3, 2007, in Los Angeles Superior Court, Central District, before the Honorable Ricardo Torres.

"Ford Motor Company's decision to place corporate profits over the safety of their SUV's occupants, demonstrates a callous disregard for the safety of the people who ride in Ford SUVs," says John Bisnar, partner and founder of the Bisnar Chase personal injury law firm. "It is shameful that an American auto maker would willingly ignore known catastrophic injury concerns just to improve their profits."

On the afternoon of July 25, 2003, the Ford Expedition's driver, swerved to avoid a collision while traveling southbound on Interstate 5 in Fresno County. The driver subsequently lost control of her vehicle which then rolled over several times. The defective roof collapsed causing severe head and spinal injuries to passenger Gloria Levesque.

The suit alleges Ford Motor Company intentionally engaged in conduct that exposed the plaintiff and other users of the Ford Expedition to potentially serious, life threatening danger for its financial interest and demonstrated a conscious disregard for consumers' safety. The plaintiff is seeking a judgment for past and future medical expenses, loss of earnings, and pain and suffering.

"The defendants clearly put profit before people," says Brian Chase, partner and the firm's chief litigator. "This is another example of an automobile manufacturer profiting from the production of a vehicle known to have serious and life threatening defects. For only $30, Ford could have easily strengthened their SUV's roof structure to withstand these types of rollover roof failures. If Ford had chosen to do so, Gloria Levesque would be teaching at her Montessori school as she had for the past 25 years. Instead she is unemployed, permanently disabled, and catastrophically injured.

The lawsuit, originally filed on November 8, 2005, centers on the allegation that Ford manipulates the general public into believing that large SUVs like their Expedition model, are safer compared to other vehicles while knowing that their SUVs have one of the highest rates of rollover injuries and deaths of any vehicle on the road today.

Chase states, "Ford's SUVs are not built strong enough to protect the front seat occupants from being catastrophically injured during a rollover. They know this and have for years.

Unfortunately, Ford chose to ignore the inherent safety problems of the Expedition including the rollover propensity and insignificant roof strength."

About Bisnar Chase:

Bisnar Chase, LLP, is a California personal injury law firm that represents people who have suffered catastrophic injuries or the loss of a family member. They specialize in automobile defect cases against the world's largest automobile makers. Bisnar Chase is known for its multi-million settlements and judgments for its clients. For more information visit: www.auto-defect-attorneys.com and www.bisnar-chase.com

The court left in place a federal appeals court ruling that Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., should not have given reporters access to the tape-recorded telephone call of Republican leaders discussing the House ethics case against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga, in December 1996.

McDermott asked the justices to hear his appeal of the May ruling, which he said infringed on his free speech rights. The court did not comment on its action.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a 5-4 decision, said McDermott's offense was especially egregious since he was a senior member of the House ethics committee at the time.

The ruling upheld a previous decision ordering McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs.

Boehner was among several GOP leaders heard on the December 1996 call, which involved ethics allegations against Gingrich. Then the House speaker, Gingrich was heard on the call telling Boehner and others how to react to allegations. He was later fined $300,000 and reprimanded by the House.

McDermott, who was then serving on the ethics panel, leaked the tape to two newspapers, which published stories on the case in January 1997.

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.

With hordes of attorneys poised to assume senior status, achieving a consensus among partners to ditch mandatory retirement policies is just the first step -- and perhaps the easiest -- in switching to what many say is a fairer system.

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis recently did it, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman made the change, and others are expected to follow. And while these firms report that reaching the decision to abandon age-based retirement was relatively painless, implementing a merit-based system for evaluating older attorneys will not be a simple feat for most.

"It takes time for people to internalize what this means," said Deborah Johnson, a member of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman's executive committee and the firm's chief human resources officer.

Pillsbury Winthrop in April decided to get rid of the provision in its partnership agreement that, in general, created a rebuttable presumption that when lawyers turned 65 it was time for them to give up full equity status.

In light of the firm's decision, Johnson has worked with other firm leaders to devise a system that provides flexibility but holds attorneys accountable for their contributions. She estimates that the change affects about 10 percent of the firm's partners.

The full results of the decision at the 755-attorney firm will take at least a year to realize, Johnson said. In the meantime, the firm is operating under its newly implemented program that includes refined partner evaluations, stated goals from senior partners, revised financial planning services and an increased role for career consultants in working with "seniors." The firm defines seniors not by their age but by year of service. It considers as seniors those who have practiced for 25 years or more.

Stephen Yagman, 63, was convicted of trying to avoid paying more than $100,000 in federal income taxes while living what prosecutors said was a lavish lifestyle that included shopping sprees and Aspen vacations.

Yagman told U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson that he was "a target" for prosecutors because of his legal campaigns against police.

In a statement spanning two days at the end of his sentencing hearing, Yagman argued that his problems stemmed from careless inattention.

"I am kind of a savant, focused on civil rights," Yagman said Monday. "I got sloppy."

Wilson said he had known Yagman professionally for 20 years and called him brave for taking on the establishment — but he also said Yagman committed his crimes knowingly. He ordered Yagman to surrender Jan. 15, serve two years of supervised release after his prison term and pay the costs of his prosecution.

Prosecutors had asked for a nine-year minimum prison sentence.

"The fact that the defendant is a lawyer is an aggravating factor," federal prosecutor Alka Sagar said Monday. "He of all people knew the implications of his conduct."

Defense attorney Barry Tarlow said he would appeal Yagman's conviction.

Yagman led high-profile legal campaigns against police, and over several years filed dozens of lawsuits claiming that Los Angeles police abused and framed suspects and made false arrests.

He also sued President Bush and other officials, alleging violations of constitutional rights of a detainee at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sought class-action status on behalf of all detainees.

Yagman filed for bankruptcy in 1999, but prosecutors said he failed to disclose that he lived in a 2,800-square-foot home near the beach. He had, however, made mortgage and property tax payments on the property and claimed the homeowner's mortgage-interest deduction on his tax returns.

The government argued that Yagman paid only a fraction of his income taxes from 1994 to 1997, eventually owing the IRS more than $158,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties. Prosecutors also alleged he failed to pay $30,000 in payroll taxes that his law firm owed during that period and claimed he hid about $617,000 he received from his mother and elderly relatives from the IRS.

Yagman also tried to hide $70,000 in assets to avoid paying out a civil judgment awarded against him and his firm in 1996, prosecutors said.