In the petition, the firm said it's representing three people severely injured in the Aug. 1 collapse and the families of two people who died in the disaster. It did not identify the victims, and attorney James Schwebel declined to reveal them.

A hearing on the petition was scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in St. Paul.

"We are in the very preliminary stage on this," Schwebel said. "We've been retained by several families. We've been contacted by many others. They're obviously wanting to make sure there is some accountability for whoever is culpable for this disaster, and we need to have experts to answer many of these questions for us."

Copies of the petition were served on the offices of the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, the Minneapolis city attorney and the state attorney general because federal, city and state and city agencies are involved in the collapse investigation. Spokespeople for those offices did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.

The petition said the firm had hired two experts to help it pursue wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits on behalf of its clients, and that they had special training and experience that would "assist a jury in determining negligence and causation issues."

Time is of the essence because the impending dismantling of the wreckage "will forever make it impossible to perform an inspection on the site," the petition said.

Nine people were confirmed dead and four were still missing as of Tuesday, while about 100 people were injured in the collapse.

Wrongful death lawsuits must be filed in three years, but the deadline for negligence suits is longer, Schwebel said.

The state's liability is limited to $1 million, but any lawsuits could also target private contractors and their insurers.

Bruce Johnson, the Noels' current attorney, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that his clients were "very disappointed."

"We were surprised by the ruling, and we believe it was incorrect," Johnson said to the newspaper.

A telephone message left by The Associated Press at Schlesinger's office and with the attorney representing the firm, Bruce Rogow, was not immediately returned after hours Thursday.

Noel was left paralyzed from the waist down at 6 months old following surgery at a state clinic in 1999. Now 19, she suffers from spina bifida, a congenital defect in which the spinal column fails to close properly.

A Broward jury awarded $8.5 million to the Noels, but state law limits such payments to $200,000 without legislative approval. Lawmakers finally passed the claims bill this year after several failed attempts.

Schlesinger filed a lien asking for more money than the legislation allocated to the firm.

Last month, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink argued the Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale lacks jurisdiction on the case. A telephone message and an e-mail left after hours by AP for Sink was not immediately returned.

Noel and her family lived in Broward County when the surgery took place but have since moved to Brevard County, where she is attending college.

Earlier this year, Roe told lawyers at a Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association conference that "there will be negative campaigns against judges in 2008. That is reality."

Lathrop simply said that it no longer needed the space it leased to Roe and that it had given its landlord and Roe notice of its intent to terminate the lease.

Roe last week said his lease runs until March or April and he'd been dealing directly with the building's owner, an out-of-town outfit. He said he originally signed a two-year lease.

Roe said he hopes to remain in the space by negotiating directly with the landlord but plans to remain there in any event until the sublease expires.

The space houses nine employees, according to Roe, who has his own 20- by 25-foot glassed-in corner office. He said he had two other offices in the area but declined to disclose their locations.

Blunt's sister, Amy Blunt, works in Lathrop's government relations department. Like other large and influential law firms, Lathrop boasts both heavyweight Democrats and Republicans on its roster, including Jack Craft (Republican) and Harold Fridkin (Democrat) in its Kansas City office.

KSU case is 'moot'

A constitutional challenge to the removal in 2004 of the adviser to Kansas State University's newspaper was ruled moot last week by a federal court.

Katie Lane, the former editor in chief of the Collegian, and Sarah Rice, its former managing editor, sued over the removal of Ron Johnson as the paper's adviser, supposedly because of the subpar quality of the newspaper's news coverage.

The move occurred after a controversy erupted on campus over the extent of minority news coverage in the newspaper and its failure to cover the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government held in Manhattan in 2004. Lane and Rice claimed that Johnson's removal was triggered by the controversy and chilled the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

The trial court dismissed the case, finding that the First Amendment claim failed because the decision to remove Johnson was based on the quality of the Collegian, not its content. On appeal, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the trial court's decision, ruling that because Lane and Rice have since graduated, their claims were moot.

An exception to the mootness doctrine — where there's a reasonable expectation that the same complaining parties will be subjected to the same actions again — was found inapplicable.

"Because only KSU students serve as editors of the Collegian, there is no reasonable expectation that Lane and Rice will be subjected, post-graduation, to censorship by defendants in connection with this newspaper," the court stated.

Five days before Troy Anthony Davis' scheduled execution, Brenda Forrest got a call from her husband of eight years.

He had just heard a report on a Chicago radio station about a convicted cop killer from their hometown of Savannah. The report said serious questions had surfaced about whether the man was actually guilty of the 1989 murder.

"Oh my God," Forrest said, finally letting go of the secret she had kept. "I was on that jury. I've got to get involved."

The next day, Forrest called lawyers at the Georgia Resource Center, whose attorneys help represent Davis. She reviewed recanted testimonies of seven of nine trial witnesses and also the affidavits of others who had stepped forward with additional information. Some implicated another man in the murder of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

Forrest signed a sworn statement of her own:

"I have some serious doubts about the justness of Mr. Davis' death sentence. I find it very troubling that the jury's sentence was based upon incomplete and unreliable evidence. If I had been aware of this newly gathered evidence and had the benefit of it at trial, I would not have sentenced Mr. Davis to death."

Three other jurors in Davis' 1991 trial signed similar statements that his defense lawyers presented to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles at a hearing on July 16, the day before Davis was set to die.

Curtis Wilson, Isaiah Middleton and Cynthia Quarterman also expressed concerns as to the fairness of Davis' punishment given after reviewing the revised testimonies.

The clemency board temporarily stayed Davis' execution.

On Friday, the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to hear Davis' request that he be granted a new trial. A spokeswoman for the clemency board said it would announce today if would hold a hearing previously scheduled for Thursday after the five board members have reviewed the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case.

Forrest said she believes Davis should not be put to death until the new evidence in his case is examined by a judge or jury. No court has yet seen the new information because of a 1996 federal law designed to streamline capital cases and place a time limit on inmate appeals.

"I can't say for sure if he's guilty or not, but he deserves to be heard," Forrest said.

It's not common to have four jurors change their minds based on new evidence, said one legal expert who has been studying capital case juries for 15 years.

"In this case, the fact that there are any jurors, but especially four with doubts about the death penalty, would sort of indicate that chances of a life sentence would be significant," said Scott Sundby, law professor at Washington & Lee University.

Because of the federal law, however, the difficulty is getting any forum to hear from Davis' defense attorneys, Sundby said. "I am impressed that the pardons board is open to this evidence," he said.

Sundby said a lot is asked of jurors who must make a decision of life and death.

"One of their greatest frustrations is when they have gone through this process and then they find out they didn't have the full picture," he said. "There is a sense of betrayal on their part. Their view is: You asked us to condemn someone to death, and we didn't have all the facts."

Forrest knows that if Davis' execution is carried out, it will be done in her name.

Since the trial, she has wrestled with her faith and the moral correctness of the death penalty. She is troubled by the case even more now that she has read the new testimony.

Forrest was 35 and working as a chemist when she was called for jury duty. She said few of the witnesses seemed like upstanding citizens, and she questioned their credibility.

"They were not people who were believable," Forrest said in a telephone interview from her office in Chicago, where she relocated in 1999.

The jury of seven blacks and five whites deliberated for one hour and 57 minutes before returning a verdict.

In the somber jury room, Forrest said her fellow jurors debated the testimony of Harriet Murray, who testified that she saw Davis with a "smirky-like smile" on his face when he shot MacPhail. The jury found her story compelling but discussed whether she could have really seen what was happening from a distance and in the darkness of night, Forrest recalled.

After the trial, in a 2002 affidavit, Murray was more ambiguous about who she saw that night. She no longer named Davis as the killer. Murray has since died.

Other jurors, Forrest said, talked about Davis' demeanor. She always thought he had a look of resignation.

There was a conversation about possible innocence. Is there any doubt about Davis' guilt based on what we heard? the jurors asked themselves.

Then they wrote down their verdicts. It was unanimous.

"I was under oath to vote according to the evidence we heard," she said. "I was compelled to agree [he was guilty] at the time.'

But the trial troubled Forrest. She never spoke about it with anyone, not even with the man she later married.

She got on with her new life, far from Savannah, far from the prison at Jackson, where Davis has been on death row for 16 years.

"What I did was put it out of my mind," she said.

After reviewing the new defense documents, she was eager to know what the clemency board would decide. "I was sitting on pins and needles to see if he got a stay," she said.

Now, like every other interested party in the case, Forrest has to wait longer.

If Davis winds up being executed, Forrest says she will have to live with herself. It will haunt her until her own death.