Maureen Stevens' husband, Robert, was a photo editor who was exposed to anthrax mailed to the Boca Raton office of American Media Inc., a supermarket tabloid publisher, in 2001. He was the first of five people killed and 17 others sickened in a series of similar attacks.

Justices ruled 4-1 that the defendants had a duty under Florida law to protect the public against the unauthorized release of lethal materials. It's an important, although preliminary, victory for the widow whose $50 million federal lawsuit also alleges the government and Battelle Memorial Institute, a private laboratory in Columbus, Ohio, were the source of the anthrax.

"We have no way of knowing whether Stevens will ultimately be able to prove a case against the defendants," Justice Harry Lee Anstead wrote in the majority opinion. "However, we concluded that Stevens' allegations are sufficient to open the courthouse doors."